Players and fans returning from overseas hungered to resume their careers and their love affair with baseball. It was a time when fans could still identify with players, whose salaries almost resembled their own, when kids played baseball on sandlots, in pastures, and on city streets all summer long, when fans followed their team on the radio, and when practically anyone could afford to see a game in person.

But change was on the horizon. Robert Murphy's attempt to organize the Pirates and the Mexican League's success in luring players south led to a series of lawsuits that almost undermined baseball's reserve clause and its antitrust exemption. Out of this came spring training pay, uniform contracts, minimum salary levels, player representation, a pension plan -- and the seeds of discontent that were reaped in the early 1990s.

It was an era dominated by the outstanding play of Joe DiMaggio, Stan Musial, Ted Williams, Bob Feller, Don Newcombe, Warren Spahn, and many others. But perhaps no performance was more important than that of Jackie Robinson, whose entrance into the game broke the color barrier, won him the respect of millions of Americans, and helped set the stage for the civil rights movement.