As the World Series returns to Wrigley Field on Friday for the first time in 71 years, we can already rest assured that the show the Cubs and Indians have put on so far has surpassed the 1945 installment.
The signature line summing up that Cubs-Tigers matchup was uttered before the first pitch was thrown. The Associated Press surveyed sportswriters around the country to get their picks to win the '45 Fall Classic, and Chicago scribe Warren Brown came up with a response that would resonate for decades:
MORE: Baseball's longest World Series droughts
"I don't think either of them can win."
Such was the state of Major League Baseball as it sputtered into a post-World War II era that would become known as the game's golden age. No such description could be applied to the product on the field in October 1945, though.
Since 1942, ballplayers at every level — from superstars such as Hank Greenberg and Bob Feller to up-and-coming minor-leaguers — had enlisted in the armed forces or were drafted. President Franklin D. Roosevelt gave his blessing for baseball to continue during the war, citing its morale benefits, but the quality of the product on the field diminished with each passing year. Consider that just 32 of 128 position players who were regular starters on big-league rosters in 1945 could make the same claim in 1946, thanks to the influx of more talented players returning to reclaim their jobs.
In the interim, baseball made do with an assortment of players who otherwise would never have gotten a chance at the majors, including 15-year-old pitcher Joe Nuxhall and one-armed outfielder Pete Gray. (Of course, the labor shortage still didn't prompt owners to drop their ban on black players.)
The 1945 World Series was the last moment of glory for many of those replacements, with roster composition unlike anything that would ever be seen again.
The average age of the eight regular position players the Tigers used in the World Series that year was nearly 34 1/2. About the only notable exception to Detroit's collection of "old men" was 24-year-old ace Hal Newhouser, who feasted on inferior competition to win back-to-back American League MVP awards in 1944 and '45. The presence of Newhouser and Greenberg, who had returned in July from his long Army stint, had some favoring the Tigers. But it was hardly a consensus.
MORE: Best players who never played in the Fall Classic
The twists and turns of New York Herald Tribune writer Al Laney's series preview column sum it up. While insisting "all the old excitement is back" thanks to the end of the war, Laney acknowledged that "both teams may field players who are not of authentic championship caliber" and all but threw his hands up when attempting to predict a winner.
"The nature of these pennant races and the quality of 1945 baseball have produced an uncomfortable situation for experting," he wrote. "It seems that nowhere is there to be found a person with a reasonable claim to the title who is willing to give an unqualified statement as to the outcome. The majority seem to be of the opinion that the Cubs ought to be good enough to win in about six games, but there is a great lack of confidence in their ability to do so."
When play actually began, the series measured up to those low expectations. Fielding errors — whether reflected on the official scorecard or not — were rampant, as Detroit's outfielders in particular stumbled and bumbled their way around the grass at Briggs Stadium for the first three games and at Wrigley Field the next four. The baserunning wasn't stellar either.
MORE: Must-see photos from the 2016 World Series
One of the more enduring images of the series was 42-year-old Tigers outfielder Chuck Hostetler falling down between third and home in the seventh inning of Game 6, a moment seized upon by sportswriters nationwide and immediately christened "Hostetler's Flop."
The Cubs managed to win that game in 12 innings when a Stan Hack line drive took a bad hop over Greenberg in left field, allowing the winning run to score. The play was officially ruled an error on Hammerin' Hank but was changed to a double later that night.
That play gave the Cubs one last chance to celebrate their first world championship since beating the Tigers in five games in 1908, but those dreams faded quickly in Game 7.
Chicago manager Charlie Grimm — a banjo-playing Missourian invariably referred to in the press as "Jolly Cholly" — chose to start Hank Borowy in the finale, just two days after he had picked up the win in Game 6 with four innings of relief. That outing came the day after he started and took the loss in Game 5. Let's just say Joe Maddon doesn't have to worry about his pitching staff like Grimm did.
Borowy, who had been brilliant since being acquired in midseason from the Yankees, simply and understandably had nothing left. He threw a total of nine pitches to three batters in Game 7, retiring none of them. All three scored, and Detroit was on its way to a five-run first and 9-3 rout that secured the Tigers' first World Series title since beating, yes, the Cubs in 1935.
MORE: Unlikely World Series heroes
While Chicago mourned another missed opportunity, the Cubs' seventh consecutive World Series loss since that 1908 title, Detroit went home to celebrate. More important, baseball fans everywhere could rejoice in the fact that the game they loved would return better than ever in 1946.
"Wartime baseball ran and did not walk to the exits yesterday as the 1945 world series moved into the record books as one of the most grotesque, funniest and incredible post-season affairs that our national pastime ever has had," Arthur Daley wrote in the New York Times. "Practically everything happened except that no fielder was hit on the noggin by a fly ball. And some of them didn't escape that misadventure by a wide margin.
"But that undoubtedly is the last such exhibition the series will have for a long, long time."
