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Saratoga, New York The first World Series I remember was in 1931 when I was nine years old and in the fourth grade. Our house was only two blocks from school, so I have to admit that the old days for me did not include trudging five miles through deep snow to get to and from the place – school was two minutes away. When I got home shortly after three o'clock, my mother would have our old-fashioned radio tuned in to the World Series, which was special. There was no television then, and radio broadcasts of regular-season ball games were rare. There was little or no radio sports news. You read the daily newspapers, morning and evening, to find how your team was doing. Like other little kids I had long since been playing baseball in one form or another almost every day from March to October in empty lots and big back yards (no Little League then). But I didn't become a baseball fan in the full meaning of the term until that summer, 1931, when my big brother took me to my first major league game – in the old Polo Grounds in New York between the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants. After that I read the newspaper sports sections faithfully every day, more faithfully than I ever read my prayers or my schoolbooks, and I became a total fan. So my mother had the radio on to the Series when I got home. Connie Mack's Philadelphia Athletics were playing the St. Louis Cardinals, and I was rooting for the Athletics because like most children, I was a front-runner. I rooted for winners, and the A's in that era were big winners, the best team in baseball. Back in the dim historical past of 1929 and 1930 – ancient history for me because 1929 and 1930 were before I became a fan and began reading the papers – the Athletics had ended the Babe Ruth-Lou Gehrig New York Yankees' domination of baseball. The A's won both the American League pennant and the World Series in 1929, and again in 1930. And now in 1931 they had won the American League pennant for a third straight year and were going for their third straight World Series title, something that had never been done before. These were the famous Philadelphia Athletics of Lefty Grove, Jimmy Foxx, Al Simmons, Mickey Cochrane – future Hall of Famers all, although the Baseball Hall of Fame didn't exist then. I was enthralled by the powerful A's and expected them to beat the Cardinals easily.  Could there be a more perfect Series memory than Yogi jumping into the arms of Don Larsen? But I hadn't figured on Pepper Martin, and neither had the A's. Martin was the St. Louis center fielder. He played a lot of third base for the Cards later on, but in 1931 he was in center field. He was 23 and in his first full year in the big leagues. Although he hit .300 during the regular season he was overshadowed by the Cardinals' stars, such as first baseman Jim Bottomley, second baseman Frank Frisch and Left Fielder Chick Hafey, all of whom ended up in the Hall of Fame too. But in the 1931 World Series, Bottomley batted a measly .160, Hafey an equally sad .167, Frisch a weak .259. What did Pepper Martin do? Pay attention. In the first game, batting against Grove, the best pitcher in baseball, Pepper hit a run-scoring double in the first inning, went three for four in the game and stole a base off Cochrane, the best catcher in baseball. Despite Martin, the Cardinals lost that game, but they won the second one 2-0. Pepper got the Cards their first run when he doubled to left in the second inning, stole third base and scored on a fly ball. He got their other run when he singled in the seventh, stole second, went to third on a ground-out and scored on a squeeze bunt. The Cardinals won the next one 5-2 after Martin – for the third straight game – hit safely in his first at bat. He moved from first base to third on a single and scored on a fly ball. In the fourth inning he doubled a teammate to third base, and both raced home on a subsequent hit. The A's tied the Series at two games each by shutting out St. Louis 3-0 in the fourth game, but Martin went two for three, singling and stealing second in the fifth inning (his fourth stolen base in four games) and hitting a lead-off double in the eighth. He now had nine hits in fourteen at bats in the Series, and his biggest game was yet to come. In the crucial fifth game, Pepper hit a fly to left in the first inning to drive in the first run of the game, bunted safely in the fourth, belted a two-run homer in the sixth and hit a run-scoring single in the eighth. The Cardinals won 5-1 to take a 3-2 lead in games. Martin was batting .667, with 12 hits in 18 at bats. He had scored six of the Cardinals' twelve runs and had batted in five. He quieted down then, was caught stealing once, and went hitless in six at-bats in the last two games. But he walked twice in those two games, and he stole a fifth base off the frustrated Cochrane as the Cardinals won the seventh game and the World Series. Fittingly, in the ninth inning of the seventh game, after Philadelphia had rallied to score twice and had the tying run on second base, Martin in center field caught a fly ball for the final out of the Series. He ended up batting an even .500, and his 12 hits tied a record that stood for another 30 years. There was no sportswriters' vote for a World Series MVP in those years, but there was no need for one. Pepper was the hero.
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