Total Classics 1939

Total Classics 1939
By Jim825, dennisjames71 & kyleb

The 1939 baseball season marked a turning point in the history of the American League, as it lost one of its greatest players, Lou Gehrig.  Gehrig's teammates had noticed something wrong with their 35-year-old leader early in the 1938 season when the ball no longer jumped off his bat.  He had rallied to finish with only slightly sub-par numbers: a .295 batting average, 114 RBI, and 29 homers.

Steadily deteriorating from the start of spring training in 1939 through eight games into the regular season, the "Iron Horse" finally called it quits, ending baseball's longest consecutive-game streak at 2,130.  Shortly afterward, he was diagnosed with the disease that carries his name.  

On July 4, Lou Gehrig was given the day at Yankee Stadium at which he delivered his famous line: "Today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth,"  He was dead by 1941.  Gehrig retired with a .340 lifetime batting average, 1,990 RBI, 493 homers -- a record 23 of them grand slams -- and a slugging average of .632, third on the all-time list behind Babe Ruth and Williams.

A very deep Yankees team replaced Gehrig with Babe Dahlgren and returned to the business of baseball.  They were in a close pennant race with Boston, which stayed within striking distance of the lead until the All-Star break.  In late July, however, New York kicked into high gear and left the Red Sox in the dust, finally winning its fourth consecutive pennant by 17 games.

The New York attack was led by MVP Joe DiMaggio (who won the batting title at .381 and drove in 126 runs, second-best in the American League), Red Rolfe (who scored 139 runs and hit 46 doubles, both league-leading figures), and 22-year-old outfielder Charlie Keller (who was fifth in hitting at .334).

Cincinnati celebrated the 70th anniversary of the champion 1869 Reds, baseball's first openly professional team, and the 20th anniversary of their 1919 World Championship by winning the 1939 National League pennant.  The Reds were led by MVP pitcher Bucky Walters, who went 27-11 with a league-low 2.29 ERA.  Teammate Paul Derringer won 25, second-best in the league, and recorded the fourth-best ERA at 2.93.  The Reds pitched their way to the National League flag by 4-1/2 games over a hard-hitting St. Louis team that featured Johnny Mize, the batting champ at .349 and home run leader at 28. Ducky Medwick batted .332 and had 48 doubles (second only to teammate Enos Slaughter's 52 doubles) and 117 RBI.

Cincinnati became the fourth National League champion in four years to run into the New York Yankees' World Series buzz saw, falling in four games by a combined score of 20-8. After losing 2-1 in a game one pitchers' duel between Derringer and Ruffing, the Reds lost by scores of 4-0, 7-3, and 7-4. The Yankees outhomered their opponents 7-0.

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The Total Classics 1939 mod brings you the sights and sounds of the 1939 baseball season.  Besides rosters, portraits, uniforms and audios, the mod provides themed menu and loading screens, stadium select screens with actual stadium photos, 1939 jukebox and batter walkup music, an accurate 1939 schedule and correct 1930's era stadiums for every team.  The mod also includes OTBJoel's great Legends from the Booth audio.

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*** INSTALLATION INSTRUCTIONS ***

- After you download the total_classics_1939.7z file, double-click to open it.

- Extract the contents of the file into a folder.

- Double-click the explodeme.exe file

- Find the location of a CLEAN (or patched) copy of MVP Baseball 2005 and click "Extract".

- Allow the program to extract all of the new content.

- Play the new Total Classics 1939 mod.