The Tigers won their second straight pennant, and this time they also won the World Series. It was their first championship, after 35 years of trying. Their top players were Hank Greenberg, Charlie Gehringer and Mickey Cochrane; big Hank won the MVP.

        The top two RBI men were Greenberg and Gehrig; when a player drives in 51 more runs than anyone else, it's a good bet that he will be the MVP.
        Lou Gehrig was baseball's first great power-hitting first baseman. Then came Jimmie Foxx, who gave the American League two of the greatest first basemen of all time. And in 1933, the Detroit Tigers put a big 22-year-old named Hank Greenberg at first base. Greenberg was 6'4" and weighed over 200 pounds, and at the plate was one of the most fearsome hitters in the league.
        Greenberg was a devastating power hitter who played for thirteen years and won two MVP Awards. This year, he led the Tigers to their first World Series championship. But despite his success, Greenberg struggled with adversity his entire career. Greenberg was the biggest Jewish star in the game; his religious beliefs had stirred a bit of a controversy the year before, when the Tigers were in a pennant race with the mighty Yankees. Greenberg played and hit a game winning home run on Rosh Hashanah, but decided to sit out on Yom Kippur. Wrote poet and Tiger fan Edgar Guest :

     We shall miss him in the infield
     and shall miss him at the bat
     But he's true to his religion
     and I honor him for that.

        The Tigers still won the pennant. This year they won the championship; Greenberg, however, broke his wrist in the second game and missed the rest of the Series. In 1936 he reinjured the same wrist and missed almost the entire season. Greenberg came back and drove in 183 runs in 1937, and hit 58 home runs in 1938. In 1940 he won his second MVP Award. In 1941, Greenberg was one of the first baseball players drafted into the army.
        After four years overseas, Greenberg returned midway through the 1945 season, and led the Tigers to another World Series. He then led the league in home runs and RBI in 1946. He was traded to Pittsburgh in 1947, where they built the famous "Greenberg Gardens" at Forbes Field (a bullpen that was built in front of the left field wall). He played only one year for the Pirates and retired at age 36. Greenberg's career amounted to only 9 1/2 seasons; he hit 331 lifetime home runs, though had he not spent all that time in the war he likely would have had over 500. Today, he remains one of baseball's most celebrated sluggers.
        And Then There Were None. Jimmie Foxx was the last of the stars left over from the great Philadelphia teams of 1929-31. Despite another big season from Foxx, the Athletics finished in last place. Team owner Connie Mack had run out of money, and had dealt off all of his other stars (Cochrane, Al Simmons, Lefty Grove). After the season, Foxx was sold to the Red Sox. And the Athletics would remain in last place for a long, long time.
        Joe Vosmik of Cleveland finished third in the MVP vote, behind only Greenberg and pitcher Wes Ferrell. This was the only year that Vosmik was a serious MVP candidate. He was another Cleveland player whose name pops up once or twice in the record book, then disappears. Vosmik led the league in hits with Boston in 1938, but otherwise was an undistinguished player the rest of his career.
        Gehringer and Cochrane were both magnificent, though Cochrane missed a lot of games (perhaps to devote more attention to his other job, as manager). He didn't play much at all in 1936 either; then in 1937, he was drilled in the head by a fastball (this was before batters wore helmets), and almost died. He never played again, and was finished as a manager the next year. It was an inglorious end to the career of one of baseball's greatest players.
        Buddy Myer was right there with the others. But the Tigers won, and the Senators didn't, so I'll take Gehringer. Myer was another outstanding player whom no one has ever heard of. This was his best year, but he had many other good ones. Myer and Billy Herman have almost the exact same career stats, though Herman is a Hall Of Famer, and is certainly more famous. Though their career stats are almost identical, they had different careers. Myer was a steady, consistent player for many years; Herman mixed in a few brilliant seasons with others that weren't much good.
         I've given Herman four(!) second-place MVP finishes, and Myer only once makes the top four. But I'm not convinced that Herman was the better player; those four seasons stick out like a sore thumb in Herman's career, whereas Myer was more consistent. Myer also got stuck in the shadow of Charlie Gehringer, who was the best second baseman of the era. I think I would still rather have had Herman, who had a great defensive reputation as well, but it's close.