GREENBERG: Well, we got off to a rousing start that spring of 1935. The team got into first place early in the race and stayed there. I had an exceptionally fine first half. I led the league in home runs and believe I set a record with 110 runs batted in by the All-Star game. I came down to the closing week of the season with a chance to win the triple crown. I think I was leading the league at about .338 or .339—and I can recall the day when my average began to drop.

I was playing in Boston, batting against Wes Ferrell. I was 1-for-4 with a home run, and the last time at bat I hit a drive on one hop to Ferrell. It bounced off his glove; he went to retrieve it, and his throw pulled the first baseman off the bag. I thought I had a base hit on that, but the next day when I looked in the newspaper, it was 1-for-5 instead of 2-for-5—the official scorer had called it an error instead of a hit—and my average dropped a point or so. That was very discouraging to me. We went on to Chicago to close out the season. I had 36 home runs, and we had four games to play in two days—doubleheaders on Saturday and Sunday. I think it was the first time that I hit a real slump. I went 0-for-16 in those four ball games. I didn’t get any hits, home runs, or runs batted in. To my chagrin, Jimmie Foxx hit 2 home runs in the last game of the Philadelphia team season in Shibe Park, and his home runs tied my record for the season.

In 1984, forty-nine years later, I got a letter from a friend who was a substitute player on the Washington Senators in 1937, and he told me that the Washington catcher was telling Foxx what pitches were coming up. After the game, the catcher was bragging about how he managed to keep me from leading the league in home runs. The pitcher hadn’t been aware during the game that his own catcher was giving signs away to the enemy, and when he heard about it, he walked up and punched the catcher in the nose.

I did lead in RBIs, though, with 170. [The next closest was Gehrig, with 119 runs batted in, followed by Foxx with 115, and Trosky 113, all, curiously enough, first basemen. Greenberg’s league-leading margin of 51 runs batted in was startling. No other batter in Major League history had ever won the RBI title by a margin of over 40.]

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