May 27, 1941: Giants, Braves pause to hear President Franklin Roosevelt declare emergency over Nazi Germany’s threats

Franklin Delano Roosevelt made time for baseball. While attending Groton School and Harvard University, he managed each school’s ballclub. As a New York lawyer, he almost got fired after sneaking off to a weekday New York Giants game. As the longest-serving President of the United States, he attended more Opening Days than any other commander in chief, saying in April 1941 that it was his “ninth year in the majors.”1

On May 27, 1941, baseball made time for Roosevelt. The President planned a White House radio address to rebuke the “world conquest” sought by Nazi Germany, which by then controlled Poland, Czechoslovakia, Austria, Hungary, Denmark, Norway, Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg, and France. Countering decades of isolationist US policy but stopping short of committing troops, Roosevelt readied a script that warned of leader Adolf Hitler’s plan – to “strangle the United States of America” – and declared that the US would “actively resist, wherever necessary, and with all our resources.”2

And using the first built-in public-address system at any major-league ballpark, technicians at the Polo Grounds prepared to relay the speech live, to a crowd of 17,009 at that night’s game between the Giants and Boston Braves.3

The New York Daily News reported as much: Giants fans flocked to the Polo Grounds “lured by the double feature of seeing a ball game and, at the same time, listening to President Roosevelt’s Fireside Chat.”4

With the speech not scheduled until 10:15 PM local time, the third-place Giants began their 8:45 game against the Braves. New York manager Bill Terry, torn between 37-year-old “King Carl” Hubbell (1-2, 3.28 ERA) and 30-year-old “Prince Hal” Schumacher (3-3, 3.50 ERA), picked the latter to start his team’s first of 21 straight home games.

Boston skipper Casey Stengel’s lineup was far more erratic. The former Giants outfielder, later famous for disjointed phrases such as “even my players aren’t players” and “most ball games are lost, not won,” jumbled his Braves.5 He gave backup first baseman Buddy Hassett his first start of the season, sending usual doorkeeper Babe Dahlgren to third. He stacked his outfield with lefty hitters – to bat against the righty Schumacher – and moved usual right fielder Gene Moore to center. Stengel hoped the shakeup would snap his second-to-last-place team’s five-game losing streak. And he put his faith in struggling pitcher Manny Salvo (1-5, 4.50 ERA).

Though Stengel’s offensive moves failed to stop Schumacher from pitching four no-hit innings, Salvo dominated in his own right. The Braves’ starter surrendered only two hits in his first four frames: a single by Billy Jurges, in the second; and a single by Mel Ott, in the fourth. While Schumacher didn’t allow any runners past second base through four innings, neither did Salvo.

Salvo finally seemed poised for run support in the fifth. After Giants second baseman Burgess Whitehead booted a groundball by Moore, Dahlgren spoiled Schumacher’s no-hitter with a right-field single, sending Moore to third base.

Ray Berres followed with a line drive – straight into Giants shortstop Jurges’s glove. Jurges threw to third baseman Joe Orengo, doubling up Moore. What had been a “promising Boston uprising,” to quote the Boston Globe, ended with the first of three twin killings against the Braves that night.6

Orengo dealt Boston more damage in the New York fifth. A year after leading the National League by batting .452 in night games, he lined an outside pitch into the right-field stands, giving the Giants a 1-0 lead.7

The Braves fell in order in the sixth, but they wasted no time in the seventh. In the inning’s first at-bat, Eddie Miller drove a shot to deep left field. The ball bounced off the scoreboard for Boston’s second hit and first run.8 The game was tied.

The score was still even when New York’s Johnny Rucker, who had entered the game with a 13-game hitting streak, flied out to center field with two outs in the bottom of the seventh. Rucker, now 0-for-4, received no more chances to extend the streak.

With the inning over, umpire Jocko Conlan yelled, “Time!”9

A Polo Grounds engineer hooked up an audio feed. The public-address system’s speakers were on, as were radios in nearby homes and stores. The crowd quieted in their seats. The players listened from their dugouts and clubhouses. A New York Times reporter wrote that “the unseen voice suffused the flood-lighted field.”10

Roosevelt spoke. From the White House’s East Room, broadcast on all US radio networks and translated into seven languages, the President said America “will not accept a Hitler-dominated world.”11 He called on American factories to “build more guns and tanks and planes and ships.” He said that “the delivery of needed supplies to Britain,” to fend off a Nazi invasion, “can be done … must be done … will be done.” Failure to help Britain, he warned, would give Nazis a path into the Atlantic Ocean: “[I]t would be suicide to wait until they are in our front yard.”

Roosevelt cited the coldness of modern warfare. “When your enemy comes at you in a tank or bombing plane, if you hold your fire until you see the whites of his eyes, you will never know what hit you,” he said. “Our Bunker Hill of tomorrow may be several thousand miles from Boston. … Our freedom has shown its ability to survive war, but our freedom would never survive surrender.”

A storm opened above the Polo Grounds, but the crowd remained too focused on the President’s speech to move. “So interested was the audience,” the Globe reported, “that the several thousand unsheltered seat-holders refused to seek a dry spot and sat in the rain.”12

Skies cleared minutes later. Roosevelt closed his remarks by proclaiming an “unlimited national emergency,” a declaration that empowered him to mobilize the nation’s defenses. “We will not hesitate to use our armed forces to repel attack,” the President said. “The nation will expect all individuals and all groups to play their full parts, without stint, and without selfishness, and without doubt that our democracy will triumphantly survive.”

After the 45-minute speech, the Polo Grounds’ long-silent spectators erupted. Cheers and whistles lasted, by one count, longer than 30 seconds. “If there is any divided feeling in this country,” wrote a Globe reporter, “it certainly was not indicated by the crowd here tonight.”13

The teams returned for the eighth inning, only without their starting pitchers. Hubbell replaced Schumacher in the top half and escaped a bases-loaded jam, getting Max West to ground into a 3-2-3 double play. Dick Errickson relieved Salvo in the bottom half, allowing a single by Babe Young but nothing else.

The Braves tested Hubbell again in the ninth. Miller and Moore worked back-to-back walks. Dahlgren grounded into a 4-6-3 double play that sent Miller to third. But a groundout by pitcher Jim Tobin, pinch-hitting for Berres, ended Boston’s chance to break the tie.14

New York had one last chance to avoid extra innings on what was already a late night. After Jo-Jo Moore flied out to left field, Jurges walked. A left-field single by Orengo put Jurges into scoring position.

It was Hubbell’s turn – not to pitch but to hit.15 He fouled off two pitches and took one for a ball.16

Errickson’s next pitch was the last. Hubbell lined it over second base for a single. As clocks struck midnight, Jurges rushed home from second.17 The New York Giants were winners.

Hubbell had earned his 229th career win. Errickson took home his fifth consecutive loss, Boston’s sixth in a row.

The Braves snapped their losing streak three days – and two losses – later, though they stayed in seventh place for the rest of the 1941 season. The Giants finished fifth.

But the US had other issues at hand by year’s end. On December 7 Japanese forces attacked a naval base at Pearl Harbor, prompting America’s entry into the Pacific theater of World War II. A congressional vote on December 11 sent US troops into the European theater, to fight Nazi Germany and Italy.

More than 500 major-league players served in the US armed forces during the war. The list includes six players from the May 27 game at the Polo Grounds: Boston’s Hassett (Navy), West (Army Air Forces), Rowell (Army), and Salvo (Army); New York’s Young (Coast Guard) and Schumacher (Navy).18

Despite the holes in team rosters, President Roosevelt encouraged baseball Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis to hold games as planned. “I honestly feel that it would be best for the country to keep baseball going,” Roosevelt wrote in a letter dated January 15, 1942. “There will be fewer people unemployed, and everybody will work longer hours and harder than ever before. And that means that they ought to have a chance for recreation and for taking their minds off their work even more than before.”19

The commissioner listened.

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Ray Danner and copy-edited by Mike Eisenbath.

FDR photo credit: Elias Goldensky/Library of Congress.

Sources

In addition to the sources listed in the Notes, the author used Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org for the box score and other material.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/NY1/NY1194105270.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1941/B05270NY11941.htm

Notes

1 Details on President Roosevelt’s baseball fandom come from Geoffrey C. Ward and Ken Burns, Baseball: An Illustrated History (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994), 267.

2 Unless otherwise noted, all quotes from Roosevelt’s speech transcript come from Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Radio Address Announcing an Unlimited National Emergency,” American Presidency Project, https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/209607. Accessed May 2026.

3 In 1929 the Polo Grounds became the first major-league ballpark to use a public-address system, ending the venue’s practice of having umpires use megaphones to announce team lineups. See David W. Anderson, “Deadball Era Umpires: What They Did for Baseball,” in The SABR Book of Umpires and Umpiring (Phoenix, AZ: Society for American Baseball Research, 2017), 408-414.

4 Dick McCann, “Fireside Chat, Arcs Lure Fans to PG,” New York Daily News, May 28, 1941: 52.

5 “Casey Stengel Quotes,” Baseball Almanac online, https://www.baseball-almanac.com/quotes/quosteng.shtml. Accessed May 2026.

6 Hy Hurwitz, “Hubbell’s Hit in Ninth Wins, 2-1,” Boston Globe, May 28, 1941: 20.

7 Hurwitz.

8 Hurwitz.

9 Arthur Daley, “Giants Take Night Game; Dodgers Blank Phils; Yanks Win,” New York Times, May 28, 1941: 34.

10 “Speech Echoes in a Hushed City, as Radios Go in Homes, on Streets,” New York Times, May 28, 1941: 21.

11 Both NBC and CBS radio networks transmitted President Roosevelt’s speech in German, Italian, French, Spanish, Polish, Serb, and Portuguese. “Speech Sent to World by Air in 7 Tongues,” New York Times, May 28, 1941: 20.

12 “Tense Fans Applaud President’s Address,” Boston Globe, May 28, 1941: 20.

13 “Tense Fans Applaud President’s Address.”

14 Tobin’s above-average hitting – at least for a pitcher – made him a frequent choice for pinch-hitter. He retired with a .230 batting average and 109 pinch-hit appearances.

15 Entering this game, Hubbell’s career batting average stood at .194. He retired after the 1943 season with a .191 career average.

16 Hurwitz.

17 Hurwitz.

18 “Those Who Served,” Gary Bedingfield’s Baseball in Wartime, https://baseballinwartime.com/those_who_served/those_who_served_atoz.htm. Accessed May 2026.

19 A copy of President Roosevelt’s letter to Commissioner Landis is available here: Craig Muder, “President Roosevelt Gives ‘Green Light’ to Baseball,” National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, https://baseballhall.org/discover/inside-pitch/roosevelt-sends-green-light-letter. Accessed May 2026.