Hank Greenberg of the Detroit Tigers, one of the greatest power hitters in baseball history, was the American League's most valuable player in 1935 and 1940, and was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1956.
Greenberg spent most of his major league career as a first baseman for the Detroit Tigers. He hit 58 home runs in 1938, only two short of Babe Ruth's 1927 record, while driving in 146 runs. He also scored 144 runs and drew 119 walks that season, both tops in the league.
But Greenberg, who hit 331 homers and had a .313 lifetime batting average, counted the 1945 season as his greatest. The first active major leaguer to enlist after Pearl Harbor in 1941, Greenberg returned from Army on July 1, 1945, and promptly hit a home run before a crowd of 47,721. He went on to lead the Tigers in their pennant fight with the Washington Senators. The Tigers clinched the pennant on Greenberg's grand slam in the dark -- there were no lights in Sportsman's Park in St. Louis -- on the final game of the season.
He achieved his greatness on the field despite recurrent anti-Jewish taunts. "Every ballpark I went to, there'd be somebody in the stands who spent the whole afternoon just calling me names," Greenberg recalled in a 1980 oral history. "If you're having a good day," he said, "you don't give a damn. But if you're having a bad day, why, pretty soon it gets you hot under the collar."
Greenberg was the first Jewish player to be chosen to baseball's Hall of Fame. He died in 1986 at age 75.
