In 1939, baseball's past ran headlong into its future. As the game celebrated its 100th anniversary with the opening of the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, it learned that the legend of the sport's origins was purely a myth. On the field, the veteran players who had saved the game after the Black Sox scandal were slowly giving way to a new wave of players, men who would usher in the Golden Age of the game.

Through extensive research, augmented by interviews with such Hall of Famers as Bob Feller, Ernie Harwell, Charlie Gehringer and Monte Irvin, the game's pivotal season is retold here. The appendix provides a statistical summary of the year.