Headline events of the year
Television comes to baseball. On May 17, Princeton University and Columbia University play the first televised baseball game. On August 26, the Cincinnati Reds and Brooklyn Dodgers play the first televised Major League Baseball game, with Red Barber at the microphone. Baseball halls open their doors. On June 12, the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum opens in Cooperstown and inducts its fourth class of immortals. On July 26, the Cuban Baseball Hall of Fame inducts its charter honorees, including José Méndez and Cristóbal Torriente.
Champions Major League Baseball World Series: New York Yankees over Cincinnati Reds (4–0) All-Star Game, July 11 at Yankee Stadium: American League, 3–1
Other champions Negro American League Champion: Kansas City Monarchs Negro National League Champion: Baltimore Elite Giants Amateur World Series: Cuba Negro League Baseball All-Star Game: West, 4–2 (first game, at Comiskey Park); East, 10–2 (second game, in New York City)
Awards and honors Baseball Hall of Fame Cap Anson Eddie Collins Charles Comiskey Candy Cummings Buck Ewing Lou Gehrig Willie Keeler Charles Radbourn George Sisler Al Spalding Most Valuable Player Joe DiMaggio, New York Yankees, OF (AL) Bucky Walters, Cincinnati Reds, P (NL) The Sporting News Player of the Year Award Joe DiMaggio, New York Yankees, OF The Sporting News Most Valuable Player Award Joe DiMaggio, New York Yankees, OF Bucky Walters, Cincinnati Reds, P The Sporting News Manager of the Year Award Leo Durocher, Brooklyn Dodgers
Statistical leaders Any team shown in indicates a previous team a player was on during the season.
American LeagueNational LeagueNegro American LeagueNegro National League Stat Player Total Player Total Player Total Player Total AVG Joe DiMaggio (NYY) .381 Johnny Mize (STL) .349 Henry Turner (CBR) .393 Josh Gibson (HOM) .402 HR Jimmie Foxx (BOS) 35 Johnny Mize (STL) 28 Turkey Stearnes (KCM) 7 Josh Gibson (HOM)Buck Leonard (HOM) 11 RBI Ted Williams (BOS) 145 Frank McCormick (CIN) 128 Willard Brown (KCM) 42 Buck Leonard (HOM) 48 W Bob Feller (CLE) 24 Bucky Walters1 (CIN) 27 Smoky Owens (CBR)George Walker (KCM) 8 Henry McHenry (PHS) 11 ERA Lefty Grove (BOS) 2.54 Bucky Walters1 (CIN) 2.29 Felix Evans (ATL) 1.86 Roy Partlow (HOM) 1.74 K Bob Feller (CLE) 246 Claude Passeau (CHC/)Bucky Walters1 (CIN) 137 Hilton Smith (KCM) 85 Neck Stanley (NBY) 44 1 National League Triple Crown pitching winner
Major league baseball final standings American League final standings
National League final standings
Negro league baseball final standings All Negro leagues standings below are per MLB and Seamheads.
Negro American League final standings
Negro American League postseason Kansas City Monarchs over St. Louis Stars (4–1)
Negro National League final standings
Negro National League postseason The National League had four playoff teams compete against each other before the championship series. National League Playoff Series Homestead Grays over Philadelphia Stars (3–2) Baltimore Elite Giants over Newark Eagles (3–1) National League Championship Series Baltimore Elite Giants over Homestead Grays (3–1–1)
Events
January January 5 – Proceeding on the then-prevalent assumption that Abner Doubleday invented the sport of baseball in a Cooperstown, New York, cow pasture in 1839, "Organized" professional baseball begins a year of centennial celebrations with a gala dinner in Philadelphia featuring honored guests Connie Mack, Clark Griffith and American League president Will Harridge. The celebrations will reach a high point with the June opening of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown. Baseball's 1839 "origin story" is largely based on the 1908 Mills Commission Report, and has been disputed since the document's publication; it will eventually be called the "Doubleday myth." Nevertheless, the myth takes root among Americans who, for patriotic reasons, reject ample evidence that the game evolved from common bat-and-ball games in Great Britain and Ireland. January 8 – Righty Bobo Newsom, who accounted for 36 percent of the St. Louis Browns' entire win total in , threatens to spend the 1939 baseball season "picking cotton" unless his salary exceeds $20,000. Newsom went 20–16 for a penniless, 55–97–4 team that finished last in the AL in attendance last season, but the South Carolinian posted a poor 5.08 earned run average. January 14 – The 15-year MLB pitching career of right-hander Charles "Red" Lucas concludes when he's unconditionally released by the Pittsburgh Pirates. "The Nashville Narcissus" won 157 National League games, 109 with the Cincinnati Reds between and , and led the NL in complete games three times. A skilled batsman, Lucas hit .281 lifetime (404 for 1,439) with three home runs and 190 runs batted in, was frequently used as a pinch hitter, and started 12 games as a position player."Red Lucas (Overview)" at Baseball Reference. January 17 – Ed Barrow, 70, since November 1920 the business manager of the New York Yankees, is elected to succeed the late Jacob Ruppert as club president; he will continue to serve as the Bombers' de facto general manager. Ruppert, who died four days ago, became co-owner of the Yankees in 1915 and sole owner in 1923; since 1921, the franchise has won ten pennants and seven World Series—including the last three Fall Classics in a row. January 24 – First baseman George Sisler (85.8% of ballots cast), second baseman Eddie Collins (77.7%) and the late outfielder Willie Keeler (75.5%) are elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame by the Baseball Writers' Association of America. The trio represent the fourth annual class of inductees since the Hall was launched in 1936. January 25 – Reacting to the Brooklyn Dodgers' embargo-breaking decision to broadcast on radio station WOR all home and road games, the rival New York Giants and New York Yankees say they will air all their home games, except on Sundays, over WABC. Prior to this season, the three New York clubs had agreed not to broadcast any home or road game to protect each other's turnstile counts.
February February 2 – Brooklyn Dodgers general manager Larry MacPhail brings Red Barber to New York City as the Dodgers' first-ever radio play-by-play announcer. Barber, 30, spent the past five seasons as the voice of the Cincinnati Reds—initially hired by MacPhail. He'll become a broadcasting legend in New York over the next 28 years, reporting Dodgers' and Yankees' games, and be honored in Cooperstown as one of the first two recipients of the Ford C. Frick Award. February 8 – Ignoring protests from neighborhood residents, Philadelphia's zoning board approves the installation of lights and the advent of night baseball at Shibe Park, home stadium of the Athletics and Phillies, in time for the 1939 season. Connie Mack's Athletics are poised to host the first night game in American League history. February 14 – The Chicago Cubs sign free-agent right-hander Earl Whitehill, released February 1 by the Cleveland Indians. Whitehill, 40, has won 214 games for three AL teams since his 1923 debut, including a 22-win campaign for the 1933 pennant-winning Washington Senators.
March March 1 – Outfielder Jeff Heath, whose 18 triples led the American League and .343 batting average was second among AL hitters last season, is banned from the Cleveland Indians' spring training camp in New Orleans because he's holding out for a higher salary. March 10 – First-year Brooklyn Dodgers player–manager Leo Durocher tells reporters he's "very 'high'" on another rookie, 19-year-old Hal "Pete" Reiser, a switch-hitting shortstop who played in the Class D Northern League in 1938 but has been impressing Durocher at bat and in the field during a spring training audition. "The boy is a wiz, I'm telling you," the manager, also a shortstop, says. When the youngster's stellar play continues—he goes eight for eight with three homers over a three-game stretch, March 22–24—Durocher will soon be battling his boss, Larry MacPhail, in a vain attempt to keep Reiser on Brooklyn's varsity roster. March 15 – A Hall of Famer and a future Cooperstown inductee join the ranks of baseball broadcasters, when all-time pitching great Walter Johnson, 51, is named to the Washington Senators' announcing team, and former second baseman and manager Frankie Frisch, 41, becomes the voice of Boston's two MLB teams, the Bees and Red Sox. Johnson was one of the first five men elected to the Hall in 1936; Frisch will enter it in 1947. March 16 – The Cincinnati Reds purchase the contract of Billy Werber from the Philadelphia Athletics for a reported $25,000. In Werber, a 30-year-old American League veteran, the Reds gain their starting third baseman for their 1939 and 1940 NL pennant-winning teams. He had been squabbling with Connie Mack over his salary for the coming year. March 22 – Chicago White Sox pitcher Vic Frazier hurls four innings and allows one hit in an exhibition game victory against the Pittsburgh Pirates in Los Angeles while pitching with an undiagnosed fractured skull, suffered the day before when he was struck in the back of the head by a thrown ball. Physicians expect the 34-year-old hurler to be hospitalized for five weeks; he'll make his 1939 debut on May 16. March 31 – The Boston Bees acquire right-hander "Barnacle Bill" Posedel from the Brooklyn Dodgers for catcher Al Todd. Posedel, 32, will lead Boston's pitchers with 15 victories in 1940, tied for seventh-best in the National League.
April
April 6 – An exhibition game between the northbound Boston Red Sox and Cincinnati Reds in Florence, South Carolina, is halted after eight innings with the score 18–18 because umpires run out of baseballs. The two teams combine for 46 hits under dusty, wind-blown conditions. April 17 A new Opening Day tradition begins when the National League season gets underway in the city that hosted baseball's first all-professional team, the 1869 Cincinnati Red Stockings. At Crosley Field, the Cincinnati Reds, 1939's likely NL pennant-winners according to an Associated Press poll, can't withstand a late-game rally by the visiting Pittsburgh Pirates and lose the contest, 7–5. The game is played amid fears that rising floodwaters from the Ohio River and local creeks will swamp the ballpark. Reds shortstop Billy Myers is knocked cold when he's struck behind the left ear by a thrown ball in the second inning."Pittsburgh Pirates 7, Cincinnati Reds 5." Retrosheet box score (April 17, 1939). Heavy rains postpone the American League's traditional "Presidential Opener" at Griffith Stadium, which would have pitted the Washington Senators against the consensus AL favorites, the three-time-defending World Series champion New York Yankees. April 18 – The Hall-of-Fame managerial career of playing skipper Leo Durocher gets off on the wrong foot when the rival New York Giants lash 13 hits—including a home run from AL refugee Zeke Bonura—and defeat Durocher's Brooklyn Dodgers, 7–3, at Ebbets Field before 25,496. The game marks Red Barber's debut as Brooklyn's radio voice, and is the first game to be broadcast by one of New York City's three franchises. April 20 – The Boston Red Sox show off prize rookie Ted Williams before 30,278 in Opening Day at Yankee Stadium in a game delayed two days because of rain. After New York's Red Ruffing strikes him out in his maiden MLB at bat, Williams, 20, doubles in the fourth inning for his first hit; he goes one-for-four. Ruffing scatters seven Boston hits in a 2–0, complete-game victory and the second Opening Day shutout in the Yankees' history. The game features ten Hall of Famers, five on each side: Williams, Ruffing, Joe Cronin, Bill Dickey, Joe DiMaggio, Bobby Doerr, Jimmie Foxx, Lou Gehrig, Joe Gordon and losing hurler Lefty Grove. Today's game is the only one in which Williams and Gehrig will appear in the same box score.