1941 -- The Greatest Year In Sports
Two Baseball Legends, Two Boxing Champs, and the Unstoppable Thoroughbred Who Made History in the Shadow of War
1
“
Good–
bye, dear, I’
ll be back in a year.”
The draft hovers over everybody, even a slugger named Hammerin’ Hank
Hank Greenberg tomorrow dons khaki
A very fine soldier he’ll be
He’ll worry the enemy wacky
By sniping at .333
—Tim Cohane, New York World–Telegram, May 6, 1941
The cops knew early on that they were in for a long night. There were 1,489 of them on duty, most of them in uniform, most of them drawing overtime, all of them startled at the steady stream of humanity pouring into the ten square blocks bracketing Forty–second and Forty–ninth Streets, Fifth and Eighth Avenues. This was Times Square, New York City, and on this thirty–first day of December, 1940, it was suddenly home to over a million temporary citizens, as many human beings as had ever seen fit to gather at one place in the city’s history. It had been a gray Tuesday afternoon, ...
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