On October 9, 1934, with Dizzy Dean leading the way on the mound, the Cardinals were crowned World Champions after beating the Detroit Tigers 11-0 in Game 7 of the Fall Classic at Navin Field in Detroit. The game was marred with controversy, as Ducky Medwick spiked the Tigers third baseman Marv Owen in the sixth inning, which nearly caused a riot. The commissioner of baseball Kennesaw Mountain Landis ordered Medwick be lifted from the game to regain order. While the incident was splashed across the headlines, the series was a great one that will forever be remembered, as the Gashouse Gang slammed the door in Detroit with a convincing victory that sent them home as Champions of the World.While researching this game I ran across an article that was written by the very well known Grantland Rice. It was a little too large to clip, so I am going to bring it to you in its entirety here. Such a great piece, I just had to share it. I hope you enjoy.
Dizzy Wins From Six Pitchers in Shutout Final
By Grantland Rice
In the wake of the western dust, blown up by the two cyclonic Deans, the St. Louis Cardinals take their place on the top plateau of baseball as the new champions of the world.
Riding along on the rubbery, loose-jointed arm of the dazzling Dizzy they cut their way to the front through six Tiger pitchers and a wild and savage barrage of beer bottles, oranges and other hurtling implements, composed of fruit, wood, iron and glass, thrown from the left field bleachers, that fir 20 minutes turned the seventh game into a wooly riotthat looked like two battles of the Marne, with Verndun and Tennenburg thrown in.Slaughters Six Pitchers
Sling-shot Dizzy slaughtered six Tiger pitchers, 11-0, in this final foray of flying spikes, as he held the enemy to six scattered hits for the closing triumph of the dukedom of the Deans.
But it remained for Ducky-Wucky Medwick, the Cardinal Cossack, to seal a big part of the show and start one of the neatest young riots that any world series has ever known.
The Vesuvian explosion that came near blowing up the ball game took place in the sixth inning. Ducky-Wucky had just tripled and driven Pepper Martin over with the eighth Cardinal run.
17,000 Lay Down Barrage
For 30 minutes, the enraged bleachers laid down a barrage that would have stopped the charge of the First division or the Prussian Guard. The sunny autumn air was whiling mass of missiles fired from a 300-yard front, and the blue autumn skyline was almost hidden by the mass of fruit and glass, hurled by the mighty indignant arms.
After a delay of 20 minutes, Judge Landis, the mandarin of the game, heard all evidence and sent Medwick from the park under a police guard. The judge agreed with the Messrs. Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin that the day of the Cossack was over. So Medwick was shipped to the iron mines of Siberia after he had hammered out 11 hits and had been a hard rider most of the week.
Spotlight on Deans
But, after all, riot or what not, it was the two country kids from Oklahoma, aged 21 and 23, who took charge of this seven-game show with all the mastery of a Booth or a Barrett, a George M. Cohan or a Walter Huston, a Mansfield or an Arliss.
These two friendly, likable country kids from Holdenville, Oklahoma, and border lines of Arkansas first carried the Cardinals from a second division berth to the top of the pile.
In spite of the fines and suspensions and brother strikes, they carved their way to 49 victories. On top of this, the same two kinds from the brush and the bush, from the dust and the sage of the southwest,won all four Cardinal victories, four winning charges in five starts, for one of the most dramatic drives beneath the great white spotlight that sport has ever known and you can go back 4,000 years if you have the energy and the time.
Dizzy Keeps Even
"I've got to keep up with Paul." Dizzy said before the game. "I'd like to win anyhow, I always like to win, but I can't let Paul down. He carried us to the seventh game. It's my time now and, if I have to, I'll just throw my arm off to show the two Deans still move together. I wouldn't let Paul down for anything in the would. A great pitcher? Sure, I know that. But he's a great kid on the side. I wish you knew him better. They don't come along like Paul. He's the finest kid toy ever met in every way you can figure him out."
As the bulky figure of Babe Ruth fades out of the picture from the playing side, and old-fashioned three-massed schooner fading into the fog, two kids from the dust of the western trail take his place as the greatest sensations baseball has known, matching the glamour of Mathewson, Hans Wagner, Ty Cobb, and Babe Ruth.
A Sudden Blaze
But these two country kids have come along with a sudden blaze and flame that surpasses in its dramatic flourish the leaders of the old parade.
In one brief six months, from the dogwoods of April to the crimson and orange tints of October, they were called upon two strong right arms to write one of the greatest of all time sporting classics.
Pepper Martin's Come-Back
And, in the midst of the Dean triumph, don't overlook Pepper Martin, who came back with a rushing, rowdy, ripping attack to regain the place he held a few years ago as one of the best ball player that ever carved and slashed and ripped his way from goat-dom to the purple toga. Except that the Pepper's interest in a purple toga would be less than nothing, with his baggy trousers, his open shirt and a front-piece that has only casual interest in a razor.
What a ball player!
And, in spite of his banishment, I'll say the same about Ducky-Wucky Medwick, the Cardinal Cossack, who plays the game up the hilt. Did Detroit ever see Ty Cobb along the two paths?
Blows Up In Third
This seventh game blew up with the roar of a heavy artillery and sappers at work in the third inning.
Dizzy Dean was facing Auker, the Tiger starter at the time. In this cataleptic inning, the Cardinals ripped apart Auker, Rowe, Hogsett and Bridges fr seven hits, three passes and seven runs.
It was Dizzy Dean who started this Tiger massacre with a double to left. Not content with shutting the Tigers out, he led the big attack of the day with a double and a single in one round, two deadly thrusts that came along like a pair of poisoned harpoons.
Others Do Part
After this, Martin, Frisch, Collins, Delancey and others all took good aim at a parade of Tigers pitchers, who were all wild and ineffective, on the border of collapse as they marched by in order, each in turn set up before a firing squad aiming for the forehead or the heart.
I caught the picture of Kipling's "grave of the hundred dead," where the young subaltern fell with " a big blue hole in his forehead, and the back blown out of his head."
The backs were blown out of the heads of the last game. The Cardinals added two more in the sixth on Martin's hit and Medwick's triple. They ran up two more in the seventh on Durocher's triple, Gehringer's error, Martin's second steal and Rothrock's double. That made 11 runs. And all this while, the great Dizzy was plowing that fast one through with speed, curves, control and a change of pace that removed stripe after stripe from the Tiger hide.
Cochrane Fights to Last
The game and wounded Mickey Cochrane, one of the heroes of the series, fought to the ultimate ditch. He gave everything he had, including blood, brains and heart, but he was in the road of the two Deans, and he might as well tried t break down the charge of an elephant herd, running amuck along the congo trail.
Close to 300,000 spectators paid in more than a million dollars to see the two Deans move to greater fame amid flying spikes, blocking backs, stranglehold, head locks, riding off, smashing tackles and all the more rugged elements that make upa half dozen sports.
Drama and Color
It was a rough and rowdy series, full of spilt blood and ragged errors, full of fine pitching and hard hitting. A series as seamy as they ball they played with, but it had fire and action, raw drama and more flaming color than any series has known in years.
And, down the final stretch, the better team in the series won out, the rwam that had the daredevil, smashing attack of a Martin and a Medwick and a Collins and, above all, the team happened to have the sling-shot arms, the cool heads and stout hears of Paul and Dizzy Dean, who now can take their two places among baseball's unforgotten stars, just a pair of country kids born to the greatness of a game they happened to love.
The Tigers today know how Bill Terry's Giants and the rest of the National League must of suffered. The twin poisons of sport carried their venom to the final out.Quite the tale that Mr. Rice told the day after that classic ballgame. The series did forever immortalize both Dizzy and Paul, and the rest of the gang as well. One of the most colorful teams to ever step on a St. Louis diamond, the Gashouse Gang will have their story told time and time again. They put together a special season, then topped it off by celebrating as the Champions of the World. A great celebration was had in St. Louis in the days that followed, and in the years that have passed since the celebration of their accomplishments continues.
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