Champions Major League Baseball Negro League World Series: New York Cubans over Cleveland Buckeyes (4–1) World Series: New York Yankees over Brooklyn Dodgers (4–3) All-Star Game, July 8 at Wrigley Field: American League, 2–1 Negro League Baseball All-Star Game: West, 5–2
Other champions All-American Girls Professional Baseball League: Grand Rapids Chicks over Muskegon Lassies First College World Series: California First Little League World Series: Maynard, Williamsport, Pennsylvania Winter Leagues Cuban League: Alacranes de Almendares Mexican Pacific League: Presidentes de Hermosillo Puerto Rican League: Leones de Ponce Venezuelan League: Sabios de Vargas Club tournaments Interamerican Series: Buffalo All-Stars
Awards and honors Baseball Hall of Fame Carl Hubbell Frankie Frisch Mickey Cochrane Lefty Grove Most Valuable Player Joe DiMaggio (AL) Bob Elliott (NL) Rookie of the Year Jackie Robinson (ML) The Sporting News Player of the Year Award Ted Williams (AL) – OF, Boston Red Sox The Sporting News Manager of the Year Award Bucky Harris (AL) – New York Yankees
Statistical leaders Any team shown in indicates a previous team a player was on during the season. American LeagueNational LeagueNegro American LeagueNegro National League Stat Player Total Player Total Player Total Player Total AVG Ted Williams1 (BOS) .343 Harry Walker (PHI/) .363 Willard Brown (KCM) .377 Henry Kimbro (BEG) .385 HR Ted Williams1 (BOS) 32 Ralph Kiner (PIT)Johnny Mize (NYG) 51 Hank Thompson (KCM) 8 Monte Irvin (NE) 11 RBI Ted Williams1 (BOS) 114 Johnny Mize (NYG) 138 Willard Brown (KCM) 64 Butch Davis (BEG)Henry Kimbro (BEG) 52 W Bob Feller (CLE) 20 Ewell Blackwell (CIN) 22 Jim LaMarque (KCM) 10 Max Manning (NE) 12 ERA Joe Haynes (CWS) 2.42 Warren Spahn (BSN) 2.33 Gene Richardson (KCM) 1.33 Lino Donoso (NYC) 2.30 K Bob Feller (CLE) 196 Ewell Blackwell (CIN) 193 Jim LaMarque (KCM) 85 Bob Romby (BEG) 99 1 American League Triple Crown batting winner
Major league baseball final standings American League final standings
National League final standings
Negro league baseball final standings All Negro leagues standings below are per MLB and Seamheads. Negro American League final standings
Negro National League final standings
Negro World Series 1947 Negro World Series: New York Cubans over Cleveland Buckeyes 4–1 (one tie).
All-American Girls Professional Baseball League final standings RankTeamWLPct.GB 1 Muskegon Lassies 69 43 .616 – 2 Grand Rapids Chicks 64 46 .582 4 3 Racine Belles 65 47 .580 4 4 South Bend Blue Sox 57 54 .514 11½ 5 Peoria Redwings 54 57 .487 14½ 6 Rockford Peaches 48 63 .432 19½ 7 Fort Wayne Daisies 44 66 .400 24 8 Kenosha Comets 43 69 .384 26
Events
January January 18 – The Pittsburgh Pirates purchase the contract of first baseman Hank Greenberg from the Detroit Tigers for $75,000. A future Baseball Hall of Famer and all-time Tiger great, Greenberg, now 36, led the American League in homers with 44 in , but he has become estranged from Detroit's front office. The Pirates will pair him with sophomore Ralph Kiner, who led the National League with 23 home runs in 1946. They also will shorten the left-field dimensions in Forbes Field; the "porch" favoring the two right-handed sluggers will be initially nicknamed "Greenberg Gardens," then "Kiner's Korner." The 1947 campaign proves to be Greenberg's last as an active player; he will hit 25 long balls for the Pirates, while Kiner's and Johnny Mize's 51 home runs set the pace for the majors. January 20 – Less than three months before the start of the National League season, with Jackie Robinson poised to break the baseball color line, catcher Josh Gibson of the Homestead Grays, known as "the black Babe Ruth", dies from a stroke in Pittsburgh at 35. Despite a prolonged period of declining mental and physical health, possibly due to a brain tumor, Gibson passes away months after leading the Negro National League in homers in —the 11th time he's done so in 13 seasons. Author of as many as 962 home runs overall, and believed to have compiled a career batting average of as high as .373, he'll be elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in . (See Deaths for this date below.)
January 21: A rule change implemented by the Baseball Writers' Association of America that allows voting only for players after 1921 produces four new members of the Hall of Fame: Mickey Cochrane, Frank Frisch, Lefty Grove and Carl Hubbell. Pie Traynor misses selection by only two votes. Brooklyn Dodgers manager Leo Durocher and actress Laraine Day wed in El Paso, Texas, publicly defying a California judge's decree that they wait a full year from Day's divorce before marrying. Durocher and Day have been the subject of intense press scrutiny since their extra-marital affair made headlines in early December 1946. January 25 – The New York Yankees sign free-agent first baseman George McQuinn, who was released by the Philadelphia Athletics 16 days earlier. A slick fielder and line-drive hitter, McQuinn, 36, is a four-time AL All-Star who had slumped badly with Philadelphia in 1946. As a Yankee in 1947 and , he'll make two more All-Star squads and earn a World Series ring.
February February 1 – Commissioner of Baseball Happy Chandler announces the creation of a pension plan for retired major leaguers. Any player with five years of experience will receive $50 a month at age 50 and $10 a month for each of the next five years. The plan extends to coaches, players and trainers active on Opening Day. The plan will be funded by $650,000‚ with the 16 teams providing 80% and the players the remaining 20%. February 4 – The career of Hal Trosky comes to an end when he's released by the Chicago White Sox. Though overshadowed by fellow first basemen Lou Gehrig and Jimmie Foxx, Trosky, 33, was one of the American League's most feared batsmen of the 1930s, once (in ) driving in 162 runs on the strength of 42 homers as a member of the Cleveland Indians. But debilitating migraine headaches impaired his durability, then caused him to miss three full seasons before attempting a final comeback with the 1946 Pale Hose. February 14 – The Philadelphia Athletics deal right-handed pitchers Lum Harris and Lou Knerr to the Washington Senators for outfielder/first baseman George Binks. February 19 – The Boston Red Sox sign free-agent catcher Frankie "Blimp" Hayes, released by the White Sox six days earlier. Former "iron-man" Hayes, 32, is only 2+ years removed from his remarkable season, in which he started all 155 of the Athletics' games behind the plate, and only missed 18 innings of action all season. He then followed that in by starting a combined 151 games for the Athletics and Indians. Hayes will be released by the Red Sox on May 21, 1947, after making only five appearances—ending his MLB career. February 23–25 – The wildest pennant race in Cuban League annals sees the Alacranes del Almendares overcome a six-game, late-season deficit to defeat their archrivals, the Leones del Habana, in a three-game, season-concluding sweep. American left-hander Max Lanier, one of the players suspended indefinitely by MLB in May 1946 for "jumping" the reserve clause to sign with the "outlaw" Mexican League, wins two of the contests, including the clincher on a single day of rest.
March March 1: New managers in spring training camps are Billy Herman with the Pittsburgh Pirates, Muddy Ruel with the St. Louis Browns, Bucky Harris with the New York Yankees, and Johnny Neun with the Cincinnati Reds. Neun had ended the 1946 season as manager of the Yankees after both Joe McCarthy and Bill Dickey had quit. Brooklyn's Catholic Youth Organization withdraws from Ebbets Field's "Knothole Gang" to protest Leo Durocher's personal conduct in his affair with and marriage to Laraine Day. Reports critical of Durocher's off-field friendships with gamblers have also been in the headlines since the autumn of 1946. March 4 – The Washington Senators reacquire outfielder and six-time American League stolen base king George Case from the Cleveland Indians in exchange for knuckleball hurler Roger Wolff. Case had played 1,190 games for Washington from – before being swapped to the Indians in December 1945 for outfielder Jeff Heath. March 15: The Brooklyn Dodgers and their Montreal Royals affiliate arrive in Panama for a series of exhibition games against each other. The teams have been training in Havana to avoid Jim Crow laws in the United States. The Montreal roster includes International League batting champion Jackie Robinson and catcher Roy Campanella. Brooklyn president and general manager Branch Rickey hopes that Robinson's talent and style of play will "break the ice" with the all-white Dodger roster and smooth his promotion to the major leagues. However, before the Panama series begins, a petition begins to circulate among the white players on the Dodgers that seeks to keep Robinson off the team. The Chicago Cubs bring back one of their stalwart pitchers of the 1930s, veteran right-hander "Big Bill" Lee, as a free agent three weeks after his release from the Boston Braves. Lee, 37, won 20 and 22 games for the National League-champion 1935 and 1938 Cubs, and also posted 19- and 18-win seasons in a Chicago uniform. He'll get into 14 games for the Cubs and spend part of 1947 in the Texas League before drawing his career-ending release on September 19. March 22 – The Chicago White Sox claim veteran pitcher Hiram Bithorn on waivers from the Pittsburgh Pirates. The first Puerto Rican to play in Major League Baseball, Bithorn, 31, will pitch in only two innings for the White Sox (going 1–0, 0.00) before being idled by a sore arm. March 24 – Commissioner of Baseball Happy Chandler convenes a hearing in Sarasota, Florida, in response to the public feud between New York Yankees president and co-owner Larry MacPhail and Brooklyn Dodgers manager Leo Durocher. The dispute flared when a newspaper article that ran under Durocher's byline on March 9 accused baseball (and, indirectly, the Commissioner) of a "double standard" by allowing MacPhail to bestow free tickets to a Dodgers–Yankees exhibition game to two known gamblers whom Durocher has been warned by Chandler to avoid. March 26 – After manager Leo Durocher calls a middle-of-the-night meeting to castigate Brooklyn Dodgers players who've signed a petition aimed at denying Jackie Robinson a place on the team, one of the petitioners, outfielder Dixie Walker, asks Branch Rickey to trade him. Walker, a former NL batting champion and three-time All-Star, is one of the Dodgers' most popular veterans, nicknamed The People's Cherce.
April April 2 – The Boston Red Sox sell the contract of right-fielder Catfish Metkovich to the Cleveland Indians. April 6 – The New York Yankees sign pitcher Lew Burdette, 20, as an amateur free agent. April 9: Commissioner of Baseball Happy Chandler drops a bombshell on the Brooklyn Dodgers, suspending manager Leo Durocher for the entire 1947 season for "conduct detrimental to baseball." Chandler's controversial ruling, which comes after his closed-door hearings of late March, stems from Durocher's highly publicized, high-risk behavior—his association with known gamblers, scandals surrounding his allegedly adulterous courting of and marriage to starlet Laraine Day, and public feud with powerful New York Yankees co-owner Larry MacPhail. The suspension leaves the Dodgers without a manager on the eve of the National League season—and the anticipated debut of "Organized Baseball's" first Black major-league player of the 20th century, Jackie Robinson. A press release issued the following day at Ebbets Field in the sixth inning of an exhibition game will announce that the Dodgers have purchased Robinson's contract from the Montreal Royals. April 12: The New York Yankees release longtime ace relief pitcher Johnny Murphy; the 38-year-old right-hander signs with the Boston Red Sox three days later.