AFTER WAR, AMERICA TURNED TO BASEBALL.

Byline: Richard Rothschild Chicago Tribune 

Fifty years ago in America there was baseball, and then there was every other sport.

Sure, an occasional one-shot event such as a Joe Louis heavyweight championship fight or a college football battle between unbeaten Notre Dame and Army would draw national attention, but that was momentary.

When V-E Day and V-J Day ended World War II in 1945, America rejoiced as it has few times in its history. Yet in an everyday sense, Americans truly celebrated the twin victories over Nazi Germany and imperial Japan the next summer by heading to major-league ballparks in unprecedented numbers.

As future Hall of Famers Ted Williams, Bob Feller, Joe DiMaggio and Stan Musial came marching home from the war, so did baseball fans.

In 1946, despite a postwar recession and labor woes highlighted by a strike of 400,000 miners, 11 of the 16 major-league teams set season attendance records. Nearly 19 million fans pushed through the turnstiles to renew their passion for baseball, including more than 5 million in New York and more than 2 million each in Chicago and Boston.

Every team enjoyed a jump in attendance. Five clubs - the Boston Red Sox, Cleveland Indians, Washington Senators, St. Louis Cardinals and Philadelphia Phillies - drew more than 1 million fans for the first time. The New York Yankees, despite a rare third-place finish, became the first baseball team to pass the 2 million mark.

No more would New York fans wonder what washed-up former Pirates great Paul Waner was doing in the Yankees' outfield because Waner would say, ``DiMaggio is in the Army.''

It's not that baseball fans ignored the game during the war seasons of 1942-'45. After all, President Franklin D. Roosevelt had urged baseball to continue, considering the game crucial to national morale.

But with so many top players in the service, baseball just was not the same. Terminal also-rans won pennants; witness the St. Louis Browns in 1944 and the Cubs in 1945.

``It's not easy to discern that the current center-fielder missed catching the ball by an extra step a Joe DiMaggio would have taken,'' Arthur Daley wrote in The New York Times. ``The spectator takes what he gets, asks no questions and seems entirely satisfied.''

Power hitting seemed to have vanished, especially in 1945. For the first time since the end of the dead-ball era in 1919, no major-leaguer hit 30 home runs. For the first time since 1924, no American League team hit 100 homers.

George Stirnweiss of the Yankees topped the American League with a .309 batting average and .476 slugging percentage, the lowest such league-leading figures since before 1910.

The Senators hit one homer at home all season - and it was an inside-the-park number. The 1945 White Sox were indeed the hitless wonders, smacking just 22 homers, the lowest one-season total in the majors in 35 years.

When the Cubs and Detroit Tigers met in the 1945 World Series, Chicago sports writer Warren Brown was asked which team would win. Brown answered, ``I don't think either team can.''

The Series, ultimately won by Detroit in seven games, was described as ``the fat men against the tall men at an office picnic.'' It would be 23 years before the Tigers returned to the Series. The Cubs still are waiting.

No other sport could fill baseball's shoes in 1946. The quarter-century-old NFL was still so unstable that the 1945 champion Cleveland Rams moved to Los Angeles. The league that would become the NBA was preparing for its first season with such soon-defunct teams as the Chicago Stags, Toronto Eskimos and Pittsburgh Ironmen.

The only sporting event that ignited publicity comparable to baseball's was the college football showdown between No. 1 Notre Dame and No. 2 Army at Yankee Stadium. The game ended in a 0-0 tie.

Baseball set the table for American sports, and the return of Williams, Feller and the rest galvanized fans. Hank Greenberg, who hadn't played a full season since 1940, restored power to the game with 44 homers.

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Photo: When baseball greats like Joe DiMaggio returned from WWII, so did the fans.

Daily News File Photo