Excerpt: "Dodgers, History; History, Dodgers"

"If the Dodgers win their next four games, they'll have played the best stretch of baseball since World War II. That Cardinals team, which benefited from having Stan Musial in a war-depleted league, closed 42-8 to edge out the Dodgers by two games; they went on to beat the Yankees in the World Series. The other two teams to go 42-8 won their league, and those 1897 Boston Beaneaters (eventually Braves) snapped the old Baltimore Orioles' hold on the NL. Those Orioles' teams are remembered as an 1890s dynasty, while the Beaneaters -- who won the NL four times in seven years in the same decade -- are forgotten."