Homer in the Gloamin'

The Pittsburgh Pirates had led the National League for much of the 1938 season, but when the final month of the season came, the Pirates began to falter. By the time they came to Chicago late in September for a three-game series, the Pirates led the Chicago Cubs by just one and a half games. The Cubs won the first game of the series 2–1, behind the pitching of Dizzy Dean, who a year after an arm injury was past his prime. Dean relied on his experience and grit to defeat the Pirates and would later call it the greatest outing of his career. The game on September 28 started at 3:00 pm CT. It was 5:30 pm when it reached the bottom of the ninth inning with the score tied at five runs apiece and the sun setting at 5:37 pm according to that day's Chicago Daily Tribune. Darkness was descending on a Wrigley Field that would not have artificial lighting for another 50 years. ==Aftermath==

The homer vaulted the Cubs into first place. They won the next day's game over the Pirates 10–1, completing a three-game sweep, and clinched the pennant in St. Louis three days later. For the Pirates, 1938 marked the closest they would come to going to the World Series between 1927 and 1960. The team slipped to sixth place the following year, with average seasons in the early 1940s and a late pennant race in 1948 only to become one of baseball's worst teams from 1949 until 1956, not contending for the National League pennant again until the late 1950s. "Roamin' in the Gloamin'" was a popular song dating to 1911, written and recorded by Harry Lauder. "Gloaming" is a regional dialect term of Scots origin denoting "twilight". Writers picked up on these facts and Hartnett's clutch hit became known in Cubs lore as the "Homer in the Gloamin'". ==References==