1940 Cincinnati Reds season
Major League Baseball season
The 1940 Cincinnati Reds season was the 58th season for the franchise. Cincinnati entered the season as the reigning National League champion, having been swept by the New York Yankees in the World Series the previous year. They would defeat the Detroit Tigers four games to three to take the World Series title.
Offseason
October 14, 1939: Hank Sauer was drafted by the Reds from the New York Yankees in the 1939 minor league draft.
October 19, 1939: Al Simmons was released by the Reds.
Regular season
Cincinnati won 100 games for the first time in franchise history. The team finished first in the National League with a record of 100–53, winning the pennant by 12 games over the Brooklyn Dodgers, and the best record in MLB. They went on to face the Detroit Tigers in the 1940 World Series, beating them in seven games. This was their first championship since 1919.
In August, back up catcher Willard Hershberger, depressed over what he felt was culpability for losing both games of a doubleheader, took his life. Coach Jimmie Wilson was added to the roster as the back up catcher.
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This entry incorporates text from “1940 Cincinnati Reds season” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.