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In Ritter’s The Glory of Their Times (1966), Greenberg told him, “Some people still have it fixed in their minds that the reason I didn’t break Ruth’s record was because I’m Jewish, [that] the ballplayers did everything they could to stop me. That’s pure baloney.... The reason I didn’t hit sixty or sixty-one homers is because I ran out of gas; it had nothing at all to do with being Jewish.”

While it is true that some teams down the stretch had pitchers who wouldn’t give Greenberg anything good to hit, the Cleveland Indians pitchers that walked him did so because it was the strategic thing to do, as the Indians and Tigers were fighting for third place money. It is commonplace now to walk a Barry Bonds-type hitter, but it was less common then. Most hitters were challenged. Still, it made sense then and now to walk Greenberg repeatedly.

Historians who don’t believe in the conspiracy against Greenberg also have an answer to why the American League decided to play the additional games at the giant Municipal Stadium: The move simply allowed many more fans to see the great slugger go for the record.

MY OPINION

The argument that the Indians were battling the Tigers for third-place and therefore didn’t want to let Greenberg beat them with a home run is ludicrous. I checked the standings on September 26, 1938. The Yankees were entrenched in first place, and the Red Sox were firmly in second. Cleveland had a record of 83-63 and Detroit had a record of 78-69, which means the Indians had a 5½ game lead on the Tigers, with a week left to play. Detroit won five of its last six games, and finished three games behind the Indians. It’s a nice rationale, the third-place money argument, but it doesn’t jive.

As for the game being moved from League Park, the Indians played the entire season at Municipal Stadium in 1933, after which the Indians returned to League Park—playing only occasionally at the Stadium. It wasn’t until 1947 that the Indians began to play all of their games at Municipal Stadium. It is possible that they moved their games to a bigger venue to maximize attendance, but I’m not sold on that. Teams averaged one doubleheader per week in those days, rather than squeezing out every last dollar by playing as many dates as possible. Organizations had to be cognizant of the Depression-era economics. If the Indians were concerned about gate receipts, they would have played every game at League Park, rather than moving a season-ending doubleheader to Municipal Stadium.

In the final two games of the season, a doubleheader in Cleveland’s huge stadium, Greenberg had a 420-foot hit in the first game that didn’t even reach the fences. In the second game, with the shadows coming across the infield, the game was called after seven innings. It was called by home plate umpire Moriarity, who apologized to Greenberg, saying that he had gone as long as he could go. (In the off-season, the Indians apparently put in lights. The first night game at Cleveland Stadium was held on June 27, 1939.)

Oh, and by the way, Greenberg had two ground-rule doubles in 1938, resulting from the batted ball hitting a screen in Tigers Stadium that wasn’t there in 1927. Both would have been home runs in Ruth’s day.

Greenberg was the first Jewish Major League player to win an MVP award, and the only one to win the MVP twice (1935 and 1940). He also was the first Jew to be elected to Baseball’s Hall of Fame, and the first Jewish owner/general manager of a Major League ballclub (of the Indians, ironically).

More importantly, Greenberg’s baseball prime was interrupted by World War II, when, at thirty years old, he was the first baseball star to enlist in the Armed Forces. He spent 4½ years serving his country, coming out of the service just in time to hit a pennantclinching home run for the Tigers in 1945.

Greenberg was just the sort of charismatic and clutch superstar to have deservedly held the single-season home run record. Was his home run record stolen by anti-Semitic pitchers and a baseball commissioner who didn’t want it broken? Greenberg never claimed