RetroSimba

Chet Laabs produced pipes to help win a war and home runs to help win a pennant.

On Oct. 1, 1944, Laabs hit a pair of two-run home runs, powering the St. Louis Browns to a 5-2 victory over the Yankees and clinching the club’s lone American League championship.

The Browns went on to play the Cardinals in the only all-St. Louis World Series.

Laabs was an unlikely hero, even for the Browns, who were described by the New York Daily News as “a ragbag ball team pieced together from remnants shed away by the rest of the circuit.”

A right-handed batter, Laabs, 32, had hit three home runs during the 1944 season before he slugged two in the pennant-clinching season finale.

His home run production was limited because when the season began he was working in a factory instead of in a ballpark.

Hard labor

Laabs began his major league career with the Tigers in 1937 and was traded to the Browns in 1939.

A 5-foot-8 outfielder, he hit 27 home runs for the Browns in 1942 and 17 the next season.

Laabs “derives tremendous power from muscular wrists and forearms,” the New York Daily News explained.

In February 1944, Laabs passed his Army induction physical, but his military service was deferred because he was older than 26. The Army put him to work in a fulltime defense job at a St. Louis plant, making pipes for construction of nuclear weapons used in World War II.

Because of the war work, Laabs missed spring training and wasn’t with the club when it won nine of its first 10 games to start the season.

In May, the Browns arranged for Laabs to play on weekends and in selected night games after his shift at the pipe plant, “but many times he was unable to even take part in batting practice” because the day job “kept him busy until a few moments before game time,” the St. Louis Star-Times reported.

Laabs appeared in his first game for the 1944 Browns on May 24. He returned fulltime to baseball in late June, but struggled. Laabs batted .133 in May, .154 in June, .239 in July and .172 in August. He hit a home run on May 30, didn’t hit another until July 18 and went two more months before hitting his third homer on Sept. 25.

The Star-Times called Laabs “the big bust of the Browns’ attack.”

Down to the wire

September was a good month for Laabs and the Browns. He batted .304 in September and the Browns went on a tear at the end of the month, winning 10 of their last 11 September games.

On the morning of Oct. 1, the last day of the 1944 regular season, the Browns and Tigers both had 88-65 records and were tied for first place. The Tigers were to finish at home against the Senators and the Browns had a game at home versus the Yankees.

At Detroit, the Senators’ knuckleball specialist, Dutch Leonard, was matched against the Tigers’ 27-game winner, Dizzy Trout.

At St. Louis, the largest home crowd in Browns history, 37,815, packed Sportsman’s Park for the Sunday afternoon game, looking for the hometown club to complete a four-game sweep of the defending champion Yankees.

The starting pitchers were the Yankees’ Mel Queen, a hard-throwing rookie, versus the Browns’ 35-year-old Sig Jakucki, a hard-drinking brawler.

In the minors, Jakucki beaned Cardinals prospect Johnny Keane, the future manager, and fractured his skull.

Jakucki made his big-league debut with the Browns in 1936 and didn’t return to the majors for eight years. The New York Daily News described him as “a tough solider who has rambled around the world, working his way by playing semipro baseball,” preferring “hoboing around the globe to playing in the big leagues.”

Jakucki was pitching for a shipyard team in Houston when the Browns rediscovered him and coaxed him back.

Going deep

Queen held the Browns hitless in the first three innings and the Yankees went ahead, 2-0. Browns batters treated Queen’s deliveries “as gently as if he were a lady,” the Star-Times noted.

Mike Kreevich got the Browns’ first hit, a line single to left, to lead off the fourth. Laabs came up next. According to the Star-Times, “There had even been a bit of booing when Laabs was announced as the starting left fielder.”

Undaunted, Laabs “cracked a fastball high into the left-field bleachers, the ball almost reaching the refreshment stand at the top,” the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.

Soon after Laabs’ longball tied the score at 2-2, the Sportsman’s Park scoreboard posted the final from Detroit, a 4-1 Senators victory. According to the Post-Dispatch, “the big crowd went wild, the cheering lasting for about five minutes.”

The Tigers’ loss meant the Browns would win the pennant if they beat the Yankees.

In the fifth, Kreevich singled with two outs and Laabs launched a slow curve from Queen 400 feet into the seats in left-center, giving the Browns a 4-2 lead.

Vern Stephens extended the lead to 5-2 with a solo home run against reliever Hank Borowy in the eighth.

Jakucki held the Yankees scoreless over the last six innings, completing the win. Boxscore

“His slider had plenty of sail and his curve was breaking fast and sharp,” Browns catcher Red Hayworth told United Press.

St. Louis showcase

In the victorious Browns clubhouse, “while his teammates sang, laughed, danced, kissed one another, Chet sat silently in front of his locker, wiping a towel across his brow,” the Star-Times observed. “He looked at the floor as if in a daze, as if he wondered if it were true.”

Asked about his home runs, Laabs said, “I think I hit the first one just a little bit harder. There was nothing to it.”

Billy Southworth, manager of the National League champion Cardinals, said he was “delighted” for the Browns and looked forward to the entire World Series being played in St. Louis.

“It’s going to be a nice family party,” Southworth said to the Post-Dispatch. “We won’t have to catch any trains or worry about hotel reservations or baggage. What’s more important, St. Louis can show the world that it can put on a World Series on its own.”

The Browns (89-65) were matched against a Cardinals club (105-49) which ran away with its third consecutive National League pennant, clinching the title on Sept. 21 and finishing 14.5 games ahead of the second-place Pirates.

The Browns won two of the first three World Series games before the Cardinals won the last three in a row. Jakucki started and lost Game 4, allowing four runs in three innings. Laabs had three hits in 15 World Series at-bats and no RBI.