The 30 Greatest Sports Conspiracy Theories of All-Time - Elliott Kalb [83]
African Americans weren’t the only ones with an inferior place in society in the mid-1930s. According to Eldon Ham’s Larceny and Old Leather: The Mischievous Legacy of Major League Baseball, Greenberg was “an immediate lightning rod for storms of ethnic insults poring out not only from subversive hate groups or even from the fans [of] that day, but directly from the Cubs’ bench.” Greenberg’s memoirs, and many other sources, say the Cubs players screamed “Christ Killer!” and “Jew Bastard!” at Greenberg. The home plate umpire, George Moriarity, threatened to kick at least five Cubs out of a Series game, led by their manager Charlie Grimm, if he heard any more profanity.
Ham’s 2005 book details how “Commissioner Landis was appalled too—but apparently in a different way: Landis fined the umpire.” Landis also fined some of the Cubs, but according to Ham, “whether doing so reflected real outrage or was just a sham to hide his true feelings is irrelevant. The fining of an umpire who not only maintained order and avoided an ugly escalation, but admirably defended the integrity of the game, speaks volumes for itself regardless of any feigned mitigation or obfuscation by the bigoted Landis.”
Greenberg broke his wrist late in that 1935 World Series, which the Tigers would go on to win. In 1936, Greenberg broke his wrist for a second time in an on-field collision. In 1937, a fully-recovered Greenberg drove in 183 runs—the third most of all time, and a number that no one has topped in seven decades. Yet that year, he didn’t win the MVP. Despite the Yankees winning the pennant, Greenberg’s Detroit teammate, Charlie Gehringer, won the MVP. Gehringer led the League in batting with a .371 average, helping to set the table for the slugging first baseman.
It wasn’t a good season for the Tigers in 1938, as they slid to fourth place. However, Greenberg challenged the most admired record in sports then and now: He went after Babe Ruth. It was like tugging on Superman’s cape.
Like most sluggers, Greenberg had hot streaks. He had eleven multiple home-run games in 1938. On September 27, he hit a pair, giving him fifty-eight home runs with five games remaining in the season, the last three to be played in Cleveland.
In one of the five games, Greenberg was walked four times. In another, Cleveland’s Bob Feller set a strikeout record (since broken), striking out eighteen Tigers (including Greenberg twice). The final game of the season was called on account of darkness in the sixth inning. The Feller performance notwithstanding, one thing is clear regarding those five games: Greenberg did not see many hittable pitches.
EVIDENCE TO SUPPORT A CONSPIRACY
The Indians played their home games in two stadiums: League Park, a small, relatively hitter-friendly park, as well as Municipal Stadium, where center field was 470 feet from home plate. All of a sudden, there was a change in the venue for the final two games in Cleveland, and the final two games were rescheduled to be played in the bigger ballpark. In other words, if Hank were to break the record, he would really have to earn it—really earn it in cavernous Muncipal Stadium. Not only that, but there were pitchers who would not pitch to him. They would not allow the Jewish Greenberg to break Ruth’s record.
One has to understand what was going on in the world in 1938. For one thing, Time magazine named Adolph Hitler its Man of the Year because he was the most influential man in the world, which was hard to dispute. In 1938, he led Nazi troops to their occupation of Austria. In November, Nazi troops and sympathizers looted and burned thousands of Jewish businesses in numerous German cities in what would be called Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass). Less than a year later, Germany would invade Poland, sending Europe into war. There was a growing anti-Semitism in the United States, some of it fueled by the preparation of U.S. armed forces to resist Hitler.