1940: From the despair of a suicide,
to the joy of a world title, it was
The Reds' Wild Ride

BY TOM GROESCHEN
The Cincinnati Enquirer

The 1940 Reds remain one of baseball's most underrated champions, although their World Championship could be called the most memorable in Cincinnati history.

That is because 1940 was the Reds' first true World Championship, after a history of mostly losing. The Reds' only previous world title, 1919, was tainted by the Black Sox scandal.

The 1940 title was also the Reds' last world championship for 35 years, until the Big Red Machine in 1975.

Greg Rhodes, a Cincinnati baseball historian who has co-authored several Reds books with The Enquirer's John Erardi, said the 1940 team was one of the most solid in baseball history.

"They led the major leagues in ERA (3.05), fielding (.981), and fewest errors (117)," Rhodes said. "It was a great pitching and defensive team."

Yet the '40 Reds remain somewhat unappreciated, maybe the least remembered of Cincinnati's five world title teams. The 1919 team is immortalized in book and film (Eight Men Out), as the unwitting beneficiary of the Chicago White Sox's tanking the Series. The 1975-76 championship Reds are ranked among baseball's greatest. And the 1990 "wire-to-wire" team is still fresh in the memory.

"That (1940) team is fondly remembered by fans from those days, but history overall has not given them a very serious look," Rhodes said. "Until (catcher) Ernie Lombardi made the Hall of Fame (in 1986), they were the only team to win back-to-back NL pennants and not have a Hall of Famer."

Pitcher Bucky Walters and catcher Jimmie Wilson were the stars of the 1940 Series. (Enquirer file)

A place in history

The '40 Reds are remembered as much for quirky, freaky things as anything:

• The most indelible incident that year was the August suicide of backup catcher Willard Hershberger, which remains the only time a major-league player has taken his life during a season.

• A 40-year-old coach, former catcher Jimmie Wilson, was pressed into playing because of Hershberger's death and Lombardi's failure to recover from an injured ankle. Wilson hit .353 to help lead the seven-game Series victory over Detroit.

• Just five days before the Series began, second baseman Lonny Frey was knocked from the lineup; Frey dropped an iron lid off the dugout water cooler and onto his foot.

The '40 Reds also did not follow up their success. The Reds slipped to seventh place (of eight teams) by 1945, as World War II wound down. They didn't climb above fifth place again until 1956, when they finished third.

Yet, 1940 capped a fabulous three-year run for Cincinnati. There were Johnny Vander Meer's consecutive no-hitters in 1938, a National League pennant in 1939, and the world title in 1940.

Those Reds had three straight NL Most Valuable Players in Lombardi (1938), pitcher Bucky Walters (1939) and first baseman Frank McCormick (1940).

Junior Thompson, a pitcher who went 16-9 for the 1940 champions, said the team was led brilliantly by Hall of Fame manager Bill McKechnie.

"We had a lot of togetherness and one hell of a manager," Thompson said recently. "He knew just where to put guys and play to their strengths. We had great pitching with Bucky Walters (22-10), Paul Derringer (20-12), Jim Turner (14-7), and me. We had Whitey Moore (8-8) and Joe Beggs (12-3, league-high seven saves). And we had one of the best defensive clubs you've ever seen."

Cincinnati residents celebrated their first untainted World Championship with a ticker-tape parade down Fourth Street. (Enquirer file)

Plenty of punch

Offensively, there was McCormick (.309, 19 HR, 127 RBI) and Lombardi (.319, 14 HR, 74 RBI) leading the way. There were second baseman Frey (.266) and shortstop Billy Myers, who hit little (.202) but won the seventh game of the World Series with a sacrifice fly.

Bill Werber (.277, 105 runs scored) manned third base, with Ival Goodman (.258, 12 HR, 63 RBI), Jimmy Ripple (.307) and Mike McCormick (.300) in the outfield. Werber, Frank McCormick and outfielder Harry Craft all led the league in fielding at their positions. Craft was nosed out of his spot by Ripple, a better hitter who had been acquired in August, for the Series.

Thompson, now 81 and living in Scottsdale, Ariz., is one of just a handful of 1940 Reds still living. He remains in baseball as a scout for the San Diego Padres.

Another teammate with vivid memories is Eddie Joost, 82, who lives in Santa Rosa, Calif.

Joost admittedly was a bit player in 1940, hitting .216 as a reserve infielder. But he became a Series regular because of the Frey injury, and hit .200 with two RBI.

"I was the designated utility player," Joost said. "I was just fortunate to be around and get to the World Series."

Joost later became an All-Star in a 17-year career. But 1940 was his only Series appearances, and he cherishes that October nearly 60 years ago.

And he still wears his World Series ring.

"It was very important to me to win that," he said. "I wear the ring quite often. I'm very proud of it."

A 1940 World Series Ticket

First to 100

The '40 Reds (100-53) were the first Cincinnati team to win 100 games. They battled the Brooklyn Dodgers for first place before taking the lead for good on July 7.

Cincinnati appeared to have an insurmountable lead of nine games when tragedy struck.

On Aug. 3, 1940, reserve catcher Hershberger committed suicide by cutting his throat in a Boston hotel room. He had been despondent over a recent loss to the Giants, blaming himself for calling the wrong pitches that resulted in two ninth-inning home runs.

Teammates told Hershberger to forget about it, but the moody catcher continued to brood. He was a loner who said little, but he was also a tremendous hitter. He hit .316 for his three-year career with the Reds (1938-40), and was batting .309 when he took his life.

The night of Aug. 2, McKechnie had dinner with Hershberger and the two men talked late into the night. When they went to their separate hotel rooms, it appeared Hershberger's depression had passed.

The Reds had a doubleheader scheduled the next day. But when the team arrived at the ballpark, Hershberger was not there. Gabe Paul, the club's public relations director and traveling secretary, phoned Hershberger and asked why he wasn't in uniform.

"I'm sick," Hershberger replied.

Hershberger was told to come to the park, that he didn't have to suit up. The catcher agreed.

That was the last time anyone talked to him.

When Hershberger failed to show by the end of the first game, McKechnie sent Dan Cohen, a Cincinnati fan who often traveled with the Reds, to the hotel to find Hershberger.

When Cohen reached Hershberger's room, he found the lifeless body in the bathroom. Hershberger had tried to slash his wrists first, then cut his throat.

He was 29 years old.

"Hersh was a different person, kind of a recluse," Joost said. "You never knew what he was thinking, and I don't think we'll ever know what really happened to him. I know we lost a good guy."

Hershberger's death shocked baseball, and bothered many Reds players for years.

"We kidded him all the time, but he was hurting more than what we knew," Thompson said. "I felt badly for many years for the way I had treated him. He was one of the best backup guys anybody ever had, and I think he was always happy just to back up Ernie."

Reds statistics
Player	r	hr	rbi	sb	avg.
Lombardi	50	14	74	0	.319
F.McCormick	93	19	127	2	.309
Hershberger	6	0	26	0	.309
M.McCormick	48	1	30	8	.300
Ripple	15	4	20	1	.298
Werber	105	12	48	16	.277
Frey	102	8	54	22	.266
Goodman	78	12	63	9	.258
Arnovich	30	0	33	1	.250
Craft	47	6	48	2	.244
Joost	24	1	24	4	.216
Myers	33	5	30	0	.202
Totals	644	83	493	67	.266
Pitcher	w	l	so	bb	era
Beggs	12	3	25	21	1.99
Walters	22	10	115	92	2.48
Turner	14	7	53	32	2.89
Derringer	20	12	115	48	3.06
Thompson	16	9	103	96	3.32
Moore	8	8	60	56	3.62
Totals	100	53	557	445	3.05

Show must go on

The Reds played through their grief that summer, and dedicated the season to Hershberger. They won the pennant by 12 games, and entered the World Series with grim memories of the preceding October.

In 1939, Joe DiMaggio and the mighty Yankees had swept the Reds in four World Series games. In 1940, Cincinnati met a potent Detroit team that featured eventual Hall of Famers Hank Greenberg and Charlie Gehringer, along with pitching aces Bobo Newsom and Schoolboy Rowe.

The Reds were underdogs for another reason. The NL had not won a World Series since the 1934 St. Louis Cardinals' "Gashouse Gang," and the NL had become the poor stepchild to the Yankee-dominated AL.

Cincinnati's best hope seemed to rest with its pitching rotation, led by Walters and Derringer. Walters won Game 2 and Game 6 and Derringer won Game 4, and when it went to a seventh game, Derringer took the mound.

In Game 7 at Crosley Field, the Reds were behind 1-0 in the seventh but broke through on a double by Frank McCormick and another by Ripple. Ripple was sacrificed to third by Wilson, Lombardi was intentionally walked as a pinch hitter, and then Myers hit a sacrifice fly to center that scored Ripple with what proved the winning run.

Joost said the 1940 Reds, like most good teams before the free agency era, were mostly homegrown.

"That team had been together a long time, outside of a few players," Joost said. "Good pitching and defense, that's what we had. These days, it's all offense."

The Series title sent Cincinnati into a frenzy, and briefly knocked the Nazi war machine off the front pages. Baseball Commissioner Kenesaw M. Landis made his way into the Reds dressing room after the final out and congratulated 40-year-old hero Wilson by saying, "You did our generation proud, Jim."

Cincinnati went wild. "Fatted calves and fifths of bourbon were being killed all over town," wrote a United Press International correspondent.

As the evening went on, fans turned over a streetcar, cut trolley lines, and made life hectic for the police. A car cruised the streets bearing a "McKechnie for President" banner.

The celebration lasted several days. The Battle of Britain was at its height, but in Cincinnati the Reds gave a brief respite. The Nazis were soon back in the headlines, and America had only a year of peace remaining before Pearl Harbor was bombed.

The Reds' fortunes started slipping, too.

"During the war years, the Cardinals became a juggernaut," Rhodes said. "People forgot about the Reds, and they didn't contend again for a long time. But the fact that they won back-to-back NL pennants kind of elevates them in history, ahead of some of the one-year wonders."