Career Lengths in the 40s & 50s

[pwdennis]

The Duke Snider HOF thread brought up the issue of relatively short careers for players during the this period. I think two factors were at work here:

A) Interruptions for WW2 and The Korean War
B) Integration of MLB starting in 1947

In the Duke Sniker thread, Jackie Robinson and Roy Campanella are cited as being among the stars who had fairly short carrers in MLB. It should be noted that Jackie Robinson was already 28 years old when he got his shot at the big time. Campy, a catcher, was suspected of being older than his given age, and was alrading fading badly at the time of his tragic accident . Many other black stars such as Minoso got a very late start.

Many black athletes of the period falsified their ages in order to enhance their attractiveness to MLB. Hence the appearence of a relatively young career fade.

MLB teams integrated over a period of time (I think that the Yankees and Red Sox were among the last to integrate) and were very wary of adding too many black players. A black athlete really had to dazzle in order to be given a decent chance of a place on a MLB roster. Those that did get an opportunity often had a relatively short shelf life (Larry Doby, George Crowe) for the reasons above.