I believe baseball's greatest era came in 1945-49. There was never a time where baseball was more popular than during the waning days of WWII, and during the next few years. Attendance starts going crazy in late 1945. The war had just ended, and soldiers were coming home in large numbers. Night games were suddenly the rage. MLB attendance in 1945 hit 10 million for the first time, and doubled to 20 million in three years. Baseball Reference lists 70 different professional leagues that operated in 1947 — compare that to today. There was minor league baseball in literally hundreds of cities and towns across the country. In 1950, TV comes out, and it's another 12 years before MLB has 20 million fans, and expansion is needed to make it happen. Also, Cuban baseball and women's baseball thrived like never before or since. On a relative level, baseball's true Golden Age happens right after WWII — there was never a time when a greater percentage of the population was fixated on the game.
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