“Browns After Major League Win Record” read United Press reporter Glen Perkins’ headline on April 29, 1944, in his wrap-up of the previous day’s baseball action. The St. Louis Browns were usually associated with futility, but not in 1944. On the 27th, Browns pitcher Nels Potter stranded 10 runners in defeating Cleveland, 5-1. The Browns got all their runs in the first two innings on four walks, three hits, and a passed ball. It was the Browns’ eighth straight victory to start the season, setting an American League record. The next day, Browns pitcher Jack Kramer tossed a four-hitter to defeat the Chicago White Sox, 3-1, to get the Browns off to a 9-0 start. That tied a major league record held by the 1918 New York Giants and 1940 Brooklyn Dodgers.
The Browns fell short of setting a new record after losing a 4-3 heartbreaker to the White Sox in their 10th game. However, they defied the naysayers who expected them to revert to their losing ways. At the All-Star break, they were 45-34, in first place in the AL with a 2.5 game lead over the Boston Red Sox, and a nation of baseball followers was captivated. With the resumption of regular play on July 13, Jack Cuddy of United Press wrote that manager “Luke Sewell’s ‘mystery team’ of St. Louis Browns resumes its pennant campaign today, almost monopolizing the baseball spotlight. Rarely has any club commanded such attention at this stage of the race.”
Not Good Enough for the Army
World War II was raging across Europe, and Uncle Sam sent many major-league ballplayers RSVP invitations to participate, only without the SVP part, depleting several teams. The New York Yankees may have been hit the hardest, losing Joe DiMaggio, Joe Gordon, Tommy Henrich, Charlie Keller, and Phil Rizzuto to the draft. From the Boston Red Sox, Dom DiMaggio, Johnny Pesky, and Ted Williams were enlisted. Cleveland’s Bob Feller and the Detroit Tigers’ Hank Greenberg were similarly lost to their teams.
On the other hand, the United States decided it could defeat the Axis powers without the aid of any Browns. Thirteen of their 25 players – including their entire starting infield of first baseman George McQuinn, second baseman Don Gutteridge, shortstop Vern Stephens, and third baseman Mark Christman – were classified 4-F. Many of the Browns’ key players were in their 30s. McQuinn had a bad back. Potter had a bad knee. Only three Browns – Christman, pitcher Denny Galehouse, and outfielder Chet Laabs, all of whom held defense jobs while playing baseball – contributed to the war effort at all.
The St. Louis Cardinals, the Browns’ National League counterpart with whom they shared Sportsman’s Park, didn’t suffer any significant losses. Their best player, Stan Musial, escaped the draft until 1945. His hometown of Donora, Pennsylvania, had an ample supply of young, single men, shoving Musial down the Selective Service Division’s list of eligible men. The Cardinals were a powerhouse in the NL, having won seven pennants from 1926 to 1943. They easily won a third consecutive pennant in 1944, 14.5 games ahead of the second-place Pittsburgh Pirates, with a 105-49 record. Musial hit .347/.440/.549, 12 HR, 94 RBI, and 174 OPS+ while leading the league in several offensive categories.
“The Players Drank Anything That Would Pour”
Much credit for the Browns’ 1944 success was given to Sewell. In 1995, Browns infielder Ellis Clary told Chuck Pickard, looking back at the 1944 season for Baseball Digest, “It was a tough job managing a bunch of hyenas like us. The players drank anything that would pour, and if you went out with them, you wore a football helmet.” Reserve catcher Frank Mancuso chimed in, “I’ll agree it was a rowdy bunch and several of the guys were known to take a few drinks, but they never let it interfere with their performance on the field.”
In 1964, Gutteridge, who played for the 1934 Cardinals’ “Gas House Gang,” compared that team to the 1944 Browns for Bob Broeg of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “The Cardinals I joined had more ability,” said Gutteridge, “but the Browns of 1944 were always in trouble, too – having fun, I mean – and they had that same care-free, cut-throat, everything-goes approach to the game and life. We had a couple of dandy fights that year – among ourselves and with other clubs.”
A Unique Approach to Roster-Building
Although the US government refrained from raiding his roster, Sewell, who became the Browns manager in 1941, was creative in assembling this gang of misfits. Sig Jakucki had begun his professional career in the minors in 1934. He pitched seven games for the Browns in 1936, posting a 0-3 record with an 8.71 ERA and 2.129 WHIP. After two more years in the minors, he quit baseball after the 1938 season. Sewell took on Jakucki when the right-hander returned to the Browns in 1944 at age 34. In 35 games, including 24 starts, Jakucki went 13-9 with a 3.55 ERA that season.
Mancuso was playing minor league baseball when he went into the service in 1943. On his final jump during paratrooper training, he broke his back and a leg. He thought his baseball career was over. Sewell believed in him, however, and offered him an opportunity to play for the 1944 Browns.
In 1942, Potter injured his knee while pitching for Double-A Louisville in the Red Sox system. He thought about giving up the game. But he was 18-8 with a 2.60 ERA, so the Browns took a chance on him in that November’s Rule 5 draft. He rewarded Sewell’s faith with a 10-5 record and 2.78 ERA in 1943, following that up by going 19-7 with a 2.83 ERA in 1944, when he received consideration for the AL Most Valuable Player.
In total, eight Browns received MVP votes in 1944, none more than the 23-year-old Stephens. The right-handed hitter batted .293/.365/.462, 20 HR, and 109 RBI while accumulating 5.5 WAR. On December 29, Major League Baseball announced that Stephens had led the AL in RBI. Why it took nearly three months after the regular season to make that determination is anybody’s guess. Perhaps the Army took all the mathematicians, too.
The Browns Win the Pennant
All season long, the Browns were locked in a tight race with the Tigers and Yankees. The Browns fell in and out of first place eight times in September. After action on the 10th, they were in third place, a game behind the Yankees and a half-game behind the Tigers. But the Yankees began a five-game losing streak on the 16th, while the Browns won 11 of their final 12 games, and the final weekend came down to a two-team race between the Browns and Detroit. Interestingly, in 1982, Sewell told Horace R. Givens of Baseball Digest, “[The Yankees] should have won [the pennant] hands down, because they had the best ball club. But they didn’t play the right type [of] ball. They tried to overpower you, and they didn’t have the power.” Hmmm. That sounds like the hitting philosophy adopted by many of today’s major league teams.
The Browns and Tigers entered action on September 29 with the Tigers in first place by one game. The Browns had a four-game series against the Yankees at Sportsman’s Park. The Tigers hosted a four-game series against the Washington Senators. The Browns swept the Friday doubleheader and took the Saturday game behind the complete game pitching of Kramer, Potter, and Galehouse. The Yankees scored only one run in the three games. Meanwhile, Detroit split its doubleheader on Friday and won the Saturday game. The final day of the regular season on October 1 began with the Browns and the Tigers tied for first place.
An interesting story was brewing in Detroit. The Tigers had Dizzy Trout, who finished 27-14 with a league-leading 2.12 ERA, ready to go on the hill. He was opposed by Dutch Leonard, who had lost seven straight decisions to the Tigers. But before the game, Leonard was approached by gamblers, who offered him $1,500 to throw the game. Leonard turned them down and was so upset by the offer that he took it out on the Tigers’ bats. He allowed just four hits en route to a 4-1, complete-game triumph.
Meanwhile, Sewell sent Jakucki to the mound for the final game. Some writers felt that the choice of Jakucki was symbolic of how badly the war had watered down the game. However, there was nobody else after the Browns’ top three starters pitched complete games that weekend. His teammates weren’t concerned. Aided by two home runs from Laabs, Jakucki turned in a fourth consecutive complete game victory, beating the Yankees, 5-2. “Sig’s showing against the Yankees didn’t surprise me,” Mancuso told Pickard. “He was always dependable on the mound and a good low-ball pitcher.”
The Browns had won the pennant. In their 51 years in St. Louis, it was the only pennant the Browns ever won. The franchise would go on to win pennants when it moved after the 1953 season and became the Baltimore Orioles. Getting back to 1944, the Browns had a fan in Cardinals manager Billy Southworth. A radio reporter suggested that the Cardinals would win the World Series easily in four games. According to United Press, Southworth shot back, “Don’t talk like that. After all, the Browns are the best-balanced team in the American League, regardless of what the eastern critics think of them. Can you name a single weak spot in their lineup? Can you name an individual star? Who wins their ball games? Every man on their roster.”
It was hard to dispute that logic. Outfielder Mike Kreevich was the only qualifying .300 hitter on the club. Stephens’ 20 home runs led the team. McQuinn, with 11, was the only other player to hit them in double digits. Potter was the ace of the staff, but Kramer chipped in with a 17-13 record and 2.49 ERA.
The World Series
Imagine one of baseball’s biggest stars not owning a car. Musial didn’t. So, the Musials lived in an apartment within walking distance of Sportman’s Park, where the entire World Series would be played. According to Musial biographer George Vecsey, with a front-row seat to all the activity around the ballpark, Musial’s wife, Lil, quickly came to believe that St. Louis was a “Brownie town.” The legendary writer Grantland Rice noticed “no one-sided fan partisanship” in his New York Sun summation. Sewell found the fans to be impartial observers who sat quietly. However, on recordings of the radio broadcasts of Games 4 and 6, the only 1944 Series games that exist on tape, one can hear cheering whenever something good happens for either team.
In Game 1, the Browns, playing as the visiting team in their home ballpark, managed just two hits. But both came in the fourth inning: Gene Moore’s hard single through the right side of the infield, followed by McQuinn’s home run. They were enough to give Galehouse a complete game, 2-1 victory over Cardinals ace Mort Cooper.
The Cardinals bounced back with a 3-2 victory in 11 innings in Game 2. Plays in the third and 11th innings proved pivotal. In the third, Cardinals second baseman Emil Verban led off with a single off Potter. The next batter, pitcher Max Lanier, laid down a sacrifice bunt. Potter and the two infielders on the left side were momentarily confused about whose play it was. At the last second, Potter picked the ball up and fired it off the glove of Gutteridge, covering first, and into right field. Potter was charged with two errors. The two runners later scored, both with unearned runs.
Cardinals pitcher Blix Donnelly was better than his counterpart at fielding bunts on that day. McQuinn led off the 11th inning with a double. Christman followed with a near-perfect bunt down the third base line. Donnelly quickly pounced on the ball, spun, and threw to third baseman Whitey Kurowski right to the spot where McQuinn would slide into the tag and where he was out on a close play. Moore followed with a fly ball deep enough to have scored a runner from third. Broeg thought Donnelly’s alert play was the deciding play of the Series.
On This Date in 1944: Olivia, MN native Blix Donnelly enters in a jam in the top of the eighth and pitches four scoreless innings as the Cardinals beat the St. Louis Browns 3-2 in 11 innings in Game 2 of the World Series.
The Cardinals won the Series in six and they threw a big… pic.twitter.com/cEJ7J9RZNc
— The Twins Almanac (@TwinsAlmanac) October 6, 2025
Now the home team, the Browns, took Game 3 rather handily, 6-2. Then they forgot how to score runs. The Cardinals won the next three games by scores of 5-1, 2-0, and 3-1 to become the world champions. The Cardinals got two unearned runs in the bottom of the fourth inning of Game 6 because Stephens fielded a double-play grounder and threw wide of second base. Without that play, Game 6 goes into extra innings.
Sewell thought that if Potter hadn’t committed an error in Game 2, the Browns would have won that game and probably the Series. Infield defense was the difference. The Cardinals’ infield handed 124 chances, “many of them near-hits” according to Rice, without an error. In that regard, Rice thought Cardinals shortstop Marty Marion was the hero of the Series. The Browns’ infield committed seven errors, which led to seven unearned runs. Indeed, although the Cardinals outscored the Browns, 16-12, the Browns scored more earned runs. Alternatively, Gutteridge theorized that the Browns lost because the Series was anticlimactic for them after winning the pennant on the last day of the season.
Why the 1944 Browns?
The 1944 season was Potter’s fondest baseball memory. He resented the pundits who disparaged the Browns’ accomplishments, noting that even with so many star players in the service, they still had to beat pitchers like Trout and Hal Newhouser. Why have the Browns been labeled “wartime champions,” he wondered, but not the 1945 Chicago Cubs? It was as though their accomplishment deserved an asterisk.
Rice’s main takeaway from the Series was the lack of “foul language.” This seems like a good place to end.
