The attack on Pearl Harbor changed the way Americans looked at life and baseball.  President Franklin D. Roosevelt believed that they needed recreational entertainment to take their minds off the military efforts overseas and at home.  There was also the possibility that canceling baseball would be perceived by the Japanese as a sign of weakness.2  Before the US got into the war, a green light would be given to a batter on a 3-and-0 count or to a runner rounding third.  FDR gave it new meaning when he sent his famous “Green Light” letter to Baseball Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis, providing baseball with the go-ahead to keep the games going.  The president encouraged night baseball to allow defense factory workers the opportunity to attend the games and relax.

The owners understandably had concerns about the quality of players they would be able to put on the field and its effect on attendance.  In 1944, the third year of the war for the US, 153 players made their major-league debuts.  This was the highest since 1915, when many established players jumped to the Federal League. It was not until the 1969 expansion that more players (183) began their big-league careers.  During the four seasons the US was at war in World War II (1942-1945), 533 players made their major-league debuts.  They were all different ages.  There were 67 first-time major leaguers (Joe Nuxhall the youngest at 15 in 1944) under the age of 21; 462 were 21 to 36, and four (Chuck Hostetler, Bill McGhee, Lee Riley, and Joe Berry) were over 36.  According to The Sporting News, more than 60 percent of the players in the 1941 Opening Day lineups departed for the service.3 

The owners did not want to sign or trade for players who were eligible for the draft.  A victim of this policy was Philadelphia Phillies pitcher Hugh Mulcahy. The Selective Service law passed while the US was still at peace required every male between 21 and 36 to register for 12 months of military service.  Mulcahy was the first player to be drafted, on March 8, 1941.  A physical deficiency, as defined by the military, became an asset of sorts.  In time a new law released draftees 28 or older from duty.  Hank Greenberg fell within this classification, but chose to re-enlist after Pearl Harbor. The minor leagues no longer were a source of manpower for the major-league teams, as over 4,000 minor-league players entered military service.4  The minor-league system was hit hard and declined from 44 leagues in 1940 to 10 (not including the Mexican League in 1943 and 1944.

The owners brought in not only first-timers but also many oldsters. Hod Lisenbee pitched 80 innings for the Reds in 1945 at the age of 46.  He had last pitched in the major leagues in 1936.  Future Hall of Famers Lloyd and Paul Waner and recently retired Jimmie Foxx once again took the field.  The 1944 Dodgers had only Dixie Walker and Mickey Owen as the two regulars from their 1941 pennant-winning team.  So manager Leo Durocher, 38, put himself back into the lineup.  In 1943 the Cardinals placed a help-wanted advertisement in The Sporting News.5  Outfielder Ben Chapman returned to baseball in 1944 as a pitcher for the Dodgers.  War veteran and former POW Bert Shepard, with an artificial leg, pitched in one game for the 1945 Senators, and one-armed outfielder Pete Gray played for the St. Louis Browns. Cuban and other Latin American players, who could not be drafted, were in demand during the earlier war years. Though black players were taken into the armed services, the owners resisted allowing them into Organized Baseball. However, World War II can be credited with helping open the door to black players.  When the war ended, Commissioner Happy Chandler said, “If blacks can make it on Okinawa, they could make it in baseball.”6

Ballplayers aided the war effort by raising funds through promotions that helped sell war bonds.  On June 26, 1944, a three-sided benefit game took place at the Polo Grounds that featured the Dodgers, Yankees, and Giants playing a nine-inning game.  Each team sat out three innings.  The effort raised over $50 million in war-bond sales.  Players actively solicited team members to join them in buying war bonds with some of their salary.

The war years featured firsts and lasts.  The St. Louis Browns won their first (and last) pennant in 1944 – a feat made more amazing by the fact that they had not finished in the first division since 1929.  The 1944 team featured 13 players classified as 4-F.7  The Chicago Cubs appeared in the 1945 World Series but have not made it back since.

There was a downturn in home-run production. The American League home-run leaders in 1944 and 1945 were Nick Etten of the Yankees with 22 and Vern Stephens of the Browns with 24, respectively.  The last time a home-run leader in the American League had 24 or fewer home runs was 1918, and even the strike-shortened season of 1981 featured four co-leaders with 22 each.  The 16 major-league teams hit 1,331 home runs in 1941.  By 1944 and 1945, the number was 1,034 and 1,007, respectively. In 1946, with many of the replacements gone, the total increased to 1,215. Part of the deficiency may be attributable to the “balata” ball used during the war years, as valuable resources used in making standard baseballs were diverted to military usage. Fans attending games were encouraged to return foul balls and homers hit into the stands.  

When the war was over and the 1946 season began, only 32 of the 128 non-pitching regulars of 1945 remained full-time players.8  The remaining 96 (75 percent) had been replaced by returning veterans, and by rookies, like Ralph Kiner, whose debuts had been delayed by military service.

Attendance at baseball games, both in the major and minor leagues, suffered during the war. In each of the first two years after the US entered the war, it dropped by 10 to 15 percent. A major reason was the absence of talented players. Another was demographics: The US population according to the 1940 Census was 132,164,569. The number of men and women who served during the war was 17.867 million.9  The average time spent overseas was 16 months.10 The number of men and women in service at one time hit a high of 11,340,000.  The total labor force increased from 57,530,000 in 1941 to a high of 66,040,000 in 1944 as more women entered the factories. Women indeed had “a league of their own” during the war years, another effort to spur morale on the home front. The unemployment rate fell from 9.9 percent in 1941 to 1.2 percent.11 The Great Depression was no more.

In the pages that follow you will read and learn about baseball’s first Xavier; some players who played in just one major-league game; the last player to wear Babe Ruth’s uniform number before it was retired by the Yankees; the batting-practice pitcher who moved up to his team’s active roster; baseball’s “chain-store operator”; the pitcher who didn’t take his pitching duties seriously; one of the worst All-Star players ever; the player with crooked fingers; the catcher who feared that he might not be able to catch both ends of a doubleheader in the hot and humid weather of August; the player who decided to drop the letter “b” from his name because he thought it would look better in print; the scrawny kid who homered in his first major-league contest; the backstop once labeled “best catcher” while in the minors, only to lead all National League catchers in errors; the rookie who hit safely in 26 straight games; the player who stayed in shape by chasing rabbits on foot; the only major-league pitcher to be relieved by a 15-year-old; the player who was deaf; the 31-year-old rookie who went back to the minors to hit four home runs in one game; and many, many more stories of the wartime replacement players. 

So sit back and relax as you learn “Who’s On First?” 

MARC Z. AARON is a Certified Public Accountant and Certified Valuation Analyst with a tax practice in Randolph, Vermont. He is also an adjunct professor of economics at Vermont Technical College, the Anglo American University in Prague, and The University of New York in Prague. A born and bred Yankees fan, Marc has four sons, coached little league for six seasons, and like Tony La Russa, retired after his team (sadly named Red Sox) won the league championship. Marc, a tournament tennis player, has been a ranked singles player by the New England United States Tennis Association (USTA) and has captained several USTA league teams.

• Read more: Find all essays from Who’s On First: Replacement Players in World War II in the SABR Research Collection online
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Notes

1 Some of the replacement players chosen for this book made minimal appearance in major-league games after 1945, and one or two spent a number of weeks in military service.

2 George Vecsey, Baseball: A History of America’s Favorite Game (New York: Random House, 2006).

3 Frank Graham, Jr., “When Baseball Went to War,” Sports Illustrated, April 17, 1967.

4 Gary Bedingfield’s website:  baseballinwartime.com.

5 Daniel Okrent and Steve Wulf, Baseball Anecdotes (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989).

6 “Baseball Enlists:  An Exhibition Commemorating the 50th Anniversary of World War II,” a 1995 pamphlet from the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum (reference contained in Richard Gannon’s December 9, 1998, essay on “Baseball and World War II”).

7 Okrent and Wulf.

8 Okrent and Wulf.

9 nationalww2museum.org/learn/education/for-students/ww2-history/ww2-by-the-numbers/us-military.html.

10 Ibid.

11 Ibid.

When Marc Aaron approached me with the book idea that became Who’s On First?, I didn’t hesitate a moment.  Several years ago, I had worked with Todd Anton on the book When Baseball Went to War, which we did in collaboration with the National World War II Museum. Todd and I had met at a conference honoring Ted Williams at the San Diego Hall of Champions and we hit it off. He had presented on Ted’s wartime years, and I was already at work on a book on the subject.  Todd suggested that the National World War II Museum host a conference to honor ballplayers who had served in the Second World War, and the conference was held in New Orleans in November 2007.

That same year – 2007 – my book Ted Williams At War was published by Rounder Books. It was later selected as “Book of the Month” by Leatherneck Magazine.

There were three days of panels, featuring major- and minor-league (and AAGPBL) ballplayers Lou Brissie, Jerry Coleman, Bob Feller, Morrie Martin, Johnny Pesky, Herb Simpson, Dolly Brumfield-White, and Lenny Yochim. Tommy Lasorda and Curt Schilling attended the event as well, as did the founding curator of the CIA museum Linda McCarthy and National Baseball Hall of Fame vice president Ted Spencer.  Gary Bedingfield of baseballinwartime.com came from the United Kingdom, joining other participants S. Derby Gisclair, Gary W. Moore, Kerry Yo Nakagawa, Arthur Schott, Bill Swank, Todd, and myself. 

After Todd and I put the book together, I sat down with Curt Schilling in the Red Sox dugout at the Tokyo Dome, where the Red Sox opened the 2008 baseball season, and Curt wrote the Foreword for the book. When Baseball Went to War was published by Triumph Books in 2008.  Tom Bast of Triumph had also attended the conference, as had a number of dignitaries including former California Governor Pete Wilson.  Todd and I later collaborated, again with Tom Bast and Triumph Books, in the 2013 book When Football Went to War.

So Marc’s idea fit in perfectly – a way to give some attention to many of those who helped keep baseball alive during the war years. We are pleased to also offer brief appreciations for Negro Leagues baseball during the war years and the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. In all our research, for all the various projects, it was always clear that FDR had been right – soldiers serving in the trenches, both in the European and Pacific Theaters, craved information about baseball back home. It helped remind them of another part of what they were fighting for. They wouldn’t have recognized some of the names, either, but they had their teams and they followed the game through Stars and Stripes and Armed Forces Radio.

— Bill Nowlin

The war against the forces of fascism in Nazi Germany and Japan mirrored another war fought in the trenches of American life – that between the entrenched forces of racism and its ugly operating system of segregation, and a black populace straining to achieve equal treatment in a land ostensibly promising “liberty and justice for all.”

Coincidentally, the tenure of Adolf Hitler as the head of the National Socialist government in Germany –1933-1945 —mirrored the time frame of an informal campaign to integrate major-league baseball. In 1933 several sportswriters began to publicly question why major-league baseball should not have black performers. Several of these writers wrote in the mainstream press – Heywood Broun of the New York World-Telegram and Jimmy Powers of the Daily News both came out against baseball’s color line early that year, with other notable sportswriters such as Dan Parker of the New York Daily Mirror and Shirley Povich of the Washington Post weighing in later on during this period. The Daily Worker, the most prominent Communist newspaper, also produced hundreds of columns, starting in 1933, castigating major-league baseball for excluding black players. But not surprisingly, the prime participants in the battle to integrate baseball were the members of the black press, especially Sam Lacy and Wendell Smith. During his lengthy career (extending into the twenty-first century), Lacy wrote for several important black newspapers and was sports editor of the Baltimore Afro-American. Smith plied his trade during this time frame for the Pittsburgh Courier.1 The Courier was the leading black newspaper of the time, reaching a high of 350,000 in circulation in 1945 – in part because of the bold stands it took on the issues of the day.2

The Courier, with Smith as its sports editor, stepped up its campaign to integrate baseball in 1942, while at the same time championing a cause expressed in a letter it published on January 31, 1942, written by 26-year-old cafeteria worker James G. Thompson. He asked: “Is the kind of America I know worth defending?” His answer to this question stressed that dedication to victory abroad must be paired with a fight for victory against similar forces at home: “The first V for victory over our enemies without, the second V for victory over our enemies within. For surely those who perpetrate those ugly prejudices here are seeking to destroy our democratic form of government just as surely as the Axis forces.”3 This crusade came to be known as the Double Victory campaign.

Thompson’s letter squarely addressed the “American Dilemma” examined by Swedish sociologist Gunnar Myrdal in his landmark study of America’s race problem, to be published in 1944. Myrdal’s study explicated what he deemed a failure of the United States to exemplify its “creed” – that of a country dedicated to equality and liberty for all – by the relegation of the black population to second-class status.4 Thompson’s letter presaged Myrdal’s work by asking how America could fight a war abroad against prejudice and blind hatred while failing to address its racial issues at home.

One of those racial issues was the continuing segregation of the national pastime. As the Double V campaign swept black (and to a limited degree, even elements of white) America, especially in 1942 but to a lesser degree until V-J day in 1945, wartime Negro League baseball and some of its prominent figures championed the cause. One such champion, Cumberland “Cum” Posey, owner of the legendary Negro League powerhouse Homestead Grays, suggested in his weekly Courier column, called “Posey’s Points,” that every team in organized Negro baseball wear a Double V symbol on its uniform, stating his belief that the cause of “victory abroad and at home is more vital than any athletic victory any of us may attain.”5 Posey was prominent among those who worried about the future of the Negro Leagues if the white major leagues were integrated, so his eloquent dedication to the cause of Double Victory is noteworthy, as “victory at home” clearly would include ending employment discrimination such as the color line in baseball.

Another Negro League owner, Effa Manley, engaged in many activities supporting the war effort, including an active promotion of the Double V campaign.6 Similarly, Satchel Paige biographer Donald Spivey indicated that Paige was a supporter of the Double V.7 Paige was not shy in expressing his opinions, as he proved in the run-up to the 1942 East-West All-Star game, Negro League baseball’s preeminent showcase.

During the heat of the summer and the heyday of the Double V campaign, Paige felt compelled to speak over the public-address system to a throng of over 48,000 attendees before he came on in relief in the seventh inning. The reason: to deny reports that he questioned whether integration of major-league baseball was possible at that time. Paige claimed he was misquoted: He merely said that he doubted that a major-league team would pay him a salary commensurate with the $37,000 he earned in 1941 and that it would be better for a team of black players to integrate baseball rather than an individual who would face Jim Crow alone.8

Fans watched Satchel as he “gummed up the program with a three-minute pointless statement”9 in trying to defuse the controversy he created, and subsequently lost the All-Star game for the West, his first such loss after three earlier All-Star game wins. Meanwhile, the large crowd also saw symbols of the Double V displayed and distributed. The front page of the August 22 edition of the Courier carried a photograph of a woman wearing a Double V logo on her back selling “VV” buttons at the game. Inside the edition, a picture of a woman flashing “VV” with her fingers was captioned “At Chicago East-West All-Star Game.”10

By the time of the East-West All-Star game, the Double V campaign as covered by the Courier was slowing down, although it was by no means at an end. Starting with its February 7, 1942, edition through the end of 1942, the Courier printed 970 Double V items, peaking with 50 such items in its April 11 issue. The campaign spread throughout black America – “there were Double V dances and parades, Double V flag-raising ceremonies, Double V baseball games between professional black teams, Double V beauty contests, Double V poems, and a double V song, ‘Yankee Doodle Tan…’”11 In the June 13, 1942, issue the Courier reported on a Double V game in St. Louis. The thousands who attended watched as the New York Black Yankees defeated the Birmingham Black Barons, 8-4. They also saw a drum and bugle corps form a Double V on the mound, and a $50 Double V certificate being presented to the winner of a Miss Mid-West contest.12

The Double V campaign was also supported by other black newspapers. In another instance where black baseball was involved, the Atlanta Daily World reported on what it called a “true double-V victory” by the Birmingham Black Barons winning an opening day Negro American League doubleheader over the Memphis Red Sox in late May1943. The article mentioned as well that a high-school band formed a “V” before the game – the first victory of the day.13 All the prominent black newspapers of the day – the Chicago Defender, the Baltimore Afro-American, the Cleveland Call and Post, the New York Amsterdam News, the World, and many others – reported on the progress of the Double V campaign even if it was not with the sustained attention of the Courier.

During 1942 especially but also throughout the war, sportswriters Smith and Ches Washington of the Courier, Fay Young of the Defender, Mabray “Doc” Kountze of the Call and Post, Dan Burley of the Amsterdam News, and Lacy and Art Carter of the Afro-American were promoting the breaking of the color line, often invoking the theme, if not the explicit terminology, of the Double V. Washington told the story of a victorious boxer who invoked the themes of Double V. He also trumpeted the triumphs of black track stars and boxers over the “enemy abroad” while wishing that baseball stars like Josh Gibson be given a chance at home.14 Smith used military terminology as he suggested that Negro fans organize and fight the battle for baseball integration with a “concentrated, nationwide action” much like that of the Double V campaign.15 And on the same day, April 11, 1942, that the Courier provided its peak coverage of the Double V campaign, Kountze echoed the words of the American Negro Press’s Claude Barnett that “if a colored man is good enough to fight for his own country, he certainly ought to be good enough to work here” as Kountze made the case that “something ought to be done. This very year. I mean, Yeah, 1942” to integrate major-league baseball.16

While the Double V campaign’s momentum slowed down throughout the war, it did not disappear entirely from the pages of the Courier until victory was declared over Japan in September 1945. Until then, the Courier continued the practice started at the commencement of the Double V campaign of putting a “vv” at the end of each article to separate it from the article appearing beneath it. Meanwhile, the calls for baseball integration continued to build to a crescendo in the Courier and the other black newspapers from 1942 through the end of the war. In the summer of 1942, the black press reported that Bill Benswanger, owner of the Pirates, would be trying out Negro League stars Leon Day, Willie Wells, Josh Gibson, and Sam Bankhead. It never came to pass. At the end of 1943, the Negro Newspaper Publishers Association met with the American and National Leagues. Baseball Commissioner Kenesaw M. Landis, an ardent segregationist, went on record as not being against the move to place Negro players in the major leagues. Everyone knew otherwise. Yet Courier president Ira Lewis spoke at this meeting, and invoked the concept of national unity in suggesting that baseball integration would bring joy to 15 million black Americans and millions of white Americans as well.17 Even though the Courier was no longer actively promoting the Double V by then, it was certainly continuing the “campaign for the integration of Negro players into the major leagues,”18 as described by Wendell Smith in late 1943. As history would later prove, a partial victory against racism at home – the signing of Jackie Robinson by the Brooklyn Dodgers – would virtually coincide with the victory against fascism abroad in the fall of 1945.

Jackie Robinson had his own indirect connection to Double V. According to essayist and cultural critic Gerald Early, Jackie likely would not have become an officer in the Army without the publicity created by the Double V, along with a behind-the-scenes campaign started in 1937 by Pittsburgh Courier owner Robert Vann to start the process of getting black officers in the military.19 Joe Louis also applied pressure on the military to commission black officers; Jackie said that without Louis “the color line in baseball would not have been broken for another ten years.”20 Louis was another supporter of the Double V campaign,21 and his wife, Marva, was the Double V girl of the week in the Courier of April 11, 1942.22

In the end, there is a consensus among historians who have researched the Double V, the black press, and African American history. The successful campaign to integrate baseball naturally fit within the larger themes of Double Victory. As Henry Louis Gates put it, one of the two most important legacies of the Double Victory campaign is that “through the columns of its sportswriter, Wendell Smith … it doggedly fought against segregation in professional sports, contributing without a doubt to the Brooklyn Dodgers’ decision to sign Jackie Robinson. …”23 The other legacy was the ultimate desegregation of the US Army by Harry Truman in 1948. A double victory – integrating baseball and one year later, the military – had now been accomplished. But the larger struggle for racial justice had just begun.

DORON “DUKE” GOLDMAN is a longtime SABR member who is specializing in research on baseball integration and the Negro Leagues. In addition to expanding his research on the Double Victory campaign, he is currently researching various aspects of the career of Monte Irvin.

Notes

1 On sportswriters supporting baseball integration, see Brian Carroll, When to Stop the Cheering? The Black Press, the Black Community, and the Integration of Professional Baseball (New York: Routledge, 2007), 69-87; Chris Lamb, Conspiracy of Silence: Sportswriters And The Long Campaign to Desegregate Baseball (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2012), 3-21; Arnold Rampersad, Jackie Robinson: A Biography (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997), 120-121.

2 Patrick S. Washburn, The African-American Newspaper: Voice of Freedom (Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 2006), 180.

3 Pittsburgh Courier, January 31, 1942.

4 Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma Volume 1: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers, 1996 reprint of original 1944 edition), 8.

5 Pittsburgh Courier, April 18, 1942.

6 Sarah L. Trembanis, The Set-Up Men: Race, Culture and Resistance in Black Baseball (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland& Company, Inc. 2014), 118.

7 Donald Spivey, If Only You Were White: The Life of Leroy “Satchel” Paige, (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2012), 186.

8 Associated Press, August 6, 1942, reprinted in Chicago Defender, August 15, 1942; New York Amsterdam News, August 15, 1942; Baltimore Afro-American, August 22, 1942; Pittsburgh Courier, August 22, 1942.

9 Art Carter, “From The Bench,” Baltimore Afro-American, August 22, 1942.

10 Pittsburgh Courier, August 22, 1942, 1, 13.

11 Patrick S. Washburn, “The Pittsburgh Courier’s Double V Campaign in 1942,” American Journalism (Vol. 74, No. 2 1986), 73, 74.

12 Pittsburgh Courier, June 13, 1942.

13 Atlanta Daily World, June 1 1943.

14 Ches Washington, “Sez Ches,” Pittsburgh Courier, March 21, 1942.

15 Pittsburgh Courier, July 25, 1942.

16 Cleveland Call and Post, April 11, 1942.

17 Pittsburgh Courier, December 11, 1943.

18 Pittsburgh Courier, December 25, 1943.

19 Author conversation with Gerald Early, October 11, 2012.

20 Rampersad, Jackie Robinson, 92.

21 Spivey, If Only You Were White, 186.

22 Pittsburgh Courier, April 11 1942.

23 Henry Louis Gates, What Was Black America’s Double War? the root.com/articles/history/2013/05/double_v_campaign_during_work

To understand professional baseball’s responses to the challenges presented by World War II, we need to look back a quarter-century from then to the previous time the United States found itself embroiled in a global conflict. The major leagues survived a serious challenge to their position at the top of the baseball world at the start of the World War I era with the rise and fall of the Federal League in 1914-15, and unintentionally scored a major coup when the litigation surrounding the demise of the Federals reached the Supreme Court in 1922 and resulted in the majors gaining an invaluable exemption from the nation’s antitrust laws, in effect allowing them to operate as a legal monopoly.1  There were also the impacts that World War I itself had on the game, including the shortening of the 1918 season, the near cancellation of that year’s World Series, the tax challenges, and most importantly the public-relations missteps and gaffes that seemed to plague the owners at every turn.  Complaints from the owners about the difficulties of filling out rosters and suggestions that baseball players should be exempted from the military draft did not play well in the court of public opinion, nor did proposals that the war taxes on admissions be passed on to the customers.  Even the players hurt the cause with salary holdouts and the threat to not play the fifth game of the 1918 World Series in a dispute over bonus money. It sometimes seemed as if everyone involved in professional baseball went out of his way to hurt the game’s image at the worst possible time.2  But baseball is resilient, and even the 1919 Black Sox Scandal couldn’t keep the game down, and actually even made it stronger by the addition of the last piece of the puzzle that would help define the game’s strategy during World War II – the hiring of its first commissioner, Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis.

Baseball entered the 1940s on a high note.  The attendance decreases of the Depression era were erased and the majors were drawing close to 10 million fans per season.  In the second half of the 1930s every season saw at least half the major-league clubs turn a profit, fueled in no small part by the increase in attendance as ticket sales accounted for 79.9 percent of an average team’s revenues in 1939.3  Even the minor leagues saw a resurgence, increasing from a low of only 14 leagues in operation in 1933 to a prewar high of 42 leagues in 1941 as the majors expanded their farm systems and even independent operators found ways to make a buck.4  The game was more popular than ever before.

The owners of the 16 major-league teams tightly controlled the business aspects of the game, and they often behaved like men who were not only willing to use their positions of power to get their way, but in fact saw doing so as their right.  The antitrust exemption gained in the Federal Baseball case allowed them to be ruthless in maintaining their economic power and to deal with any upstarts and potential competitors who might try to intrude on their territory.  They used the reserve clause to control both the players and their salaries; the farm system allowed them to keep some of the best next-level talent away from their rivals while also giving them power over much of the minor-league system; and they used the so-called “gentleman’s agreement” to keep black players out of the game.  They were men used to calling the shots.

The nation took its first tentative steps in preparing for possible involvement in the building world conflict with the passing of the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940, which re-instituted military conscription for the first time since World War I.  While the specter of a military draft was cause for concern among the owners, Landis for one had learned from the game’s missteps during the previous war and made it clear that baseball would not be seeking any special treatment for its players and that only he would speak for the game on draft-related issues.5  It wasn’t long before the military claimed its first baseball superstar when Detroit Tigers slugger Hank Greenberg was called to duty in April 1941.  Greenberg reported without complaint, and Tigers owner Walter Briggs offered no public objections.6  Overall the draft didn’t have a serious impact on the 1941 season and the majors once again attracted over 9 million fans to the ballparks.  But 1942 would be a different story.

Landis wasted no time in reacting to the December 7, 1941, attack on the American naval base at Pearl Harbor, sending a letter to President Roosevelt on January 14, 1942, asking if professional baseball should continue to operate during the war.7  Perhaps surprisingly, Roosevelt wasted no time in responding, penning a reply to the commissioner the next day in what has become known as the “Green Light Letter,” which, while intentionally vague, spoke of the morale and recreation value provided by the game as a spectator sport.8  The president also hinted that an expansion of the number of night games would be beneficial, which may very well have been a sort of favor to his friend the Washington Senators owner Clark Griffith, one of the few owners who recognized the attendance and therefore financial benefits of night baseball.  Regardless, the business of baseball could carry on, at least for now.

If professional baseball was to continue during what promised to be a long and costly war, the major-league owners needed to put their best collective foot forward and not repeat the mistakes of World War I. Their approach, while it may have never been formally codified as an official strategy, was two-pronged.  The first was to play to patriotism and morale, tying baseball fandom (and therefore attendance) to what it meant to be an American.  The other was to publicly emphasize the manpower contributions baseball as a whole made to the military in the form of players, umpires, and executives of every level who entered the military via the draft or voluntary enlistment.  This was positive from a publicity standpoint, and it also would build a strong relationship between baseball and the military that would give the owners and Landis at least some influence with government and military decision makers.  For many owners at the major-league level, baseball was their only occupation, so it was essential to do what they could to keep their businesses afloat during the war.

Landis was quick to show baseball’s patriotism and contributions to the war effort by reviving the Professional Baseball Equipment Fund, also known as the “Ball and Bat Fund,” in December 1941.  The fund was originally established during World War I to provide baseball equipment to servicemen, and the newly launched program was seeded with $25,000 ($24,000 from the leagues and $1,000 from the Baseball Writers Association of America), and 1,500 kits were on order before the year was out.  It was further announced that all the proceeds from the 1942 All-Star Game would go to the fund.9  Brooklyn Dodgers general manager and World War I veteran Larry MacPhail also got into the act, announcing in February 1942 that the Dodgers had plans to admit 150,000 servicemen to Ebbets Field free of charge in the coming season,10 a program that was adopted to some extent by every team in the majors and most in the minors. 

War-bond sales, raw-materials drives, the playing of the National Anthem, and sometimes military drills before games were all means to tie to the game to the war effort at home, while overseas servicemen stayed connected to the game through radio broadcasts, films of important games, and free copies of The Sporting News.  Maintaining the support of the servicemen was essential – while an April 1942 Gallup Poll indicated that 66 percent of Americans were in favor of professional sports continuing during the war,11 the owners knew how quickly this support could and would erode as casualties mounted and the inevitable questions arose as to why a man who could play professional baseball wasn’t serving in the military.  Fortunately baseball’s popularity remained high among servicemen, with an early 1943 poll showing that upwards of 95 percent supported the continuation of professional baseball,12 and the majority of servicemen described the game favorably throughout the war.

Perhaps the most public and patriotic contribution to the war effort was through teams and leagues donating receipts from games to various wartime charities.  In the majors a formal program was established through which each team would donate the total receipts from one home game, meaning that each team in effect gave up their share of the receipts from one home and one road game each season.  While this resulted in some huge public-relations wins, such as the May 8, 1942, Dodgers-Giants game that generated almost $60,000,13 there were also some public failures like the paltry $3,700 raised less than two weeks later when the Phillies hosted the Pirates.14 These discrepancies raised some questions about the games selected by the owners.  While the Dodgers contributed revenues from a lucrative Friday-afternoon game, the Phillies chose a Tuesday day game that came the day after a fairly well attended doubleheader.  For chronically poor teams like the Phillies, the loss of revenues from a home game was a big deal, and this may have impacted their scheduling decisions.  As the war progressed the money raised from these games decreased, though the fans have to take some of the blame as well for not coming out to the parks.  Regardless, over the first three years of charity games, including All-Star and World Series contests, the majors contributed over $2.6 million to various wartime charities15 and helped sell over $1 billion in war bonds.16

Not all the owners were happy with how the contributions were dictated by Landis, however.  In late 1943 sportswriter Dan Daniel noted, “There is a feeling in some quarters that in giving away most of the profits of the World Series, Judge Landis has been too lavish, that it would have been wiser to set up a sinking fund against possible trouble with finances.”17  The majors as a whole failed to turn a profit in 1943, which no doubt contributed to the financial concerns.  More surprising was the resistance to Roosevelt’s Green Light Letter recommendation to increase the number of night games, which in theory would be more accessible to people who worked during the day in war industries.  While the majors agreed to expand the night schedule somewhat, owners were not free to do so at will, despite both Roosevelt’s request and the fact that night games drew considerably more fans than daytime contests.  While the owners as a group generally objected to broadly expanding the night schedule, tellingly it was the wealthier teams that were most adamantly against it, while those that perennially struggled at the gate wanted to see more nighttime baseball.  New York Yankees president Ed Barrow was very clear as to his reasons for opposing night ball at Yankee Stadium – dollars and cents.  “Night baseball is a passing attraction which will not make it wise for the New York Club to spend $250,000 on a lighting system for the stadium.”18  The Yankees had no trouble selling tickets and turning profits with day games, so it didn’t make sense to incur a large expense to play at night.

Manpower was baseball’s most visible contribution to the war effort, though to be fair the owners had minimal control over this and in fact the minors were hit far worse than the majors.  Minor-league players tended to be younger than their major-league counterparts and fewer had families to support, making them higher-priority draftees.  By the start of the 1942 season over 600 minor leaguers were in the military,19 and almost a quarter of the minor leagues that operated in 1941 folded up shop.  By 1943 the situation was dire, with only 10 leagues starting the season and only nine completing their schedules.  It wasn’t until the conclusion of the war and the flood of returning veterans that the minors were able to get back on track.

The majors looked to fill out their rosters with men who weren’t eligible for the draft.  Sometimes this meant players who were either too young or too old to be drafted, but as the war progressed the focus turned more towards those classified 4-F by their local draft boards, making them ineligible for military service due to medical reasons.  Sometimes these medical exemptions were for obvious reasons, such as Pete Gray of the St. Louis Browns, who was missing his right arm as a result of a childhood accident.  For others, though, the reasons for their medical deferments were not always apparent.  Ruptured eardrums, herniated discs, or even significant dental problems could make a man ineligible for military service but could be managed effectively at home, where he would be healthy enough to play baseball. By 1944 the Browns had 18 4-F players on their roster, insulating the team from much of the impact of the draft and certainly contributing to their American League championship that season. 20

As the war progressed and casualties increased, so too did resentment towards 4-F athletes.  The thinking went that if a man was well enough to play a sport professionally, he should be able to perform some kind of military service, or at the very least work in a war industry.  The pressure finally reached the point in 1944 that the director of the Office of War Mobilization, James F. Byrnes, ordered that all 4-F athletes be re-evaluated by draft boards, and suggested that they be required to transition into some type of service work.21  One of baseball’s supporters during this difficult time was Senator Albert B. Chandler of Kentucky, who would later be rewarded for his efforts on behalf of the game by being selected as its new commissioner in late 1945.  Eventually the chairman of the War Manpower Commission, Paul V. McNutt, agreed to allow those still classified 4-F to play in the 1945 season, averting a probable shutdown of the majors.22 The timing of this announcement was interesting, however, as it followed comments made by Roosevelt during a press conference in which he expressed his hope that baseball would continue, a press conference held the day after his friend Griffith stopped by the White House to drop off the president’s pass for the coming season.23  The owners had businesses to protect, and having a baseball fan in the White House didn’t hurt.

Brooklyn Dodgers manager Leo Durocher thought there was an obvious answer to the manpower challenges faced by the majors: the Negro Leagues.  When he commented to the press in 1942 that there were a number of black players he would gladly sign if he were allowed to do so, Landis was swift in issuing a statement that there was no rule prohibiting the signing of black ballplayers.24  This was technically true – no such written rule existed.  However, there was widespread opposition to integrating baseball, particularly among the major-league owners and executives, with the exception of the Dodgers’ Branch Rickey.  World War II provided the perfect opportunity to sign black ballplayers – not only were the majors depleted, but Roosevelt’s Executive Order 8802 also barred racial discrimination from war industries, opening the door for a wider, societal integration.  However, owners worried about the effects on their pocketbooks. .  According to Larry MacPhail, now in a leadership role with the New York Yankees:  “Our organization rented our parks to the Negro Leagues last year for about $100,000.  This is about return we made on our investment.  The investment of Negro League clubs is also legitimate.  I will not jeopardize my income nor their investment. …”25  Even more telling, though, was the explanation laid out in the 1946 Report of Major League Steering Committee, which noted:  “A situation might be presented, if Negroes participate in Major League games, in which the preponderance of Negro attendance in parks such as Yankee Stadium, the Polo Grounds and Comiskey Park could conceivably threaten the value of the Major League franchises owned by these clubs.”26  This contradicted another part of the same report that noted sports fans want to see the best athletes possible perform, regardless of race.  Racism, in the minds of most of the major-league owners at the time, was good for business. 

So how successful were the major-league owners in protecting their businesses?  Well, no teams went bankrupt during the war, nor did any relocate to another city, though the Browns were on the verge of moving to Los Angeles before Pearl Harbor ended that plan.  One owner, however found himself forced to sell after six consecutive years of losing money.  Gerald Nugent’s Philadelphia Phillies were terrible on the field and terrible in the stands, finishing at the bottom or second from the bottom in the National League standings every season between 1933 and 1942 (and continuing to do so throughout the war) and having the lowest attendance in the National League every season since 1932.  Eventually the National League purchased the team in February 1943 before selling it to a group led by William D. Cox – who lasted all of one season before a gambling scandal forced the team’s third sale in 1943 when it was purchased by Robert R.M. Carpenter, Sr.  Despite the near failure of the franchise, it would be inaccurate to say that the war was a driving factor in what happened to the Phillies, who had been losing money for years.

In terms of overall major-league profits, in 1951 the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Study of Monopoly Power undertook an in-depth study on Organized Baseball and its status as a monopoly.  Based on its findings, the majors as a whole lost money only once during World War II, suffering a 2.7 percent deficit in 1943.  However, even in that year 10 of the 16 major-league clubs turned a profit, and during all four war years (1942 to 1945), each season a minimum of 10 teams turned a profit.  In looking at the 1942-45 period as a whole, 12 of the 16 teams came through the war profitable, with five in the black every single season.  In fact only two cities saw their franchises lose money during the war era, as both Philadelphia teams and both Boston clubs finished in the red, which may speak to the situations in those cities as much as it does to the quality of the ballclubs.27  So despite the complaints and hand-wringing by the owners, at the end of the day the war years represented a profitable period, at least for the majors. 

This is not to imply that the owners were confident in their ability to weather the storm.  When the game hit its low point with the money-losing 1943 season, there were some who privately hoped that McNutt would force Landis to shut down the game for the remainder of the war.  This was not just a short-term reaction to a challenging financial situation, however; after all, nothing prevented the majors from deciding to shut down on their own, just as many of the minor leagues had, without government involvement.  So why indicate it would be better if McNutt forced the decision onto them?  Because that would protect the reserve clause.  If the majors unilaterally made the decision, the players would have a valid argument that the one-year continuation provision of their contracts had in effect come and gone without their clubs offering them new contracts, making them all free agents.  If the government ordered the shutdown, the contracts would effectively be “frozen” and the reserve clause would remain intact and in force.  Maintaining long-term power over the game was paramount, and so the majors continued on into what turned out to be a profitable 1944.28

The owners’ power reared its head as former professional ballplayers began to return home after their time in the service.  A 1944 amendment to the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940 allowed returning vets the right to return to the job they left to enter the service, and they were guaranteed that position at their prior level of pay for a minimum of one year.  But Organized Baseball had its own idea as to what was fair, ultimately deciding under new commissioner Albert “Happy” Chandler that a 30-day training period and two weeks of paid time was more than sufficient for returning players, hanging their hat on the provision of the statute that indicated the employer had to bring the employee back “unless the employer’s circumstances have so changed as to make it impossible or unreasonable to do so…,” in effect arguing that if the player isn’t good enough to crack the team’s roster, then it would be “unreasonable” for the team to retain him. 

Many former players never went back to baseball upon their return home.  Others did, and while some retained their positions on the diamond, many were demoted, reassigned, or cut outright. While most of those who couldn’t stick with their clubs exited quietly and went on with their lives, a handful felt strongly enough about the injustice of the situation to make an issue of it.  Perhaps the most notable example was minor leaguer Al Niemiec, who sued his club, the Seattle Rainiers of the Pacific Coast League, and won a favorable decision from the court, though the judge acknowledged that the Rainiers were only required to pay Niemiec one year’s salary and did not have to carry him on the roster or play him.29  As a result a number of other PCL players were quietly paid to go away.  Others, however, were not so fortunate.  Some found the very prosecutors who should have helped them suggesting that they drop the matter, while others pushed the issue and lost their cases.  Pitcher Steve Sundra took the St. Louis Browns to court when the team cut him after a 0-0 start (11.25 ERA) to the 1946 season.  Three years later when his lawsuit finally made it to trial, the judge, while acknowledging the Niemiec case in his decision, found against Sundra, noting that baseball isn’t like other businesses and that players’ skills can erode over time, leaving them undeserving of a roster spot.30  Despite baseball’s having entered an unparalleled period of prosperity immediately following World War II, the owners were more concerned about profits than they were about doing what was right by their returning veterans.

Professional baseball survived World War II and emerged from the conflict stronger than ever.  In 1945, the war’s last year, the majors set an all-time attendance record of 10.8 million fans through the turnstiles, and the following year they nearly doubled that, drawing 18.5 million.  The rebound took a year longer for the minors, which exploded in size from 13 leagues in 1945 to 43 just a year later as millions of servicemen returned home and millions more were released from their war-industry work.  Landis and the owners, while they surely made some missteps along the way, learned some of the hard lessons from World War I and kept themselves in a position to continue to be profitable while also maintaining a positive public image.  Ultimately, what they did was done for the sake of their business, which is just what many other businesses did in an effort to survive in the wartime economy.  And their success helped usher in what many consider to be baseball’s Golden Age in the 1950s, a decade of tremendous success at the gate (though notably impacted by the effect of the Korean War early in the decade), expansion to the West Coast, and the rise of television.

JEFF OBERMEYER, a SABR member since 1995, has written extensively about wartime baseball, including his most recent book, Baseball and the Bottom Line in World War II: Gunning for Profits on the Home Front (McFarland, 2013). A Seattle area resident, he holds his Master of Arts in Military History from Norwich University and works in insurance claims. During the off season he also writes about music for his blog, Life in the Vinyl Lane.

Notes

1 Federal Baseball Club of Baltimore, Inc. v. National League of Professional Baseball Clubs, et al., 259 U.S. 400 (Supreme Court of the United States, 1922).

2 Jeff Obermeyer, Baseball and the Bottom Line in World War II: Gunning for Profits on the Home Front (Jefferson, North Carolina:  McFarland & Company, 2013), 19-30.

3 House Subcommittee on Study of Monopoly Power of the Committee on the Judiciary, Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Study of Monopoly Power of the Committee on the Judiciary, Organized Baseball, Serial No. 1, Part 6, 82nd Cong., 1st Session, 1951, 1599-1610.

4 The figure includes the independent Mexican League, as does the number of leagues cited in 1945.

5 Dan Daniel, “’Smile and Take It’ Policy on U.S. Draft,” The Sporting News, November 14, 1940, 6.

6 “Greenberg and Briggs Do Their Bit,” The Sporting News, May 1, 1941, 4.

7 Letter, Kenesaw M. Landis to Franklin D. Roosevelt, January 14, 1941; Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, New York.

8 Letter, Franklin D. Roosevelt to Kenesaw M. Landis, January 15, 1941; Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, New York.

9 “Service Men to Get Bat and Ball Kits,” New York Times, December 31, 1941.

10  “Baseball May Ask Government Help,” New York Times, February 4, 1945.

11 George Gallup, “Pro Sports for Duration of War Heavily Favored in Poll of Public,” New York Times, April 15, 1942.

12 “Favor Baseball in Poll,” New York Times, March 25, 1943.

13 John Drebinger, “Dodgers Defeat Giants in Twilight Game Raising $59,859 for Navy Relief,” New York Times, May 9, 1942.

14 John Kieran, “Sports of the Times:  A Bad Play for Baseball,” New York Times, May 21, 1942.

15 War Relief Figures Given,” New York Times, February 8, 1945.

16 House Subcommittee on Study of Monopoly Power of the Committee on the Judiciary, Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Study of Monopoly Power of the Committee on the Judiciary, Organized Baseball, 41.

17 Dan Daniel, “Drafting of Fathers Builds Major Manpower Problems for Big Leagues,” Baseball magazine, December, 1943, 247.

18 Geoffrey C. Ward and Ken Burns, Baseball:  An Illustrated History (New York:  Alfred A. Knopf, 1994), 242.

19  L.H. Addington, “Let’s Go!”  Baseball magazine, March, 1942, 456.

20 Richard Goldstein, Spartan Seasons:  How Baseball Survived the Second World War (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1980), 197.

21 “Baseball’s Role Praised,” New York Times, January 11, 1945.

22 “WMC Decision Lets Baseball Players Leave War Plants,” New York Times, March 22, 1945.

23 “Griff Visits Roosevelt,” The Sporting News, March 15, 1945, 12; George Zielke, “Game Okayed by FDR in ‘Pinch-Hitter’ Form,” The Sporting News,  March 22, 1945, 8.

24 “Landis on Negro Players,” The Sporting News, July 23, 1942, 11.

25 Dan W. Dodson, “The Integration of Negroes in Baseball,” Journal of Educational Sociology 28, No. 2 (October 1954), 74-5.

26 Major League Steering Committee, “Report of Major League Steering Committee for Submission to the National and American Leagues at Their Meetings in Chicago,” August 27, 1946, 18-20.

27 House Subcommittee on Study of Monopoly Power of the Committee on the Judiciary, Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Study of Monopoly Power of the Committee on the Judiciary, Organized Baseball, 1599-1601, 1615.

28 Obermeyer, Baseball and the Bottom Line in World War II:  Gunning  for Profit on the Home Front, 138-39.

29 Niemiec v. Seattle Rainier Baseball Club, Inc., 67 F. Supp. 705 (U.S. Dist. Ct. 1946).

30 Sundra v. St. Louis American League Baseball Club, 87 F. Supp. 471 (U.S. Dist. Ct. 1949).

“I Must Go Dear and Talk to Father”

She had just finished saying goodbye to some luncheon guests and was walking past her husband’s study. She realized something was terribly wrong. His secretaries were scrambling, and two phones were in use. She overheard the phone conversations, and knew there had been an attack. She returned to her room to finish a letter to her daughter. “The news of the war has just come. … I must go dear and talk to father.”

Eleanor Roosevelt did indeed talk to Anna’s father, President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The Japanese had just attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and America was now officially thrust into World War II in “a day which will live in infamy,” December 7, 1941. The attack came at 7:48 A.M.  Honolulu time, while soldiers were sleeping, eating breakfast, or glancing at the morning paper. A fleet of 189 Japanese planes destroyed 18 American naval vessels, killing nearly 2,500 military personnel and civilians and etching into the memories of Americans where they were on that fateful day.1 America was no longer a spectator in World War II.

Many feared an imminent attack on the West Coast. There were four air-raid alerts in San Francisco the evening after the Pearl Harbor attack. The San Francisco Chronicle’s next-day headline read, “Japan Planes Near S.F.,” and citizens were clearly on edge, claiming to spot enemy aircraft and submarines. Ships began arriving with military and civilian personnel from Pearl Harbor, and fears abounded that nearly anyone of Asian descent could be a spy and should be questioned.2

Meanwhile, a game was being played at the Polo Grounds between the Giants and Dodgers – the football teams. Long before there was instant access to information, a buzz began in the crowd. The public-address announcer gave an urgent call for Colonel William J. Donovan to call his office immediately. More announcements were soon made for other government and military personnel. Those in the press box saw the bulletin many fans never heard until they arrived home and realized their world had forever changed.3

Washington would soon begin practicing air-raid drills, and the lights of the Capitol would be turned off. People bought “blackout curtains” for their houses. The Library of Congress moved the Declaration of Independence, the United States Constitution, and copies of the Gutenberg Bible and Magna Carta to a more secure location. Fear and panic filled the country as planes flying overhead gave jitters to those dreading attack.4 

People reacted in shock, fear, and anger. Julia Ruth Stevens, daughter of Babe Ruth, remembered the Babe’s reaction to the Pearl Harbor attack. Ruth loved being in Japan on a baseball tour in 1934, but now, “He was furious. Mother and Daddy had brought back mementos from Japan. But Daddy started throwing them out of the window of our apartment at 110 Riverside Drive. Mother was so concerned that he was going to get arrested for throwing objects out the window that she began to grab things before Daddy could get to them.”5

This dreadful event forever changed the course of world history, and talking about the disruption of baseball is a minor sidebar in comparison. However, baseball is about people whose lives and livelihoods were also disrupted that day. By remembering where they were and what they experienced, we catch a glimpse of America’s story. As Tom Brokaw articulated:

“Farm kids from the Great Plains who never expected to see the ocean in their lifetimes signed up for the Navy; brothers followed brothers into the Marines; young daredevils who were fascinated by the new frontiers of flight volunteered for pilot training. Single young women poured into Washington to fill the exploding needs for clerical help … learned to drive trucks or handle welding torches … Millions of men and women were involved in this tumultuous journey through adversity and achievement, despair and triumph.”6

The nation was stirred to patriotism and a sense of duty in the wake of this attack, and people rushed to enlist. Hitler’s declared war on the United States on December 11 also ignited a spark of American pride. Americans now needed to work together in unity as never before, as Gary Bedingfield noted:

“Industrial giants across the nation – including factories, workshops, mills, and mines – swung into action to produce the necessities of war. The vast automobile industry unhesitatingly switched to the production of military vehicles, turning out a steady stream of military trucks, jeeps, tanks, and airplanes, while manufacturers that were more accustomed to handling refrigerators and vacuum cleaners turned their straight-line production techniques to the manufacturing of ammunition, guns, and other essential war commodities.”7

Some questioned whether baseball should even have continued during this national crisis. Others turned to baseball for a glimmer of hope and support. President Roosevelt’s letter to Commissioner Kenesaw M. Landis – his “Green Light Letter” – affirmed his support that “it would be best for the country to keep baseball going. 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.”8

The game would continue with its stars overseas and replacement players filling in the lineups. When The Sporting News in April 1942 asked for the opinion of servicemen on whether baseball should continue, they were swamped with replies, including that of Pvt. John E. Stevenson, who declared, “Baseball is part of the American way of life. Remove it and you remove something from the lives of American citizens, soldiers, and sailors.”9

While this book focuses on baseball replacement players of World War II, this chapter recalls the stories of some who left the green grass of baseball diamonds to serve the country at sea, in the air, and in hostile territory. They replaced the roar of the crowd with the fire of weapons. Spikes were replaced with fatigues. They left behind a game and risked their lives for people’s freedom to play it. Many heroes didn’t come home, but these men came back to the ballparks forever changed, and told us their stories.10  

“You’ve All Been Swell”

Cecil Travis was probably on his way to a Hall of Fame career with the Washington Senators (1933-1941; 1945-1947) when Pearl Harbor was attacked. Travis played some outfield and third base for the Senators, but the majority of his career was spent at shortstop. It was his bat that would have propelled him to Cooperstown. A career .314 hitter, he had his greatest season of 1941 but it was overshadowed by the historic feats of Ted Williams and Joe DiMaggio. Travis batted .359, second only to Williams (.406) and ahead of DiMaggio (.357), while his 218 hits led the league. His 24-game hitting streak understandably received little fanfare in a season dominated by DiMaggio’s 56-game streak.

 Travis was on a hunting trip with teammate Buddy Lewis when he heard the news of Pearl Harbor. Seventeen days later, on the day before Christmas, he received his induction notice and reported for duty in January, 1942.11 Travis became a member of the Special Forces in the 76th Infantry Division, which pursued Hitler’s forces as they retreated after the Battle of the Bulge. They battled the frigid cold winter, which cost Travis two toes to frostbite.12 While part of the greater victory in war, his baseball career would never be the same.

Travis played until the end of the 1947 season. That summer he was bestowed with gifts, monetary contributions, and appreciations fit for a hero. Fans, ballplayers, umpires, and civic groups celebrated him on Cecil Travis Night at Griffith Stadium. General Dwight D. Eisenhower was on hand, as were the VFW honor guard and a Scottish bagpiper. Connie Mack and Clark Griffith presided over the ceremonies, and the soft-spoken Travis came to the microphone and said, “I’ll never forget this night. You’ve all been swell.”13

“We Sure Grew up in a Hurry”

Ned Martin, a future Red Sox broadcast (1961-1992), was a freshman at Duke University in 1941, and recalled 50 years later where he was when word of the Pearl Harbor attack spread.

“The Depression was over and we were pretty much just concerned with growing up and enjoying ourselves. None of us had much interest in what was happening outside our own little worlds – but, man, we sure grew up in a hurry.” Martin had taken his girlfriend to a movie and when he returned to the dorm, “everyone clustered around a radio. One guy turned to me and said, ‘Isn’t it awful what the Japanese did? They bombed Pearl Harbor!’”14

Martin responded, “ ‘Pearl Harbor? That’s in the Hawaiian islands, isn’t it?’ I figured it was a possession of ours, but what did it mean? I didn’t know. We were just kids, away from home at a big university, with a football team on its way to the Rose Bowl, and the most important thing in the world was having a date for the Saturday night dance. I guess you could say we were kind of dumb.”15

World War II had come to Duke University. “I think that’s when we finally understood it was all over, the whole thing, that our lives were about to change, that things were going to be very different now for people our age,” Martin said. “My time, I knew, was coming.” 16 He enlisted in the Marines in 1942 and later was with the 4th Marine Division in the landing at Iwo Jima in February 1945. “Sad to say, however, I’m not one of the guys who raised the flag that you see in the monument,” he quipped. “I was a radio lineman, stringing wire from our radio emplacement out to the forward lines where we were calling naval gunfire on caves and pillboxes and things like that. I remember being told to be sure we used the right passwords, or else we’d be fired on by our own people.”17

It wasn’t long before Martin realized the horrifying reality of war. “I don’t think we were there 30 minutes when we came upon a shellhole. I looked in and saw it was filled with dead Marines. I mean blown-up Marines, with entrails and … oh, God, I’d never seen anything like that before. Then I started looking around and saw Japanese dead, and pretty soon death got to be common. Corpsmen were so busy ticketing bodies they just couldn’t keep up.”18

An expected nine-day tour on the island became 26, but finally victory came. “I remember the day the word spread: ‘The flag is now flying on Mt. Suribachi.’ Our flag! What a feeling,” Martin recalled.19

“Where is Pearl Harbor?”

For Johnny Pesky, 1942 would be his rookie year in a 10-year career with the Red Sox, Tigers, and Senators (1942, 1946-1954). On December 7, 1941, returning home from church in Portland, Oregon, Pesky walked in the door to see his brother sitting in front of the radio. Pesky would be battling fellow rookie Eddie Pellagrini for the Red Sox’ starting shortstop job in the spring. Pellagrini was at the Strand Theater in the Dorchester section of Boston getting popcorn when he heard a couple of guys talking about Pearl Harbor. “Bombed Pearl Harbor! Wow!” Pellagrini exclaimed. “But where is Pearl Harbor?”20

Pellagrini didn’t see the rest of the movie. Everything changed that day. Pellagrini was drafted first and went to the Great Lakes Naval Training Station while Pesky played his first season with the Red Sox. As he watched players leave for service, Pesky knew his time was coming. “Ted (Williams) and I knew it and we had become good friends. In the middle of the season, we joined the V-5 program for pilots.”21 Ted became a pilot, while Johnny became an operations officer. Pellagrini (1946-1949; 1951-1954), the kid from nearby Dorchester, hit a home run in his first major-league at-bat for the Red Sox. Pesky’s career continued well beyond his playing years with 73 years in baseball, 61 of them with the Red Sox organization.

Williams had just finished season three of his Hall of Fame 19-year career for the Red Sox (1939-1942; 1946-1960), and had batted .406, the last .400 hitter in the major leagues. On December 7, 1941, he was duck hunting in Minnesota. He heard the news on the radio. He later confessed, “Frankly, none of this war talk had meant a damn to me up to then. … Hitler had been giving Europe fits, and things were looking bad all over, but it hadn’t sunk in on me yet. All I was interested in was playing ball, hitting the baseball, being able to hunt, making some money.”22 Ted was able to be deferred from service because he was the main source of support for his mother. His exemption brought criticism from the press, which was nothing new. Eventually he did enlist and spent time in the V-5 program, becoming an expert pilot, gunner, and trainer of other soldiers, but Ted never saw combat … until Korea.

Fighting Jim Crow

Jackie Robinson recalled in his autobiography that it was difficult finding a job as an African American athlete, and the only available opportunity was with the Honolulu Bears football team. He also found a weekday job with a construction company near Pearl Harbor, and played football on Sunday. When the football season ended, Robinson left by ship on December 5, 1941. He was on the ship playing poker when he noticed crew members painting the windows black. They were notified of the attack and that war had been declared.23

Robinson had not been eager to enlist before the attack, and had struggled with getting a draft exemption for a number of reasons. Draft boards in the South had attempted to keep blacks out of military service, consistent with segregationist laws at the time. In Pasadena, California, however, the draft board wanted blacks drafted ahead of whites. Robinson had declared himself his mother’s chief means of support. He also doubted that his bad ankle could endure combat training. Then we also shouldn’t forget the humiliations people of color faced in the American military.24

After Pearl Harbor, however, there was little doubt that the draft board would now call up Robinson. He received his “Order to Report for Induction” on March 23, 1942. At the time he received it, he and Nate Moreland, a fellow black player, were being “teased and tantalized by an opportunity to work out in Brookside Park with the Chicago White Sox, in town once again for spring training.”25 Manager Jimmy Dykes said he endorsed integrated baseball and said other managers would as well. He said Robinson was worth $50,000 to any club. However, on April 3, 1942, Jackie was inducted in the National Guard Armory in Pasadena and then sent to Fort Riley, Kansas, for basic training.26

Robinson recalled, “I applied for Officers’ Candidate School. It was then that I received my first lesson about the fate of a black man in a Jim Crow Army. The men in our unit had passed all the tests for OCS. But we were not allowed to start school; we were kept sitting around waiting for at least three months. … It seemed to be a case of buck passing all along the line.”27 The influence of the newly arrived Joe Louis (who had friends in Washington), changed that, and Jackie later became a second lieutenant.

Robinson continued to battle the Jim Crow military as he was not allowed on the segregated baseball team, was accused of irritating white commanding officers, and faced court-martial for refusing to move to the back of an Army bus (a case he won before he was given an honorable discharge).28 This foreshadowed the years to come, as Robinson broke the color barrier in major-league baseball, a game that despite the lack of playing talent during the war years refused to recruit African Americans.

“Nothing Was Important Except the War”

Jerry Coleman was a second baseman for the New York Yankees (1949-1957) as well as a Ford C. Frick award recipient at the Baseball Hall of Fame for a lengthy broadcasting career, most famously with the San Diego Padres (1972-2014). In 1941, however, he was, like many high-school kids, playing baseball and dreaming of college. Playing for Lowell High School in San Francisco, Coleman had his eye on a scholarship from the University of Southern California. He had already been visited by Yankees scout Joe Devine, who persuaded him to join the Kanely Yankees, the San Francisco-area semipro team Devine used to farm talent and evaluate prospects. The Dodgers also expressed interest.29

“Then came a Sunday when I was playing in a semipro baseball game at Alameda. They stopped everything around the third or fourth inning. Someone announced that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor,” Coleman recalled. “That ended my plans to attend USC. The war had started, and nothing was important except the war. No matter what you were doing, for kids 17 years old, the questions were, ‘What am I going to be?’ ‘What branch of service am I going to go into?’ All of us wanted to do something to support our country, to join the military.’”30

Coleman was anxious to turn 18 and go to flight school, but that was six months away. This gave him a chance to sign with the Yankees for $2,800 (given to his mother so she could, among other things, buy her first refrigerator) and be assigned to the Wellsville Yankees of the Class D Pennsylvania-Ontario-New York (PONY) League.31 But Coleman’s proudest day was April 1, 1944, when he received his pilot’s wings. He flew 57 missions in the Solomon Islands and the Philippines in a two-seat Dauntless dive bomber,32 earning two Distinguished Flying Crosses and seven Air Medals.33 Coleman also served in Korea.

“It Teaches You”

“In the first days after Pearl Harbor, the question wasn’t whether 1941 was baseball’s most historic season. Instead, the question was whether it would be the last,” Dominic DiMaggio reflected.34 Dominic wanted to enter the Navy in 1942 but eye tests showed he needed to wear his glasses, which was not acceptable by naval standards. He maybe had a chance at the Army, his doctor concluded, but Dominic persuaded him to write a letter to the War Department stating that his athletic ability made up for poor eyesight.35 “I wanted to be on the water. I love the water. I guess that comes from being raised in San Francisco. I just didn’t want to be at home playing baseball while all my fellow countrymen were out fighting and serving their country. I wouldn’t have felt right about that.”36 Dom (nicknamed the Little Professor) also concluded, “I do believe that anyone who goes into the service, for even a short period of time, picks up a lot more for their future as far as living and understanding things a great deal better, a maturity, so to speak. It teaches you. It’s another avenue of learning.”37

When Pearl Harbor broke out, Dominic’s brother Joe was married with a child and in little danger of being drafted. But throughout 1942, “cries of ‘draft dodger’ followed him around the American League parks, despite the fact that his marital status pushed him well down the draft list. By the end of the year the Yankee Clipper was ‘morose’ over fans’ treatment by him, and in February 1943 he voluntarily joined the armed forces.”38 Much of his military time, however, was spent playing baseball, to which Marine George Paulson remarked, “Joe DiMaggio did a lot more good with a bat than he could have done with a rifle.”39He received his own training table, ate the best steaks (gaining 10 pounds over playing weight), received passes when he wanted, and accepted gifts from generals.40 Joltin’ Joe demanded combat duty to help his image, but was denied. His baseball playing contributed to the morale of soldiers, which gave them a much-needed lift.

Brother, Can You Spare Some Scrap Metal?

Pearl Harbor caused a time of national crisis that affected all of American life and society, including baseball. The household names who were the faces of franchises now served overseas. Back home, replacement players attempted to carry the game forward. Gasoline rationing and travel restrictions meant spring training was held in the north, while cabs and hotels were limited and meals often eaten en route. Players carpooled to games. Road trips were condensed to save mileage. You could get admission to a game with a contribution of scrap metal. Blackouts were common for fear of attacks by enemy planes, and air-raid directions were printed on each seat. The Chicago Cubs were to install lights at Wrigley Field in 1941, but after Pearl Harbor they were donated to the war effort. Wrigley would not have lights for 47 more years.41 Ed Barrow, president of the Yankees, offered up Yankee Stadium for use as a bomb shelter.42 Fans reportedly threw 148,644 foul balls back (apparently someone was counting), and with rubber in short supply the “balata” ball concoction created a brief Deadball II era. Some games were held at 10:30 in the morning so night workers could catch a game, and players took 10 percent of their salaries in War Bonds.43

The Pearl Harbor attack also had a direct bearing on the history of the St. Louis Browns franchise. Donald Barnes, majority owner of the Browns, and William O. DeWitt, general manager, planned to move the team to Los Angeles because they were unable to draw fans in St. Louis. The majors had been stable with the same 16 teams since 1903. Cubs owner Philip K. Wrigley also owned the Los Angeles Angels of the Pacific Coast League and agreed to sell his California holdings to the St. Louis group. LA civic boosters were even underwriting the expenses. Major-league teams would benefit from bigger crowds in Los Angeles – even the visiting teams would profit. Everything looked like a go and Barnes was going to seek approval at the major-league owners’ meetings in Chicago on December 8, 1941.44 December 7 changed those plans.

DeWitt recalled the event years later: “We were in Cominskey Park watching the Bears and Cardinals. … Somebody came in and said, ‘Gee, they just had a flash on the radio that the Japs have bombed Pearl Harbor.’ Me, I didn’t know where the hell Pearl Harbor was; I never heard of Pearl Harbor. Everybody started, ‘Buzz, buzz …’”45 Moving a franchise was now out of the question since the continuity of the game itself was now in question. Club owners voted down the move.

A Winning Team

Hugh Mulcahy was the first major leaguer to enter military service in World War II, being inducted into the Army on March 8, 1941, nine months before Pearl Harbor and the day he was to leave for spring training. He served until December 5, 1941, when he turned 28, the cutoff age for service, and like Hank Greenberg was discharged. Pearl Harbor changed that two days later and Hugh was back in the military. His career with the Phillies (1935-1940; 1945-1947) was so filled with losses that he earned the nickname “Losing Pitcher” Mulcahy. When drafted he was fresh off his 1940 season of a 13-22 record but a good 3.60 ERA, demonstrating well that he played for some awful Phillies teams. Mulcahy served in the 101st Field Artillery Battalion, 26^th Infantry Division. Mulcahy humorously summed up going from the Phillies into the military: “At last I’m on a winning team.”46

We’re glad you were, Hugh.

BOB LeMOINE, a native of South Portland, Maine, grew up watching the Red Sox and NBC’s Game of the Week on a black-and-white television. He dreamed of one day becoming a Red Sox announcer. While other kids imitated star players on the ball field, he imagined Ned Martin calling the game. Bob joined SABR in 2013. He currently works as a high school librarian, which gives him ample opportunities to exclaim“Mercy!” in tribute to Ned. He lives in Rochester, New Hampshire.

Notes

1 Doris Kearns Goodwin, No Ordinary Time, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Homefront in World War II (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994), 288-290; history.navy.mil/branches/teach/pearl/aftermath/facts.htm.

2 Tom Clavin, The DiMaggios: Three Brothers, Their Passion for Baseball, Their Pursuit of the American Dream (New York: HarperCollins, 2013), 146.

3 Frank Graham, Jr., “The Day War Came to the Polo Grounds,” Sports Illustrated, October 24, 1966. Retrieved from  sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1079199/index/index.htm

4 Bill Gilbert, They Also Served: Baseball and the Home Front, 1941-1945 (New York: Crown, 1992), 34.

5 Peter Kerasotis, “Home, at the Other House that Ruth Built,” New York Times, March 10, 2014 [online edition]. Retrieved from nytimes.com/2014/03/11/sports/baseball/yankees-home-at-the-other-house-that-ruth-built.html?ref=sports&_r=2.

6 Tom Brokaw, The Greatest Generation (New York: Random House, 1998), 9, 12.

7 Gary Bedingfield, “When Baseball Went to War,” in Todd W. Anton and Bill Nowlin, eds., When Baseball Went to War, (Chicago: Triumph Books, 2008; ebook edition), 21.

8 William B. Mead, Even the Browns: The Zany, True Story of Baseball in the Early Forties (Chicago: Contemporary Books, 1978), 36.

9 Bedingfield, 22.

10 Both Bob Feller and Hank Greenberg had notable memories of Pearl Harbor. Due to space limitations, these portions were excluded as both players are mentioned elsewhere in this book.

11 Guy Curtright, “Cecil Travis Is Still a Local Standard,” Cedartown(Georgia) Standard, October 7, 1999, 2B.

12 Rob Kirkpatrick, “Cecil Travis,” sabr.org/bioproj/person/4d5ab420

13 Rob Kirkpatrick, Cecil Travis of the Washington Senators: The War-Torn Career of an All-Star Shortstop (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Co., 2009), 153-154.

14 Joe Fitzgerald, “Ned’s patriotism will never flag,” Boston Herald, December 6, 1991; 098.

15 Ibid.

16 Ibid.

17 Curt Smith, Voices of the Game: the First Full-Scale Overview of Baseball Broadcasting (South Bend, Indiana: Diamond Communications, 1987), 383.

18 Ibid.

19 Ibid.

20 Bill Parrillo, “Baseball, Too, Felt the Shockwaves of Pearl Harbor. Their Careers Rescheduled, Some Players Went to Battlefields, Others Played on Service Teams,” Providence Journal, December 8, 1991, C-1.

21 Ibid.

22 Ben Bradlee, Jr., The Kid: The Immortal Life of Ted Williams (New York: Little Brown & Co., Ebook edition, 2013), 231.

23 Ibid.

24 Arnold Rampersad, Jackie Robinson: A Biography (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997), 89.

25 Ibid.

26 Ibid.

27 Jackie Robinson, I Never Had It Made (NewYork: Ecco, 2003), 13.

28 Rick Swaine, “Jackie Robinson,” sabr.org/bioproj/person/bb9e2490.

29 Jerry Coleman and Richard Goldstein, An American Journey: My Life on the Field, in the Air, and on the Air (Chicago: Triumph Books, 2008), 28-29; Peter Golenbock, Dynasty: the New York Yankees, 1949-1964 (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1976), 157.

30 Coleman and Goldstein, 29.

31 Coleman and Goldstein, 31.

32 George Vecsey, “Jerry Coleman, 89, Yankee Infielder, Fighter Pilot, and Voice of the Padres.” New York Times, January 6, 2014 [online edition]. Retrieved from nytimes.com/2014/01/07/sports/baseball/jerry-coleman-yankees-infielder-and-padres-broadcaster-dies-at-89.html?_r=0.

33 “Jerry Coleman,” Marine Corps Sports Hall of Fame. Retrieved from usmc-mccs.org/sports/hof/2005-coleman.cfm.

34 Clavin, 143.

35 Clavin, 149.

36 Clavin, 157.

37 Clavin, 159.

38 Steven R. Bullock, Playing for Their Nation (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2004), 100.

39Bullock, 99.

40 Bullock, 100-101.

41 Gerald Bazer and Steven Culbertson, “Baseball during World War II: The Reaction and Encouragement of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Others.” Nine: A Journal of Baseball History and Culture, 10, no.1 (2001), 123-124, 129.

42 Mead, 35.

43 Tom Infield, “When America Counted on its Pastime … Baseball Answered the Call, Came Marching into Battle,” The Daily Oklahoman (Oklahoma City), September 26, 1992, 97.

44 Infield, 195; Mead, 33-34.

45 Mead, 34.

46 C.Paul Rogers III, “Hugh Mulcahy” sabr.org/bioproj/person/243755f5; Gary Bedingfield, “Hugh Mulcahy,” Baseball in Wartime. baseballinwartime.com/player_biographies/mulcahy_hugh.htm

Like their National and American League counterparts, the Braves experienced an exodus of players during the war years.  Thirty-one Tribesmen with previous major-league experience departed for military service.1  The infield was particularly hard hit with the loss of regulars Max West, Carvel “Bama” Rowell, Sibby Sisti, Nanny Fernandez, and Connie Ryan.  Two unheralded rookie pitchers on the 1942 team, Johnny Sain and Warren Spahn, would not return to a major-league mound until 1946.2  Hank Gowdy, a catcher on the 1914 Miracle Braves and the hero of that year’s World Series sweep, had been the first baseball player to enlist during World War I, leaving the Tribe for the trenches of France.  The patriotic backstop enlisted again after the 1942 season and assumed an Army captaincy to lead recreational activities at Fort Benning in Georgia.  Some of the players who remained on the active roster contributed to the war effort by acting as nightly aircraft spotters during homestands.3

The scarcity of able-bodied replacements led to a continuous roster turnover as the Braves struggled to field a representative team.  A number of ballplayers received “cup of coffee” big-league trials that otherwise might not have taken place under normal circumstances.  This was especially true for the pitchers.  The 1942-45 Tribe included a number of obscure players whose time in the majors consisted of a dozen or fewer games.  The pitching staff saw brief appearances by Jim Hickey (9 games), George Diehl (2), John Dagenhard (2), Carl Lindquist (7), Roy Talcott (1),4 George Woodend (3), Harry MacPherson (1), Charlie Cozart (5), Hal Schacker (6), and Bob Whitcher (6).  Position players in this category included such unfamiliar names as outfielder Frank McElyea (7), third baseman Bob “Ducky” Detweiler (12), outfielder Sam Gentile (8), outfielder Connie Creeden (5),5 second baseman Pat Capri (7), infielder Gene Patton (1), catcher Mike Ulisney (born Ulicny) (11), outfielder Stan Wentzel (4), and third baseman Norm Wallen (4). To alleviate the wear and tear on scarce catching resources, the 1945 edition of the Braves even resorted to recruiting a 27-year-old amateur, Joe Tracy, to serve as a nonroster backstop during the 1945 season to assist the official battery brigade at home and on road trips, resulting in his inclusion in the year’s official team photo. 

“Graybeards” and those recently introduced to shaving found their way to Braves Field’s confines in futile attempts to address manpower shortages.  For 74 games in 1942, 41-year-old Johnny Cooney was called upon to split his time between the outfield and first base.  Outfielder Ab Wright, at 37 and out of the majors since 1935, answered the call and performed in 71 games for the 1944 Tribe.  The Hall of Fame Waner brothers joined the Braves during their sunset years (see below).  Hurlers Danny MacFayden (38), Allyn Stout (38), Joe Heving (44), and Lou Fette (38) tried but were unable to recapture their youthful glory days during brief stints with the Braves.  Fuzzy-cheeked teenaged rookies Ray Martin (18), Harry MacPherson (17), and Gene Patton (17) made quick and uneventful popup appearances.6

While it was not reflected in the club’s senior circuit standings, some Tribe ballplayers recorded notable individual achievements as the war’s impact began to be felt on the diamond.  In 1942 the Braves had their first NL batting champ since player-manager Rogers Hornsby captured that crown in 1928.  Ernie Lombardi, the legendarily slow-moving backstop, had been purchased from the Cincinnati Reds in February and his .330 batting average was the league’s top mark.  It would be the only season where representatives of both of the Hub’s major-league entries claimed their respective circuit’s hitting titles. Ted Williams of the Red Sox, with a .356 average, staked out those honors in his last American League campaign before leaving baseball behind for military duties.

Another first and last batting accomplishment in Boston Braves history took place that same season.  On June 19, 39-year-old right fielder Paul “Big Poison” Waner recorded his 3,000th hit, against his former Pittsburgh Pirates teammate, Rip Sewell.  Two days earlier, he had implored the official scorer not to award him a questionable hit after he reached first base on an infield grounder because he didn’t want his milestone hit to be a cheap one.  Although he was wearing a Braves uniform at the time, the vast majority of the future Hall of Famer’s safeties came as member of the Pirates.  Waner’s eyesight had been deteriorating and after accomplishing the hit mark, he confessed to manager Casey Stengel that he even had trouble reading the advertisements on Braves Field’s outfield wall and catching fly balls.  When Casey asked how he still seemed able to hit, Waner exclaimed, “Oh, that’s different.  The pitcher’s so near that the ball looks as big as a grapefruit.”7  As the result of war-caused player shortages, Waner was able to extend his career through his 42nd birthday, recording his final appearance at the plate in 1945, when he garnered a walk for the Yankees.  The same struggle to fill roster openings previously had brought about the brief reunion of Big Poison with younger brother Lloyd (aka Little Poison) in Boston on the Braves’ 1941 team.

One of the Tribe’s all-time fan favorites made his big-league debut in 1942.  Tommy “Kelly” Holmes had been cast off as surplus by the New York Yankees after a frustrating five seasons of captivity in their abundant farm system.  Assigned uniform number 1, the 25-year-old rookie broke in as the Braves’ regular center fielder.  Holmes adapted well to a diet of National League pitching, batting a respectable .278 in his inaugural season.  He became a protégé of Paul Waner and would preach Waner’s batting theories to professionals and amateurs throughout the remainder of his days whenever an opportunity arose.

The team’s best pitcher in 1942 was a 21-game loser.  Despite leading the National League in defeats, knuckleballer Jim “Abba Dabba” Tobin was tops in complete games and innings pitched.  His 12 victories tied Al “Bear Tracks” Javery for the team lead. The bulk of his mound career took place during World War II.  Tobin would wrap up his time in the big leagues in 1945 after recording consecutive 19-loss seasons.  His principal claim to fame arose from his batting prowess.  After slugging a pinch-hit home run on May 12, 1942, he took to the Braves Field mound the following day.  Over the course of the contest, which he won 6-5, Tobin slugged three more home runs and drove in four.  His home runs that day set a modern batting record for pitchers.

Braves Field provided the site for another legendary, albeit ignominious feat during the ’42 season.  On September 13, during the second game of a doubleheader, Lennie Merullo, a wartime shortstop for the Cubs who hailed from East Boston, made four errors in one inning.  His unsteadiness on the field was excused by the fact that his wife was in the process of delivering their first child, a son.  Newspapers applied the nickname “Boots” to the boy to commemorate his father’s performance on the date of the child’s birth.

Heeding the government’s mandate to reduce travel, clubs shifted to spring-training sites as near as possible to their home fields.  In 1943 the Boston Braves worked out a deal with an exclusive boys prep school in Wallingford, Connecticut. The Choate School (mispronounced “Choke” by skipper Casey Stengel8) opened up vacant dormitory space to the players and provided access to its Winter Exercise Building – which contained a large indoor batting cage – and to three outdoor diamonds.  In return, the Tribe agreed to have its players and coaches provide instruction to the school’s varsity baseball team.  Reactions to the shift from the club’s Sanford, Florida, training site varied.  Pitcher Charles “Red” Barrett remarked, “This joint don’t even have any dames.  We’ll never get in shape here.”9  Manager Stengel, however, in his convoluted Stengelese, had a different view.  “There will be no temptations here to distract our boys other than to go to the library, which would be something new they would not be experiencing otherwise for the first time.”10

In this academic atmosphere, Stengel couldn’t resist the opportunity to live up to his “Old Perfesser” nickname.  In cap and gown, he posed for photographs while lecturing to ballplayer “students” seeking roster spots.  Stengel even met and had his picture taken with a Choate namesake, chemistry teacher Edward Stengle, who also bore the nickname Casey.11  Among those in Casey’s “classroom” desperately looking for big-league jobs was former Yankees mound ace Vernon “Lefty” Gomez.  Sharing a ride on the way to Choate with infielder William “Whitey” Wietelmann, the sore-armed hurler asked his driver to pull over at a cemetery along the way.  When Wietelmann asked why, Gomez replied, “I want to see if I can dig up another arm.”12  Although he did make the Opening Day cut, Gomez was released before appearing in a game for the Braves.

Absent from spring training was batting champ Ernie Lombardi.  The backstop was holding out for a raise commensurate with his previous season’s performance.  The J.A. “Bob” Quinn ownership consortium was always short of cash.  Attendance at Braves Field had hovered well under 300,000 since 1939.  Even if the budget permitted an increase in the Schnozz’s pay, recently instituted Treasury Department regulations imposed a strict wage ceiling.  Basically, no ballplayer could negotiate a raise that would result in compensation over the team’s top 1942 salary without hard-to-obtain special permission.  Lombardi’s reported request of $15,000 exceeded the Tribe’s allocated wage range by around $2,500.13  Faced with this dilemma, Braves management dealt their 1942 NL All-Star catcher to the New York Giants, who had a higher and more flexible salary scale.  In return Boston received 33-year-old third-string catcher Hugh Poland, promising young infielder Connie Ryan, and some much needed cash.

Just before Opening Day, Casey Stengel was struck by a car while walking to his hotel in Kenmore Square.  He suffered a badly broken leg, and was out of the dugout convalescing for a couple of months.  In the face of Stengel’s four previous seventh-place finishes, members of the press and the public had grown weary of his act. A Boston sportswriter so welcomed the skipper’s forced absence from the Tribe’s helm that he suggested the offending automobile driver be given an award.  In Stengel’s stead, coaches George “Highpockets” Kelly and Bob Coleman took over the club.

The Braves’ climb to sixth place in 1943 resulted from improved pitching rather than enhanced batting prowess.  Whether it was the effect of the introduction of the hit-deadening balata ball during the season or basic ineptitude at the plate, the Tribe’s overall batting average of .233 was dead last in the National League by a wide margin.  However, there were a few bright spots.  First sacker Johnny McCarthy, a former heir apparent to Bill Terry of the Giants, was hitting .304 until he was felled by a broken leg in midseason and then received the call to military duty.  Rookie outfielder Butch Nieman delivered a number of clutch hits, while Tommy Holmes performed solidly at the plate, avoiding the sophomore jinx.  The pitching corps attained a respectable collective ERA of 3.25, bettering the circuit average of 3.38.  Even 20-game loser Nate Andrews posted a 2.57 earned-run average.  The four-man starting rotation of Al Javery, Nate Andrews, Red Barrett, and Jim Tobin accounted for 57 of the team’s 68 victories.

On July 12 Ted Williams, Joe DiMaggio, and Babe Ruth participated in Boston Mayor Maurice J. Tobin’s annual charity field day, held at Braves Field.  The Bambino headed up a military service All-Star ballclub that defeated the Tribe 9-8 on a Williams ninth-inning homer.  The exhibition had featured a Williams-Ruth pregame home run hitting contest, easily won by the Splendid Splinter as an old knee injury robbed Ruth of his legendary ability to drive a ball into the stands.

One of the most important events in the history of Boston’s Braves occurred during the height of World War II.  Minority Quinn syndicate shareholders Lou Perini, Guido Rugo, and Joseph Maney, local contractors, had been engaged in lucrative wartime construction work.  With cash on hand and frustrated by the team’s continued poor performance and seemingly never-ending stockholder cash calls, the so-called “Three Little Steam Shovels” approached their fellow investors with an offer in January of 1944.  “We are ready to sell our stock to you for what we paid for it, or we will buy your stock for what you paid for it.  One or the other.”14  Seeing an opportunity to extricate themselves from a long-standing losing proposition, the stockholders tendered their shares to the trio.  Thus, the era of the Boston Braves “Last Hurrah” commenced.  The new owners’ first move involved manager Casey Stengel.  He had not endeared himself to them after he suggested that they “stick to their cement mixers and let him run the Braves.”15   The Steam Shovels quickly disposed of Stengel and replaced him with Bob Coleman. 

Despite the regime change in the front office and on the field, the Braves could do no better than repeat a sixth-place finish in 1944, winning three fewer games than the previous season and finding themselves only 3½ games out of the cellar.  Attendance bottomed out at 208,691, the lowest figure since 1924.  Although only one starter recorded a winning record (Nate Andrews, 16-15, 3.22) and two others each lost 19 games (Al Javery, 10-19, 3.54, and Jim Tobin, 18-19, 3.01), a truer measure of the sixth-place mound staff’s capabilities was reflected in the overall squad ERA of 3.67, close to the league norm of 3.61. 

The wartime’s weakened lineups may or may not have contributed to the notching of a few notable accomplishments by Braves pitchers over the season.  Knuckleballer Jim Tobin distinguished himself on the mound and at the plate.  He pitched the franchise’s sixth no-hitter and first since 1916 on April 27, defeating the Brooklyn Dodgers at Braves Field before just 1,447 fans.  Two free passes to former Tribe teammate Paul Waner cost Tobin perfect-game immortality.  Nevertheless, he became the first hurler to throw a no-hitter and stroke a home run in the same contest.  The tables were turned on him on May 15 at Crosley Field when the Reds’ Clyde Shoun held the Braves hitless in a 1-0 triumph.  It was Tobin’s turn to prevent a perfecto as he drew the only Tribe walk of the game. The knuckler’s flirtation with hit-free events continued on to June 22 when his dancing baseball frustrated Phillies batters through five innings at the Wigwam before another scant crowd of 2,556.  This second game of a doubleheader was called at the end of five due to increasing darkness, with the Tribe leading 7-0 and the Philadelphians devoid of a safety in the box score. Tobin’s effort was considered a legitimate no-hitter in its day but was later removed from the record books when rules defining no-hitters were revised.

One of the most famous and oft-cited pitching efforts during the war years belonged to Braves right-handed starter Red Barrett.  Barrett’s 1944 record of 9-16 was mediocre to say the least.  However, one of those victories is to this day held up as an example of pitching efficiency and as a critique on the length of today’s ballgames.  On August 10 Barrett took to the mound at Crosley Field to face Cincinnati in an evening tilt.  The Reds had pioneered illuminated baseball in 1935 and by 1944 ten other major-league teams had installed lights.  Restrictions on the use of material not in support of the war effort brought such expansion to a halt in 1941 and installations at major-league ballparks wouldn’t resume until 1946, when a switch flicked on the eight new light towers at Braves Field on the night of May 11.

All that Red Barrett did that evening was to defeat the Reds, 2-0, by throwing only 58 pitches from the mound of Powel Crosley, Jr.’s ballpark.  The entire affair was completed, and fans headed home, after a mere 75 minutes.  Barrett issued no walks nor did he strike out a batter.  He allowed two isolated singles and otherwise let his fielders efficiently do all the work.

In the spring of 1944, the Tribe’s best hitter received his draft notice and departed spring training at the Choate School for a pre-induction physical.  Tommy Holmes reported to his Brooklyn draft board for his examination, expecting to pass and receive a call to active duty by the summer.  However, physicians ruled that a lifelong sinus problem disqualified him for duty.16  The Tribe did lose promising second baseman Connie Ryan to the Navy in July.  Ryan was batting .295 at the time and was a starter on the NL’s All-Star squad, garnering two hits, in the senior circuit’s midsummer classic victory at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh.

In his third season in the majors, Holmes led the club in most hitting categories: batting average (.309), hits (195), runs (93), doubles (42), triples (6), and RBIs (73).  Despite Holmes’s emergence, Tribe batters continued perform at a subpar level.  The team’s .246 batting average placed them last in the National League and well below the circuit’s .261 standard. 

In an effort to enhance the home team’s capacity to hit home runs, the Steam Shovels modified the Wigwam’s right-field perimeter while the team was on the road in May.  The right-field line was shortened to 320 feet from its previous 340-foot distance. The Tribe’s homer output at Braves Field did increase to 51 from the previous season’s 25 but the club lacked players who consistently could reach the fences.  Its leading slugger, lefty-batting outfielder Butch Nieman, managed to make it to the seats only 16 times during the season, with 12 of those shots coming at home.

With one notable exception, the 1945 season provided “more of the same” for fans of Boston’s National League entry.  The spring-training site shifted from Connecticut to Georgetown University in Washington.  On the day of his 75th birthday in February, former ownership syndicate head Bob Quinn retired from his post as general manager and was replaced by his youngest son, John.  Injuries and dissension plagued the team throughout the season. Skipper Bob Coleman, who had reluctantly accepted the managerial role, resigned in late July, preferring to return to a more desirable and less pressured assignment in the minors.  Coach Del Bissonette, a former Brooklyn first baseman and apple farmer from Winthrop, Maine, filled his shoes but was clearly seen as a placeholder.  In seventh place at the time of the takeover, the Braves under Bissonette managed a sixth-place finish.  Attendance did exhibit an uptick to 374,178.

The Steam Shovels admired from afar the successful operations of St. Louis’s Cardinals and would aggressively seek to remake the Braves in their image in the coming years through several transactions involving the Redbirds.  These efforts led some local sportswriters to nickname the team the “Cape Cod Cardinals.”17  The first step in this transformation took place on May 23, 1945, and involved an ill-fated deal for Cards wartime ace Mort Cooper.  Cooper had won over 20 games in 1942-1944.  To obtain him, the Steam Shovels parted with journeyman pitcher Red Barrett and a sum estimated at around $60,000.  While Cooper’s performance might have benefited from the opposition’s depleted talent pool, he posed a further risk either unknown to or ignored by Braves management.  The Cardinals were well aware that Cooper had bone chips in his elbow and consumed aspirin to relieve the pain.  His health coupled with ongoing salary squabbles led to his departure to Boston.  With the Braves, Cooper’s arm woes grew so intense as to require surgery and he never regained his wartime glory.  In the meantime, Barrett shockingly went on to win 23 games in 1945.  When asked for the reason for his surprising transformation, Barrett responded, “The difference between the Cardinals and the Braves is that the Cards are fast enough to catch the line drives hit off me.”18  Barrett eventually returned to the Braves in time to contribute to their 1948 pennant drive. Without the expected level of performance from Cooper, the Tribe’s pitching staff was spread especially thin.  Jim Tobin led all moundsmen with nine victories – and he had been sold to the Tigers on August 9!

Boston’s Fenway Park had its All-Star Game-hosting assignment postponed until 1946 as the 1945 contest was suspended due to the wartime travel restrictions.  In 1945 the midseason break instead featured a series of exhibition games designated to support the United War Fund.  Many of these contests involved a city’s National and American League representatives battling for hometown bragging rights.  Such was the case in Boston.  The Braves and Red Sox battled at Fenway Park before 22,809 fans on July 10.  Before Commissioner Albert “Happy” Chandler and a number of Hub baseball immortals, the Red Sox bested the Braves by a score of 8-1.  Tribe pitcher Jim Tobin was given the unique opportunity to face younger brother Jackie, who had benefited from the war-thinned talent pool to put in his only season in the majors with the Red Sox.  The Braves’ notorious “orchestra,” the Troubadours, serenaded the Bosox rookie third baseman with “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” when he strolled to the plate.  Although the kid brother weakly connected with his older sibling’s knuckleball offering, it rolled through the box for a hit.  The Tribe’s Tommy Holmes unofficially added to his 37-game hitting streak with a sixth-inning hit.19  The charity received some $70,000 from the day’s activities.

Although Boston’s National League baseball fans suffered through another lackluster year, they rallied behind the exploits of the newly adopted hero of Braves Field’s 1,537-seat “Jury Box.”  The small right-field bleachers earned that title when a Boston scribe observed only a dozen fans sitting in those stands during a lightly attended contest.  With an arm not fully compatible with his past center-field post, Tommy Holmes had been shifted to right field in ’45 and would remain there through 1950.  He quickly became a favorite of the denizens of the Jury Box, engaging in frequent friendly “give and takes” during games with the hard-core Tribe bleacherite loyalists.

In the year before a deluge of returning WWII ballplayer-veterans would resume interrupted careers, Holmes performed at remarkable level.  He broke Rogers Hornsby’s 1922 National League record of hitting in 33 consecutive games by hitting safely in 37 straight.20  Finishing second to Phil Cavarretta of the Cubs for the batting title by three points with a .352 average, Holmes led the National League in hits (224), doubles (47), homers (28), total bases (367), slugging percentage (.577), and OPS (.997).  The Hero of the Jury Box knocked in 117 runs, scored 125 and hit .408 at home.  Perhaps his most remarkable accomplishment was striking out only nine times in 636 at-bats.  The Sporting News recognized Holmes as its National League Most Valuable Player, a designation that it rarely accorded to a player on a second-division team.21

The Steam Shovels’ adjustment to the outfield fences transformed the Wigwam.  For the only time in its existence, Braves Field topped the National League as the most homer-friendly site in 1945 with 131 home runs, one more than at New York’s Polo Grounds.  Brooklyn’s tiny Ebbets Field came in a distant third with 63 round-trippers.  Boston’s warriors accounted for 68 of the blasts (almost 52 percent) as compared to the resident-friendly Gotham ballfield where the Giants totaled 64 percent of the home runs.22  In 1946 the ballpark returned to being the league’s stingiest locale for circuit clouts at 45 (as compared to the leading Polo Grounds at 151) and Braves batters contributed only 14 fence-clearers (32 percent) to the grand total. Boston Braves historian Harold Kaese opined that the “marked decrease” was attributable to further tinkering with the park’s outer boundaries.23

Lefty-batting Holmes in 1945 no doubt benefited from the Steam Shovels’ shrinkage of right field’s dimensions.  Never in his minor- or major-league career had he sent so many baseballs out of the park.24  So too did another left-handed hitter.  Third baseman and part-time outfielder Chuck Workman took advantage of the shortened porch, finishing second in the NL home-run chase. Of Workman’s 25 home runs, 19 came at the Wigwam, one more than Holmes’s at-home heroics.  He had never hit more than 11 homers in the majors previously and was out of the big leagues at age 31 after the 1946 season as returning ballplayers pushed their less capable replacements out of the lineup.

Prior to the close of 1945, the Braves ownership engaged in a bold move in an attempt to turn around the team’s long-standing losing ways.  While attending the World Series, Steam Shovel Lou Perini approached Cardinals owner Sam Breadon for permission to negotiate with current St. Louis manager Billy Southworth, a former Boston Braves outfielder (1921-23).  Southworth had won three pennants and two World Series championships for the Redbirds.  Perini came up with a multiyear offer that provided a salary and bonus package approaching $100,000.  Breadon, unable to match the Braves’ deal, released Southworth from his contract.  The exodus of other Cardinals to Boston would shortly commence and Southworth would deliver a National League pennant to his new employers in three years.

Even though the country and baseball began to adapt to a peacetime environment in 1946, fallout from the war produced lingering negative effects on the Tribe.  For the Braves, their rapid improvement under Billy Southworth’s leadership temporarily hid festering issues that more fully emerged during and after their ’48 NL title. 

On February 15, 1945, Southworth suffered a heartbreaking tragedy that haunted him throughout the remainder of his life.  His son, popularly known as “Billy Jr.” but born William Brooks Southworth, had survived flying 25 bombing missions in Europe only to be killed while piloting a B-29 Superfortress in the United States.  Taking off from Mitchel Field on Long Island, New York, his bomber crashed into Flushing Bay.  Father and son were very close.  A talented minor-league outfielder before the war, Billy Jr. also had attracted attention from Hollywood for his movie-star looks.  Further compounding Southworth’s grief was the fact that the body of his beloved 27-year-old son was not recovered until nearly six months after the accident. 

Manager Southworth’s past issues with alcohol were exacerbated by the loss of his son and by emerging clubhouse dissension instigated by ownership’s seemingly contradictory actions of bidding large amounts for unproven talent while hardballing current players during salary negotiations.  A case in point took place in June of 1948 when the Steam Shovels opened the team’s wallet to sign one of baseball’s first “bonus babies.”  Recent high-school graduate Johnny Antonelli was lured to the Braves for a reported $50,000 and was required under baseball’s rules to be placed on the major-league roster.  Antonelli received a rough baptism in the majors as his teammates chafed at the fact that a valuable roster spot had been taken away from a more deserving player more likely to contribute to their pennant quest.  Such bad feelings even led Tribe players to refuse to vote a partial World Series share to Antonelli, forcing Commissioner Happy Chandler to step in and mandate a one-eighth portion.

Former World War II Navy officer Johnny Sain and field-commissioned Bronze Star and Purple Heart recipient Warren Spahn, hardened by wartime service, led a player challenge of management.  Both had lost prime career years serving their country.  They were offended by the fact that their salaries, based on annually hard-fought negotiations with management and reflecting proven past performance, were dwarfed by the money ownership willingly handed over to an untested teenage pitcher.  They successfully demanded salary increases.  Other players possessing less clout than the team’s star pitching duo had a much more difficult time and, fairly or unfairly, cast blame on Southworth for a perceived failure to support his troops.  Some contended that this was a reflection of their manager’s intent to claim credit for the club’s performance to their individual detriment.

Southworth proved unable or unwilling to adapt his rigid, controlling “old school” managerial style in the face of a postwar group of veteran ballplayers who had grown increasingly confrontational.  A glaring example of this involved an unwise and unnecessary incident with a war veteran ballplayer.  Southworth routinely sent diminutive clubhouse attendant Shorty Young on room checks to enforce his midnight curfew.  On one occasion, Young knocked on the door of Sain, who it was known usually retired in the early evening. The star right-hander was awakened out of a sound sleep.  A furious Sain responded by threatening to throw out of his hotel window anyone who disturbed his sleep in the future by any ill-advised attempt at enforcing the manager’s heavy-handed edict.25

Factions that formed on the ballclub contributed to Southworth’s breakdown in 1950, prompting a leave of absence during the season, and his subsequent resignation in June of 1951.  Arguably, such war-related aftereffects played a part in the Braves’ post-’48 downward spiral on the field and at the box office. The team bottomed out in 1952 and departed from Boston in the spring of 1953 for the greener pastures of Milwaukee.26

BOB BRADY joined SABR in 1991 and is the current president of the Boston Braves Historical Association. As the editor of the Association’s quarterly newsletter since 1992, he’s had the privilege of memorializing the passings of the “Greatest Generation” members of the Braves Family. He owns a small piece of the Norwich-based Connecticut Tigers of the New York-Penn League, a Class-A short season affiliate of the Detroit Tigers. Bob has contributed biographies and supporting pieces to a number of SABR publications as well as occasionally lending a hand in the editing process.

Notes

1 David S. Neft, Richard M. Cohen, and Michael L. Neft, The Sports Encyclopedia: Baseball (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2004), 229.

2 Spahn’s four-game major-league debut in 1942 and subsequent 20-game appearance with the 1965 New York Mets allowed him to conjecture that he was “the only guy who worked with [manager] Casey Stengel before and after he was a genius.”  Editors of Total Baseball, The Biographical Encyclopedia of Baseball (Total Sports Illustrated, 2000), 1063.

3 Both Braves and Red Sox players would trek to an American Legion lookout tower atop Corey Hill in Brookline to spot possible enemy aircraft. Richard Goldstein, Spartan Seasons: How Baseball Survived the Second World War (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1980), 80.

4 Talcott was plagued by chronic shoulder pain from an injury incurred during college play when the medical student signed with the Braves in the spring of 1943.  Instead of immediately farming him out, the club placed him on the big-league roster.  In a sparsely attended (1,585) contest at Braves Field on June 24 against the Phillies, he recorded a relief appearance of two-thirds of an inning.  It marked both his major-league debut and his swan song.  Talcott went on to become a doctor in Florida and numbered Ted Williams as among his patients.  Richard Tellis,  Once Around The Bases: Bittersweet Memories of Only One Game in the Majors (Chicago: Triumph Books, 1998), 71.

5 Creeden had a talent at the keyboard and could play tunes ranging from classics to boogie-woogie.  Pitcher Red Barrett, a singer of questionable ability who dreamt of becoming a night-club entertainer, lobbied manager Casey Stengel to keep Creeden on the big-league roster.  Casey rejected his hurler’s ongoing sales pitch by telling the redhead, “Yeah, Red, and if he could play the outfield the way he does the piano, you’d have an accompanist for the season.”  Bob Sudyk, “The Perfesser,” Northeast magazine (Hartford Courant), March 14, 1993, 18.

6 Patton was a real-life version of Moonlight Graham.  The teenager entered his only big-league game as a pinch-runner in the ninth inning of the second game of a doubleheader on June 17, 1944, at Braves Field against the Giants. Patton would never get the opportunity to bat in the majors.

7 Harold Kaese, The Boston Braves, 1871-1953 (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2004),  251.

8 Sudyk, “The Perfesser,” 15.

9 Ibid., 12.

10 Ibid.

11 Ibid., 13.

12 Ibid., 15.

13 Goldstein, Spartan Seasons, 147.

14 Kaese, The Boston Braves: 1871-1953, 254.

15 Ibid., 255.

16 An initial diagnosis deemed him unfit and the examining medic declared, “We can’t take you. You’d be a pension case.”  However, when it was learned that Holmes was an athlete, a team of six doctors was called in for a closer examination.  The initial diagnosis was reconfirmed to the extent that one of the physicians told him, “If you go to England, you’ll die.”  Bill Gilbert,  They Also Served: Baseball and the Home Front, 1941-1945 (New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1992), 246.

17 Al Hirshberg,  The Braves: The Pick And The Shovel (New York: Waverly House, 1948), 141.  Cardinals who eventually migrated to Boston included Danny Litwhiler, Ernie White, Bob Keely, Walker Cooper, Joe Medwick, Carden Gillenwater, Ray Sanders, Don Padgett, Johnny Hopp, and Si Johnson.  The Steam Shovels even tried to pry Stan Musial away from St. Louis with a “blank check” offer.  Kaese, The Boston Braves: 1871-1953, 261. 

18 Kaese, The Boston Braves: 1871-1953, 259.

19 Holmes’s official streak ended at 37 games immediately upon the resumption of the regular National League schedule on July 12.  At Wrigley Field, Cubs right-hander Hank Wyse held him hitless in four at-bats during a Chicago 6-1 victory.  The previous time Holmes was blanked in a box score also occurred in the Windy City, in the second game of a doubleheader on June 3 at the hands of Cubs hurler Claude Passeau.

20 According to Holmes, “I was hot.  All of my hits reached the outfield.  There wasn’t one where there might have been a doubt.  No bunts.  Every one of mine was clean.” Gilbert, They Also Served, 250.

21 From 1942-45, Holmes was tops in the majors with 744 hits and 146 doubles.  He placed second in total bases (1,092), third in runs (349), and fourth in batting average (.303). David Finoli, For the Good of the Country, (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2002), 324-25.

22 Kaese, The Boston Braves: 1871-1953, 265.

23 1947 National League Green Book, 42.

24 Holmes acknowledged that his home-run surge was greatly aided by the reduction in distance to the right-field stands.  As a result, he doubled his salary the following season.  When asked why he could not sustain his home-run total post-1945, Holmes answered, “They moved the fence back.  Maybe they didn’t want to pay me more, or maybe the enemy was hitting more homers than we were.” Gilbert, They Also Served, 248.

25 Bill Nowlin, ed., Spahn, Sain and Teddy Ballgame (Burlington, Massachusetts: Rounder Books, 2008), 123.

26 Finishing in seventh place (64-89), 32 games behind the NL champion Dodgers, the Braves could lure only 281,278 of their remaining hard-core fans to the ballpark in their final Boston season.

1942

Citing the sport’s value as a morale-booster to Americans, President Roosevelt wrote, “I honestly feel it would be best for the country to keep baseball going.”1  But he also stressed that individual players eligible for the military should go into the service.  This so-called Green Light letter let America know that baseball was indispensable and that the game should give a business-as-usual appearance.  Brooklyn Dodgers general manager Larry MacPhail responded, “We can’t adopt any ‘business as usual’ slogan for baseball.  There is no business in this country so dependent upon the good will of the public as baseball.”2  On February 19 the Dodgers front office announced that for the duration of the war, any serviceman in uniform would be admitted to Ebbets Field free.3

The Dodgers began their first wartime spring training with several games in Cuba, and then they traveled northward to Daytona Beach, Florida. With the war on two fronts, there was now a sense over the course of the season that 1942 might be the last normal season.  The Dodgers adopted an unofficial win-now philosophy, as among their key players only Hugh Casey, Kirby Higbe, Mickey Owen, Pee Wee Reese, and Pete Reiser were under 30. It seemed that most teams would play the wartime seasons with “4-Fs, has-beens, and never-would-bes.”4

With the war under way, players had begun to make their way to the service.  First to leave the Dodgers was third baseman Cookie Lavagetto.  He was replaced by Arky Vaughan, for whom the Dodgers traded four players.5  Cookie was followed into war by teammates Herman Franks, Joe Gallagher, Joe Hatten, Don Padgett, and Tommy Tatum.

In the 1942 home opener, Durocher and Giants manager Mel Ott were handed war bonds by Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia in a home-plate ceremony.  As part of the program, the two skippers announced that each had diverted 10 percent of his first paycheck to the war-bond drive.6

A few practices started across the country in 1942.  The “Star Spangled Banner” was played before every game, not just on special occasions.7  Further, for the duration of the war, fans were asked to return balls hit into the stands.  The balls were then donated by the clubs to various recreation departments of the armed forces.

The Dodgers won four more games than the pennant-winning club of 1941 but still ended two games short of a return trip to the fall classic, with a record of 104-50.  They had endured a fierce pennant race with the St. Louis Cardinals.  Some historians believe that Brooklyn actually lost the race on a July afternoon in St. Louis when Pete Reiser crashed into the center-field wall pursuing a drive off the bat of Enos Slaughter.8  Slaughter raced around the bases for an inside-the-park home run while Reiser lay unconscious with a concussion and fractured skull.  Pete’s batting average tumbled to .310 (still fourth best in the league), due to constant blurry vision.  Before the accident, over three consecutive games (May 31 through June 2), Reiser had collected 11 hits in 13 at-bats, including two home runs, a triple, and four doubles), and his offense had kept Brooklyn ahead of the pack.  Largely due to his absence, the Dodgers’ 10-game lead in early August disappeared. 

The 104 wins that season is the most ever by a Brooklyn club.  The New York Giants finished in third place in the NL, 18 games behind Brooklyn.  Dolph Camilli finished second in home runs and RBIs.  The Dodgers drew just over one million fans in 1942, which led all of baseball, and they once again sent seven players to the All-Star Game. 

On September 23, in the midst of the pennant race, Larry MacPhail lobbied for and accepted a commission in the Army.  A month later, on October 29, the Dodgers organization announced that MacPhail’s replacement as general manager and president would be his former classmate at the University of Michigan, Branch Rickey, who just happened to be general manager of the rival Cardinals.

1943

All major-league teams had conducted spring training in 1942 at their traditional Florida and California locations.  However, by late 1942, the general picture of World War II had changed.  In early 1943, Commissioner Landis decreed that clubs should conduct spring training in the North, in order to relieve rail congestion, causing major-league teams to search for suitable spring-training facilities north of the Mason-Dixon Line.  On January 15, 1943, Brooklyn general manager Branch Rickey announced “that the Dodgers, still as much in character as ever, would do their 1943 ‘Southern’ spring training 45 miles north of New York City.  They will pitch their camp at Bear Mountain, noted ski-jumping resort, and have permission to assail (sic) themselves of Army’s magnificent field house at West Point should weather conditions prevent working outdoors.”9  Three decades before, the baseball diamond at Bear Mountain had been the site of a Sing Sing prison stockade.10

On the afternoon of April 2, 1943, the Brooklyn Dodgers had a practice game against West Point in which the batteries were switched.  Dodgers Roy Sanner and Bob Chipman “did the pitching for the cadets, while Paul Steinle, Randolph Heard, and Dave Zillmer of West Point performed on the mound for Brooklyn.”11  The Dodgers sluggers prevailed, 12-8, in an eight-inning game.  Billy Herman and Roberto Ortiz connected for home runs for the Dodgers.  Manager Durocher started the game at shortstop, had a hit in two plate appearances, and even stole a base.   

During the 1943 season, Brooklyn lost Hank Behrman, Hugh Casey, Cliff Dapper, Bruce Edwards, Larry French, Carl Furillo, Chet Kehn, Pee Wee Reese, Pete Reiser, Lew Riggs, Johnny Rizzo, and Stan Rojek to a different uniform.  Reiser had tried to enlist in the Navy after the 1942 season but was rejected.  So, in January 1943, he tried for the Army and was waved through.  He was sent to Fort Riley, Kansas.  Larry French was a lieutenant junior grade at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.  The proximity to Ebbets Field inspired him to ask the chain of command for a favor.  At the time of his entry into military service, French had attained 197 career victories.  His last outing in a big-league uniform was on September 23, 1942, and Larry pitched a gem, allowing a single hit against the Phillies in a 6-0 victory.  He was 34 years old.  Therefore in 1943, he sought permission to pitch for his old club, the Brooklyn Dodgers, while on leave so he could get three more wins and number 200.  He even offered to donate his Brooklyn salary to the Navy Relief Society. But Admiral W.B. Young denied the request, fearing a flood of such requests from other ballplayers.12  French saw action at Normandy the next year on D-Day.  When the war ended, he remained in the service instead of returning to baseball, and he served during the Korean War.

On July 9 Bobo Newsom had an argument with catcher Bobby Bragan after a passed ball that cost the Dodgers a run.  Newsom continued the tirade against manager Durocher, who subsequently suspended Bobo.  The next day, the Dodgers team threatened to strike, upset over Newsom’s suspension.  Facing a forfeit, Durocher finally persuaded the team to take the field.  Only Arky Vaughan did not, sitting in street clothes in the stands next to Newsom.  Brooklyn exploded offensively against the Pittsburgh Pirates, winning 23-6.  Newsom was traded to the St. Louis Browns five days later.13

Brooklyn finished third in 1943; their 81-72 record placed them 23½ games behind the Cardinals, who ran away with the pennant.  Brooklyn drew 661,739 fans in 1943, almost 375,000 fewer than the season before, yet they still led the league in attendance.  In 1941 Dodgers sluggers belted out 101 home runs; in 1942 the total was 62. The 1943 squad hit only 39 round-trippers, tied for lowest in the league (Augie Galan led the team with nine home runs.) Second baseman Billy Herman and outfielder Galan led Brooklyn in most offensive categories.  Whit Wyatt won a team-high 14 games and led in most pitching categories. Five Dodgers were among the league’s oldest players (Johnny Cooney was 42) and three were among the league’s youngest.  Herman, Galan, Dixie Walker, and Mickey Owen made the All-Star team.

1944

In February 1944 the newspapers said that manager Durocher was going overseas with Danny Kaye to entertain the troops.  Unfortunately, the trip had been delayed, but Leo was confident he could “leap overseas, tour a sector, and leap back in time to take command of his team by March 15.”14 

On March 21, 1944, as the Germans pushed eastward in Europe, the Japanese pushed into India, and the Allied forces pushed northward in Italy, Durocher watched the snow at the Dodgers’ Bear Mountain resort, and worried about his infield. The day before, a 6-inch snowstorm had hit spring training.  As the Brooklyn Daily Eagle put it, Durocher had become “half manager and half detective.”15  Branch Rickey had filled spring training with teenagers not old enough yet to be drafted, including Hodges, Duke Snider, and Ralph Branca, all of whom were years from fulfilling their potential.  Filling in for Vaughan was 18-year-old Gene Mauch, who would eventually become a big-league manager, but who in 1944 was only one year removed from serving as his high-school class president.  Durocher played second base and broke his thumb taking a throw from Mauch in an exhibition game against the Red Sox.

Before the 1943 season began, Rex Barney, Al Campanis, Dutch Dietz, Billy Herman, Kirby Higbe, Gil Hodges, and Bill Sayles had entered the military service. Additionally, once the season began, Jack Bolling, Ed Head, Roy Jarvis, Gene Mauch, and Lou Rochelli all either enlisted or were drafted.

The season did not start well. On April 27 Jim Tobin of the Braves no-hit the Dodgers and hit a home run in a 2-0 victory.  Three days later the Giants beat the Dodgers at the Polo Grounds, 26-8.  The Giants set a major-league mark with 26 RBIs and tied another with 17 walks.  Phil Weintraub drove in 11 runs, one shy of the major-league record.  Weintraub recalled that “Babe Ruth was at the game and came in the clubhouse afterward, and in his big roaring voice said, ‘Where is the guy who knocked in enough runs for a month?’  This was the great Babe.”16

In the summer of 1944, so many Brooklyn Dodgers left for their World War II service that Branch Rickey had to call up or sign several players 18 or younger to fill the void. Among them were three pitchers, Branca, Charlie Osgood, and Cal McLish , a trio so young that Harold C. Burr of The Sporting News dubbed them “Brooklyn’s Nursery School.”17  McLish was wearing a Brooklyn uniform even before finishing high school in Oklahoma City.18 Other Dodger youngsters included Clyde King, Eddie Miksis, Tommy Brown, and Mauch, who played in just five games.

On June 6 all major-league games were postponed in observance of D-Day.  President Roosevelt strongly urged Americans to spend the day in prayer for the men in combat. That same day, Branch Rickey traded pitcher Bob Chipman to the Chicago Cubs for second baseman Eddie Stanky.  Stanky was well-known as someone with a small strike zone who pestered opposing pitchers, and he lived up to his nickname, “The Brat.”  Rickey described Stanky as a player who “can’t hit, he can’t run, he can’t field, he can’t throw.  All he can is beat you.”19

The Dodgers went from bad to simply dreadful.20  On June 28, playing after the Tri-Cornered War Bond Baseball Game involving all three New York area teams, they dropped a doubleheader to the Cubs at Wrigley Field and didn’t win again until the second game of a July 16 doubleheader against the Braves.  Their 16-game losing streak was the longest in the club’s history.

On September 1 the Dodgers beat the Giants 8-1 in a home game.  Giants Hall of Famer Joe Medwick had to leave the game temporarily after being hit on the elbow by a pitch. The Giants asked Brooklyn manager Durocher if Medwick could re-enter the game. Leo agreed, only if he could choose the pinch-runner for the Giants while Medwick was treated. Mel Ott agreed, and Durocher selected Gus Mancuso, a 38-year-old catcher with six career stolen bases at the time (he retired with eight).  As if on cue, the Dodgers then turned a double play.  That same day, Brooklyn released 41-year-old Paul Waner. 

The next day, on September 2, Dixie Walker hit for the cycle against the Giants.  Walker, whose nickname was “The People’s Cherce,”21 played in 147 games, belted a career-high 191 hits, and batted .357.  This mark was good enough to win the National League batting title. Walker, Augie Galan, and Mickey Owen played in the All-Star Game.  Attendance in Brooklyn dropped to just over 600,000 fans, third in the National League. However, Brooklyn finished a disappointing seventh, with a record of 63-91, 42 games behind the Cardinals.  No pitcher was ranked in the top five in any major pitching category; Curt Davis had a team-high 10 victories (against 11 losses).  The staff ERA of 4.68 was a full two runs higher than that of St. Louis.  Four of the oldest players in the league still wore Brooklyn uniforms.

1945

The 1945 season found the Dodgers training at Bear Mountain and West Point for the last time.  The first competitions of their spring season were against the cadets on March 24, 1945.  The Dodgers won the first, but Ralph Branca issued a walk with the bases filled in the 10th inning of a second game to give Army a 5-4 victory.  Manager Durocher played all 10 innings at second base, turning a double play but going hitless at the plate.22  The material with which Durocher started at Bear Mountain in the spring of 1945 was as sparse as it had been the year before.  In the offseason, Bobby Bragan, Rube Melton, Cal McLish, and Eddie Miksis had all left the team for military service.  Mickey Owen departed after the season began.  Branch Rickey asked Durocher to start the 1945 campaign at second base, and he is credited with saying, “I’ll add a thousand dollars to your salary if you will play the first fifteen games.”23  Rickey was seriously hoping that Leo’s hustle might have an inspirational effect on the team.

Some players returned from the war to the Dodgers, and the ballclub steadily climbed out of the cellar, up to third place.  On June 8 Durocher was charged, arrested, and indicted for assault on a Brooklyn fan.  So much for inspiration.

Pitcher Ben Chapman was on Brooklyn’s roster for the 1944 and 1945 seasons, winning eight games and losing six.  Rickey traded Chapman to the Phillies on June 15, 1945, where Ben became their manager for the next four seasons.24

Floyd “Babe” Herman came back to Brooklyn during the 1945 season.  He had played for the Dodgers from 1926 through 1931, and he retired from the game in 1937.  The fans loved Babe because they remembered him as one of the best hitters Brooklyn ever had.  The beat writers loved Babe because he was great copy, never denying even the most outlandish things written about him.25  Unlike many of the wartime old-timers, Babe Herman needed neither baseball nor money.  He owned a California poultry farm that made him wealthy. After being away from baseball for seven seasons, Babe returned in 1945 and batted .265 with one home run and nine RBIs. 

On September 15 the Dodgers and Pirates played a game in Pittsburgh, with Brooklyn winning, 5-3. Brooklyn had arrived in Pittsburgh after being involved in a train accident out of St. Louis. At 6:30 A.M., the train struck a gasoline truck, and the ensuing explosion engulfed the train in flames.  The heat was enough to shatter the train’s windows.  The train’s engineer was killed, but none of the Dodgers players suffered anything worse than a bruise. 

With the end of the war in 1945, attendance surged in Brooklyn, and the Dodgers drew 1,059,220 fans, enough to once again lead the National League.  Their 87-67 record left them 11 games behind the pennant-winning Cubs.  The .271 team batting average was above the league mean and the 3.70 ERA was below the league average. Augie Galan, Eddie Stanky, Dixie Walker, and Goody Rosen ranked fourth through seventh in Position Players WAR (Wins Above Replacement) for the National League.  Twenty-three-year-old Hal Gregg paced the club with 18 wins. There was no 1945 All-Star Game, but Gregg, Walker, and Rosen were selected to the NL squad. 

On August 6, 1945, an atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan. Three days later, a bomb was dropped on Nagasaki.  Less than three weeks after that, on August 28, an explosion would hit Major League Baseball, as Jackie Robinson met Branch Rickey.  By that fall, Rickey would announce that he had signed Robinson, an infielder who had played that year with the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro National League, to a contract.  Rickey told the media, “I have never meant to be a crusader, and I hope I won’t be regarded as one.  My purpose is to be fair to all people, and my selfish objective is to win baseball games.”26 By 1947, Robinson’s first season with Brooklyn, the Dodgers were back in the World Series.

MIKE HUBER, a SABR member since 1996, is Dean of Academic Life at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania, where he regularly sponsors undergraduate research in sabermetrics, focusing on modeling, simulation, and prediction. He has been publishing his sabermetrics research in books and journals for close to 20 years. He has been rooting for the Baltimore Orioles for more than 45 years.

Sources

Allen, Lee, The Giants and the Dodgers: The Fabulous Story of Baseball’s Fiercest Feud (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1964).

Cohen, Stanley, Dodgers! The First 100 Years (New York: Birch Lane Press/Carol Publishing Group, 1990).

Goldstein, Richard, Superstars and Screwballs: 100 Years of Brooklyn Baseball (New York: Dutton Publishers, 1991).

Graham, Frank, The Brooklyn Dodgers: An Informal History (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1945).

Huber, Mike, West Point’s Field of Dreams: Major League Baseball at Doubleday Field (Quechee, Vermont: Vermont Heritage Press, 2004).

Marzano, Rudy, The Brooklyn Dodgers in the 1940s: How Robinson, MacPhail, Reiser, and Rickey Changed Baseball  (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 2005).

Snyder, John, Dodgers Journal: Year by Year & Day by Day With the Brooklyn & Los Angeles Dodgers Since 1884 (Cincinnati: Clerisy Press, 2009).

Stout, Glenn, The Dodgers: 120 Years of Dodgers Baseball (New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004).

Newburgh (New York) News

New York Times

The Pointer of the United States Military Academy, Volume XX, Number 16, April 9, 1943.

Akers, W.M., “Spring on Bear Mountain,” found online at sportsonearth.com/article/69334480/brooklyn-dodgers-spring-training-world-war-ii-bear-mountain-state-park.  Accessed March 23, 2014.

examiner.com/article/charlie-osgood-teenage-pitcher-for-the-brooklyn-dodgers-dies-at-87.  Accessed March 23 2014.

Statistics taken from baseball-reference.com.

Notes

1 Richard Goldstein, Superstars and Screwballs: 100 Years of Brooklyn Baseball, 219.

2 Frank Graham, The Brooklyn Dodgers: An Informal History, 216. 

3 John Snyder, Dodgers Journal: Year by Year & Day by Day with the Brooklyn & Los Angeles Dodgers Since 1884, 306. 

4 Glenn Stout, The Dodgers: 120 Years of Dodgers Baseball (New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004), 114.

5 Stanley Cohen, Dodgers! The First 100 Years, 64.

6 Goldstein, 222.

7 Snyder, 306.

8 Cohen, 66.

9 New York Times, January 16, 1943.

10 Goldstein, 229.

11 New York Times, April 3, 1943.

12 Goldstein, 228.

13 Snyder, 315.

14 Graham, 245.

15 W.M. Akers, “Spring on Bear Mountain.”

16 Goldstein, 237.

17 Examiner.com/article/charlie-osgood-teenage-pitcher-for-the-brooklyn-dodgers-dies-at-87.

18 Goldstein, 233.

19 Snyder, 320.

20 Goldstein, 238.

21 Graham, 246.

22 New York Times, March 29, 1945.

23 Graham, 248.

24 Rudy Marzano, The Brooklyn Dodgers in the 1940s: How Robinson, MacPhail, Reiser, and Rickey Changed Baseball, 98.

25 Marzano, 101.

26 Snyder, 328.

The Chicago Cubs finished 1941 in sixth place in the National League with a 70-84 record. Their offensive attack was led by Stan Hack, who hit .317 with a .417 on-base percentage; Bill Nicholson, who contributed 26 homers and 98 runs batted in; and Babe Dahlgren, who added 16 homers in 99 games. The staff workhorse was Claude Passeau, who had 20 complete games in 30 starts, while 23-year-old Vern Olsen led the starting rotation with a 3.15 ERA. After spending most of the 1930s with the National League’s best or second-best attendance, in 1941 the Cubs finished fifth in the National League, drawing a crowd of 545,159.

There was limited immediate effect upon the Cubs when the United States declared war on Japan after the attack on Pearl Harbor. The team maintained largely the same lineup in 1942. The few lineup changes, which included Jimmie Foxx replacing Dahlgren at first base, occurred primarily for baseball reasons. The Cubs won two fewer games (68) in 1942 and Passeau, who posted a 19-14 record, was the only regular member of the pitching staff to compile a winning record. Hack and Nicholson again led Chicago’s offensive attack. Three years later, the Cubs were in the World Series.

It appears that the first member of the club to join the military was Russ Meers, who made his major-league debut for the Cubs on the last day of the 1941 season. In June 1942 he quit the Milwaukee Brewers of the American Association and joined the US Navy. Meers was assigned to the Great Lakes Naval Training Center, where he played baseball for manager Mickey Cochrane.

The Cubs began losing more players to military service in the 1942-43 offseason. Chicago had concluded the 1942 season with a doubleheader loss to the St. Louis Cardinals on September 27. The next day outfielder Marv Rickert, who hit .269 in eight games for Chicago that month, was inducted into the US Coast Guard.

A month later, on October 29, 1942, the Cubs lost Lou Stringer, who joined the Army Air Force, which assigned him to Williams Field in Arizona. Stringer was Chicago’s regular second baseman in 1942, hitting .236 in 121 games. The previous season Stringer accumulated the third-most at-bats on the club behind Hack and Nicholson.

Bobby Sturgeon and reliever Emil Kush both enlisted in the US Navy during the offseason. Sturgeon had hit .247 in 63 games as a backup middle infielder in 1942 after being displaced as the starting shortstop by Lennie Merullo.

The Cubs lost at least three more players in early 1943. Catcher Marv Felderman, whose brief major-league career consisted of three games in 1942, entered the Navy and third baseman Cy Block, a September call-up in 1942, joined the Coast Guard in April. First baseman Eddie Waitkus, who spent 1942 with the Los Angeles Angels of the Pacific Coast League after appearing in 12 games for the Cubs in 1941, was drafted into the Army shortly after receiving an invitation to spring training with the Cubs. Waitkus would be shot by a fan in 1949, an incident that served as the inspiration for Bernard Malamud’s novel The Natural.

Chicago posted a 6½-game improvement in 1943 with a 74-79 record. Bill Nicholson led the offense once again, as he had the previous two seasons. He had one of the best seasons of his career and finished third in National League MVP voting. Nicholson led the senior circuit in home runs (29) and runs batted in (128). Meanwhile, Passeau and Hiram Bithorn, who was the first Puerto Rican to pitch in the major leagues, anchored the staff with ERAs of 2.91 and 2.60, respectively. The pair combined for a 33-24 record with 37 complete games in 61 starts. The Cubs finished second in the National League in attendance, despite drawing only 508,247 fans, which was a reflection of the impact the war had on attendance across baseball.

As it did with all major-league baseball clubs, the gradual exodus of players to military service created opportunities for replacement players during the wartime years. Several players were given an opportunity to play major-league baseball that they may not otherwise have received. Two such players were Billy Holm and Walter Signer. Holm was a catcher who would play in the minor leagues for 18 years. Starting in 1943, Holm spent two years with the Cubs, appearing in 54 games as the club’s primary backup catcher in 1944, and hitting only .136 in 155 plate appearances. He played for the Boston Red Sox in 1945. Signer, a pitcher, returned to professional baseball in 1943 after having retired from the minor leagues in 1937. He made four appearances for the Cubs in 1943 and six in 1945, posting a 3.00 ERA in 33 innings.

Also among the Cubs who played as a result of the thinning of the ranks was outfielder Ed Sauer, who made his major-league debut in 1943 and hit .253 for the Cubs between 1943 and 1945. Sauer was reassigned to the minors in 1946, but returned to the majors in 1949 with the Boston Braves and St. Louis Cardinals.

Bill Schuster, who had nine major-league at-bats in 1937 and 1939, returned to the majors with the Cubs in 1943 and amassed 277 plate appearances between 1943 and 1945. In 1943 he hit .294 in 13 games. After hitting .191 in 1945, and scoring the winning run in Game Six of the 1945 World Series, Schuster never played in the majors again, although he played in the Pacific Coast League through the 1952 season.

Ed Hanyzewski, who was signed by the Cubs in 1941 after his freshman season at Notre Dame, made his major-league debut in 1942 as a 21-year-old. After six major-league appearances that year, Hanyzewski had his most successful season in 1943, when he posted a 2.56 ERA in 16 starts and 17 relief appearances. Hanyzewski was rejected for military service on medical grounds because of a knee injury he suffered playing high-school football. After missing two months in 1944 because of arm problems, Hanyzewski was rejected by the Army a second time that offseason. Hanyzewski threw just 4⅔ innings for the Cubs in 1945, primarily because of arm soreness following a “pop” he heard in his elbow during an appearance in August 1944. He was left off the Cubs’ World Series roster and threw just six more major-league innings.

Southpaw John Burrows posted a 5.05 ERA for the Cubs in 35⅔ innings in 1943 and 1944. Third baseman Pete Elko was another player who only saw major-league action during the war, as he went a combined 9-for-52 for the Cubs in 1943 and 1944. Neither Burrows nor Elko played in the majors after the 1944 season.

The exodus continued after the 1943 season, robbing the Cubs of one of their rotation anchors. Although he was born in Puerto Rico, Hiram Bithorn was a US citizen and eligible for the draft, pursuant to the 1917 Jones Act. His request for a draft deferral was denied and he was inducted into the Navy on November 26, 1943. Bithorn spent two years serving at San Juan Naval Air Station in Puerto Rico.

In April 1944 the Cubs lost Peanuts Lowrey, who played in 130 games the previous season. Lowrey had hit .292 and finished second in the National League with 13 stolen bases and tied for third with 12 triples. The Army assigned Lowrey to Fort Custer, Michigan, where he was the player-manager of the baseball team at the Military Police Officers Candidate School. Lowrey received a medical discharge on October 13 because of “weak knees.”

Lowrey wasn’t the only Cubs player granted an early medical discharge from the Army. Mickey Livingston, who had played in 36 games for the Cubs in 1943, was drafted into the Army in March 1944. Reportedly, the pressure from his helmet caused him to suffer severe headaches and created a significant vision problem. He was granted a medical discharge that November and, like Lowrey, returned to play for the Cubs in 1945.

The Cubs also lost the services of Charlie Gilbert and Al Glossop, who were both drafted into the Navy. Gilbert was stationed at the Naval Air Technical Training Center in Norman, Oklahoma. Glossop, who was acquired from the Phillies in September 1943 but hadn’t yet played for the Cubs, entered the military on March 17, 1944, and spent that year stationed at the Great Lakes Naval Training Center.

The 1944 season did not start promisingly for the Cubs. Without Bithorn, the rotation didn’t have the depth of the previous season and the club started with only one victory in its first 10 games. Manager Jimmie Wilson was fired and Charlie Grimm succeeded him. The Cubs showed improvement under Grimm, as they posted a winning record under his stewardship and finished 1944 with a 75-79 record overall.

Nicholson led the National League in home runs (33) and runs batted in (122) for the second consecutive year. He also led the NL with 116 runs scored and 317 total bases. He finished second in MVP award voting to Marty Marion, the shortstop for the St. Louis Cardinals. Passeau continued as the staff’s ace with a 15-9 record and 2.89 ERA in 27 starts, but behind him and Hank Wyse, who had an unexpectedly strong year, the back end of the rotation spent most of the year in flux.

Several wartime replacement players also debuted for the 1944 Cubs. Southpaw Hank Miklos made his major-league debut on April 23, 1944, throwing five innings in a blowout loss to the Cardinals. In his second and last major-league appearance, the 33-year-old Miklos threw another two innings in a blowout loss to Brooklyn on May 15. Aside from those two appearances, there is no record of Miklos playing in Organized Baseball after 1939, which he spent pitching for the Winnipeg Maroons of the Class-D Northern League.

Pitching exclusively out of the bullpen, aside from one spot start, Mack Stewart debuted for the Cubs in 1944 and threw 40⅔ innings over the next two seasons. Charlie Gassaway, who was born in Gassaway, Tennessee, made his major-league debut in September 1944. He was hit hard in both of his starts for the Cubs. However, Gassaway wound up throwing more than 150 major-league innings over the next two seasons for the Philadelphia Athletics and Cleveland Indians.

Catcher Mickey Kreitner, who made his major-league debut in 1943 as a 20-year-old and went 3-for-8, received an extended look as a backup catcher in 1944. He spent the entire year in the majors, but hit only.153 with one RBI in 85 at-bats. Kreitner, whose minor-league career began in 1941, last played professional baseball in 1945 with the Los Angeles Angels of the Pacific Coast League.

Catcher Roy Easterwood made 34 plate appearances in 17 games in 1944, his only major-league season. He hit .212 with two doubles and a home run. The Texan would have a 15-year minor-league career, but never appeared in the major leagues again. However, he had a longer major-league career than Garth Mann. Mann, a pitcher who never got the chance to pitch in the major leagues, entered a game against the Brooklyn Dodgers on May 18 as a pinch-runner for Lou Novikoff in the eighth inning with the Cubs trailing 7-1. He scored Chicago’s second run and was replaced defensively in the top of the ninth inning. Chicago came back to win the game in the bottom of the ninth inning, 8-7, but Mann never appeared in the majors again.

The Cubs lost several more players during the late stages of the war. On October 2, 1944, Dale Alderson entered military service with the Navy, after previously having being rejected twice because of kidney ailments. He was assigned to the Naval Training Center in San Diego, where he served until he was discharged on October 19, 1945. On January 15, 1945, Bill Fleming, who had made 39 appearances for the Cubs in 1944, entered the Army and was stationed at Fort Lewis, Washington.

In 1945 the Cubs lost the talents of Dom Dallessandro, who had his best season for the Cubs in 1944, when he hit .304 and drove in 74 runs. He entered the Army on March 8, 1945, and was assigned to Fort Lewis. Dallessandro, who along with Bithorn was perhaps the most noticeable loss for the Cubs during the war, was placed in charge of the gymnasium at Fort Lewis. Both Fleming and Dallessandro played for the camp’s baseball team, alongside a number of fellow major leaguers, including Danny Litwhiler of the Cardinals, Cincinnati’s Ray Mueller and Frankie Kelleher, and Ron Northey of the Phillies. With such a talented roster, it was not surprising that the baseball team was extremely successful. The club had a 37-game winning streak and won the Ninth Service Command championship. Dallessandro was discharged on April 2, 1946, and appears to have been the last Cubs player discharged from military service after the war.1

Like Fleming and Dallessandro, many of the Cubs played baseball while they served in the military. Among the many players who stayed involved in baseball was Hi Bithorn, who was the player-manager of the baseball team at the San Juan Naval Air Station. Emil Kush pitched for the Lambert Field Navy Wings during the war and defeated the Cincinnati Reds and the Dodgers in exhibition games. Bobby Sturgeon played while stationed in the Navy and, along with Joe DiMaggio, played for a service all-star team that played in several benefit games around California in 1943. Lou Stringer starred for the Williams Field Flyers, who won the Arizona Servicemen’s League in 1943 and 1945, amassing a 41-9 record during their first championship season.

Eddie Waitkus and Marv Rickert likely had the most demanding and dangerous duties of all Cubs players during the wartime. Waitkus’s military service began with the Army engineer amphibian command at Camp Edwards in Massachusetts. In 1944, he was assigned to the 544th Engineer Boat & Shore Regiment, 4th Engineer Special Brigade. He spent much of his time in the Pacific Theater, where he was stationed at Bougainville, New Guinea. In September 1944 Waitkus participated in amphibious landings at Marotai in the Dutch East Indies and then in another series of amphibious landings in January 1945 at Lingayen in the Philippines.

However, Rickert, who was in the Coast Guard, may have faced more danger than any other Cub. He worked aboard an explosives boat in the Pacific Theater, transporting ammunition from Seattle to American bases in the Aleutian Islands, an area reportedly high on the list of Japanese targets. During his last two years in the Coast Guard he was stationed in Seattle and he coached the Coast Guard’s baseball team, which posted a 98-8 record during that period.

Meanwhile, in the major leagues, the Cubs continued their turnaround under Charlie Grimm in an even more dramatic fashion in 1945. The Cubs (98-56) won the National League pennant with a 98-56 record. The team was particularly impressive in the second half of the season, posting a 54-27 record. Chicago played outstanding baseball in July, compiling a 26-6 record on the strength of an 11-game winning streak that began on July 1. During this streak, the Cubs took first place in the National League from Brooklyn, a lead they would never relinquish. The club nearly doubled its attendance from 1943, drawing 1,036,386 fans to Wrigley Field, which placed them second in the National League.

The Cubs finished the season with a 22-10 record in September and won the pennant by three games over the St. Louis Cardinals. The Cubs finished with at least a .500 record against every National League club but the Cardinals, against whom they won only six of 22 contests. The Cubs went 3-5 against the Cardinals in September, but midseason acquisition Hank Borowy won all three of his starts against St. Louis, which proved to be the difference in the standings. The Cubs also owed much of their pennant title to their play against the Cincinnati Reds, against whom they won 21 of 22 games.

The 1945 Cubs won 23 more games than they did in 1944. Their success in 1945 appears to stem from a combination of roster volatility as a result of World War II service and a number of players having career seasons.

The Cubs weren’t the only club to experience a big jump in the standings between seasons during the war. While the Cubs went from fourth place in 1944 to winning the pennant in 1945, Brooklyn also improved by four places in the standings from seventh place to third. Cincinnati dropped from third place in 1944 to seventh in 1945 and in the American League the Washington Senators improved from eighth place to second place. As a further demonstration of wartime unpredictability, between 1942 and 1943 in the American League, Boston dropped from second place to seventh and Washington rose from seventh to second.

It’s also worth noting that the 1944 Cubs outscored their opponents by 32 runs, which might have made them a little unlikely to finish with a record under .500. In 1945 the Cubs had a much better season and outscored their opponents by over 200 runs. Several players buoyed the offense with career years, which more than compensated for Nicholson having the poorest season of his career to date. Andy Pafko, who had struggled at the plate in 1944, which was his first season as a regular, burst onto the scene in 1945 and finished fourth in MVP voting. The 24-year-old outfielder reached double digits in doubles, triples, and home runs. He had a career-high 110 RBIs and hit 12 triples after hitting two the previous season.

Stan Hack didn’t have his best offensive season in 1945, but he had his best season in several years with a .323 batting average and 29 doubles. He finished 11th in MVP voting and posted an on-base percentage and slugging percentage more than 50 points higher than he had the previous season. Hack retired after the 1947 season at the age of 37.

Don Johnson made an unexpected offensive contribution as the Cubs’ second baseman. The Chicago native was another wartime replacement player who made his debut in 1943 as a 31-year-old rookie. He had his best offensive season in 1945, setting career highs in batting average, on-base percentage, and slugging percentage. Johnson also showed marked improvement in the field, cutting his error total from 47 in 1944 to 19 in 1945. Perhaps a reflection of how unexpected his performance was came when Johnson finished 21st in MVP voting that season.

However, the key to the offense in 1945 was first baseman Phil Cavarretta, who won the National League MVP award with a .355 batting average, 34 doubles, and 97 runs batted in. He posted a .449 on-base percentage after earning 81 walks and he struck out only 34 times. Cavarretta, who was an All-Star in 1944, 1946, and 1947, made his debut in 1934, but hadn’t had more than 350 at-bats in a season between 1937 and 1941 and only became a regular after World War II began. Cavarretta had never hit over .300 or posted a slugging percentage over .425 until the 1944 season, when he came into his own as an offensive force while playing regularly. 

While the offense improved from the 1944 season, it was the club’s pitching staff that really stood out. The Cubs allowed only 533 runs, which was the least in the National League by 49 runs. The Cardinals finished with the second-fewest runs allowed with 582 and the Pirates finished with the third-fewest runs allowed in the National League after allowing 681 runs, Chicago led the National League in ERA and complete games and finished with the fewest hits, runs, home runs, and walks allowed. All eight pitchers who pitched over 50 innings for the club posted ERAs of 3.50 or lower.

Claude Passeau had his last good full season in the majors, posting a 2.46 ERA in 27 starts. He went 17-9 with 19 complete games and a National League-leading five shutouts. He allowed only four home runs in 227 innings. Passeau was out of baseball after the 1947 season

In 1945 the staff workhorse was Hank Wyse, who won 22 games and lost 10. He threw 278⅓ innings with a 2.68 ERA and finished with 23 complete games in 34 starts. He posted an identical ERA in 1946, but his record dropped to 14-12. Wyse never had a winning record again. After not pitching in the majors in 1948 and 1949, he resurfaced and spent a full season with the Athletics in 1950. He pitched briefly for the Athletics and Senators in 1951 and then never pitched again in the major leagues.

A pair of 38-year-old Cubs veterans combined for 29 wins. Kentucky native Paul “Duke” Derringer’s went 16-11 in 30 starts and five relief appearances with a 3.45 ERA in his last season in the major leagues. Had the save been an official statistic in 1945, Derringer would have earned a save in four of his five relief appearances. Although he was the only member of the rotation with an ERA over 3.00, Derringer’s ERA was still 0.70 lower than it was in 1944, when he only won seven games.

However, the most unexpected performance on the entire roster probably came from Ray Prim. Prim hadn’t pitched in the majors since 1935, aside from 60 innings in 1943. The southpaw spent 1944 in the Pacific Coast League and was out of the major leagues after 23⅓ innings in 1946. However, he was a major contributor for the Cubs in 1945 with a 13-8 record with a 2.40 ERA in 165⅓ innings. He led the National League in ERA, WHIP, and strikeout-to-walk ratio and allowed the fewest hits and walks per nine innings pitched.

The final piece of the puzzle was the midseason acquisition of Hank Borowy. The Cubs purchased Borowy from the New York Yankees on July 27 for $97,000. At that point in his career Borowy had compiled a 56-30 record and a 2.74 ERA. With the Cubs, Borowy went 11-2 in 14 starts with 11 complete games. He made one relief appearance, in which he would have earned a save. For his accomplishments, Borowy finished sixth in National League MVP Award voting and earned The Sporting News National League Pitcher of the Year award. Borowy went 25-32 over the next three years and the Cubs dealt him to the Phillies after the 1948 season.

Three other pitchers who made spot starts when necessary prior to the acquisition of Borowy also pitched well. Bob Chipman, whom the Cubs had acquired for Eddie Stanky in mid-1944 from Brooklyn, pitched mostly out of the bullpen, but he also made 10 starts and posted a 3.50 ERA in 72 innings. Hy Vandenberg, who was out of the majors from 1941 through 1943, put up a 3.49 ERA in 95⅓ innings as a 39-year-old. He went 7-3 in seven starts and 23 relief appearances and never pitched in the majors again after that season. Illinois native Paul Erickson posted a 3.32 ERA in 108⅓ innings in nine starts and 19 relief appearances. Erickson, who made his debut in 1941, was out of baseball after the 1948 season.

Another player who was given an unexpected chance to play in the major leagues again was 43-year-old outfielder Johnny Moore.  Moore, who broke in with the Cubs in 1928, hadn’t made a major-league appearance since 1937, but he returned to the majors in his 21st season in professional baseball. In his limited opportunity, Moore went 1-for-6 with two runs batted in.

Catcher Paul Gillespie hit .283 with a .405 slugging percentage in 89 games for the Cubs during the war years. Most of Gillespie’s playing time came in 1945, when he played in 75 games and hit .288. He had three homers and 25 RBIs and walked 18 times with only nine strikeouts. Outfielder Lloyd Christopher made his major-league debut that season for the Boston Red Sox. He was selected off waivers by the Cubs on May 26. He only played in one game for the club and didn’t record an at-bat. Also, George Hennessey, who pitched briefly in the majors in 1937 and 1942, threw 3⅔ innings for the Cubs in 1945.

The Cubs advanced to the World Series for the first time since 1938 and faced the Detroit Tigers. The first game of the World Series was at Briggs Stadium and the Cubs won 9-0 behind a six-hit shutout by Borowy. After Chicago lost the second game, Passeau threw what was likely the best game of his life in Game Three. He allowed only one hit, a second-inning single by Rudy York, and faced only one batter over the minimum as the Cubs won, 3-0.

The Tigers won the next two games in Chicago to take a 3-games-to-2 lead in the Series. Billy Goat Tavern owner Billy Sianis and his pet goat were asked to leave Wrigley Field during the fourth game, leading to the alleged Curse of the Billy Goat. Facing elimination, the Cubs took a 7-3 lead in Game Six. However, the Tigers clawed back to tie the game in the top of the eighth inning, but the Cubs prevailed in the bottom of the 12th, inning, 8-7, on a double by Stan Hack with two outs, scoring pinch-runner “Broadway Bill” Schuster from first base.

Unfortunately for the Cubs, the Tigers jumped all over Borowy in Game Seven. Borowy had pitched four innings of relief in Game Six two days earlier and, perhaps still tired from that appearance, allowed three of the five runs the Tigers scored in the top of the first. Detroit wound up with a 9-3 victory and a World Series title.

The loss in the World Series didn’t occur because of a lack of contribution from at least two players who had returned from military service. Peanuts Lowrey played in all seven games and hit .310 and scored four runs. Mickey Livingston played even better, hitting .364 over six games with three doubles and four runs batted in.

However, the Cubs’ replacement players didn’t fare so well. Sauer batted twice in the World Series, striking out both times. Gillespie made three appearances and went 0-for-6. Meanwhile, Schuster only played in one game, but he made a key contribution, as previously noted, as he scored the winning run in the 12^th inning of Game Six to send the World Series to a seventh game

The Cubs dropped to third place in the National League in 1946 with an 82-71 record. Cavarretta and Hack led the offense again, but didn’t live up to the previous season’s performance. Meanwhile, Nicholson slumped and was no longer a regular by season’s end. Also, the pitching rotation was not as deep behind Wyse and Johnny Schmitz, as Passeau only made 21 starts and struggled, while Borowy posted a winning record, but with a relatively high 3.76 ERA.

A number of the Cubs who had served in the war returned to the team for the 1946 season. Eddie Waitkus played 106 games, almost entirely at first base, Peanuts Lowrey played 144 games, mostly in the outfield, and Marv Rickert made 107 appearances in the outfield. Although they weren’t regulars, Bob Sturgeon and Lou Stringer played in 100 and 80 games, respectively. Mickey Livingston, Bob Scheffing (who missed three seasons while in the Navy), and Dom Dallessandro all played in more than 60 games. Also, Cy Block, Al Glossop, and Charlie Gilbert made brief appearances for the club. The pitching staff benefited less from the returning players. Of the players who served, only Emil Kush threw over 100 innings. Hi Bithorn, Bill Fleming, Russ Meyer and Russ Meers all pitched far fewer innings.

As of the date of publication, this was the last time the Cubs appeared in the World Series.

THOMAS AYERS is a lawyer who practices labour and employment law. He has earned degrees from the University of Toronto, the London School of Economics, and Queen’s University. Born and raised in Toronto, he is a lifelong Blue Jays fan, who has contributed several biographies to the SABR Baseball Biography Project.

Sources

Baseball in Wartime Website:

baseballinwartime.com/those_who_served/those_who_served_nl.htm

SABR Biographies:

sabr.org/bioproject

• Berger, Ralph, “Russ Meyer”
• Bohn, Terry, “Ed Hanyzewski”
• Griffith, Nancy Snell, “Mickey Livingston”
• Gumbs, Gene, “Marv Rickert”
• Morrison, John, “Bobby Sturgeon”
• Nowlin, Bill, “Dom Dallessandro”
• Nowlin, Bill, “Lou Stringer”
• Quevedo, Jane Allen, “Hi Bithorn
• Rosen, Dick, “Peanuts Lowrey”

Other Sources Consulted:

Baseball Alamanac: baseball-almanac.com

Baseball-Reference: baseball-reference.com

Retrosheet: retrosheet.org

Notes

1 See: baseballinwartime.com/player_biographies/dallessandro_dom.htm.

On December 7, 1941, Japan launched a surprise attack on the American naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.  The next day, December 8, 1941, the United States declared war on Japan. Three days later, December 11, 1941, Germany and Italy, supporting Japan, declared war on the United States; America in turn declared that a state of war existed with these two countries. The United States had entered World War II, supporting Great Britain, France, Australia, the Soviet Union, and other allies.  Although the Axis powers (Germany, Italy, and Japan) had already committed acts of war against neighboring countries throughout the 1930s and into the 1940s, a majority of US citizens, remembering World War I and deeply affected by the Great Depression, supported neutrality, and wished no direct involvement in the conflict.1  However, international events required the nation’s citizens and industries to face challenges never imagined.  Questions needed to be asked, and guidance was sought.

All of the United States felt the impact of the declarations of war, and major-league baseball was no exception.  Remembering the government’s “work-or-fight”2 order issued during World War I, club owners waited as Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis posted a letter to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.  In this letter, dated January 14, 1942, Landis wanted to know whether or not baseball ought to be “suspended for the duration of the war,”3 and succinctly asked “What do you want to do?”4 In his response, dated January 15 and known as the “Green Light Letter,”5 President Roosevelt encouraged Major League Baseball to carry on as well as it could.  The president stressed that his wish for baseball to continue was merely his opinion; however, Landis accepted that opinion as a mandate to play.

While international conflicts raged during the 1930s, America struggled to recover from the financial crash of 1929; and citizens wanted to find reasons for optimism, hoping to dismiss a despair that had taken hold of their lives.6 The major leagues did play on at this time, but not without its own issues. Robert Creamer stated:

Major league teams in the 1930s were divided into the haves and have nots. The same teams generally finished near the top year after year. Others hovered near the middle of the standings (the Cleveland Indians finished either third or fourth ten times in eleven seasons). Some (the Browns [and Reds], for example) were almost always near the bottom.  Now and then a team would rise or fall, but not often. The Yankees, the epitome of the haves, usually won the American League pennant, and in the World Series they always walloped the National League champion.7

The Cincinnati Reds had not won a pennant, and had not played in a World Series, since 1919. During the 1920s, the Reds finished in second place, 4½ games out in 1922,8 and two games out in 1926. 9 However, the 1930s saw the Reds consistently near or at the bottom of the National League standings.  It would take nearly all of the 1930s, and ownership changes, for the Cincinnati Reds to become “haves” in the National League.  In 1939 the Reds won their first pennant in 20 years, led by manager Bill McKechnie and several National League All-Stars, including pitchers Paul Derringer, Bucky Walters, and Johnny Vander Meer, second baseman Lonny Frey, outfielder Ival Goodman, catcher Ernie Lombardi, and first baseman Frank McCormick.  Despite an impressive 97-57 regular-season record, the Reds were swept by the Yankees in that season’s World Series; 1940, however, would be different. 

Sidney Weil became owner of the Reds in 1929, only months before that year’s economic panic. In time, he would feel the financial impact of the Great Depression, but being “a magnate who is a ‘pal’ of the ballplayers,” he told International News Service sportswriter James L. Kilgallen that he had no intention of selling his team.10 Sincere statement or not, in 1933, with an average attendance of fewer than 3,000 fans per game11 and encouragement from the directors of Cincinnati’s Central Trust Bank, it was deemed advisable that Weil sell his floundering National League club.  The bank assumed ownership and hired 43-year-old Leland Stanford “Larry” MacPhail to run the team.

Soon thereafter, succumbing to MacPhail’s powers of persuasion,12 Powel Crosley, Jr., inventor, entrepreneur, and radio pioneer,13 bought the club and MacPhail carried on as general manager.  Prompted by MacPhail, Crosley changed the name of the Reds’ home field to Crosley Field. (It remained so named until the Reds left it in 1970.)14 Crosley had created the Crosley Broadcasting Corporation and owned several radio stations.15  He hired Red Barber to be the radio voice of the Reds; he held that position from 1934 to 1938. From 1939 to 1945 the play-by-play radio announcers included Roger Baker, Dick Bray, Lee Allen, Dick Nesbitt, and Waite Hoyt.16 Crosley’s WLW was the most powerful radio station in the world and reportedly could be heard as far away as Australia. (Some people claimed that the station could be heard in house gutters17 or in their teeth.)18 Crosley’s numerous achievements would play roles in the outcome of World War II.

Powel Crosley’s Reds did not fare much better than Sidney Weil’s clubs, consistently suffering from “tailendinitis,”19 including last-place finishes in 1934 and 1937.20 Finally in 1939 (as Hitler’s Germany invaded Poland) the Reds won the pennant. In 1940 (while the Battle of Britain surged) the Reds boasted a record of 100 wins and 53 losses and this time won the World Series, beating the Detroit Tigers in seven games. The Reds and their fans delighted in this turn of events; yet the reality of World War II could not be ignored. 

MacPhail left the Reds in 1936 to work for the Brooklyn Dodgers.  His replacement, Warren Giles, from the St. Louis Cardinals organization, would serve as general manager until 1951.  Reasonable debate can be raised as to whom the Reds owed their success in 1939 and 1940.  However, the fact remains that Giles had hired Bill McKechnie.  McKechnie, known for “expertise in pitching,”21 saw the “Dutch Master” Johnny Vander Meer pitch consecutive no-hit games in 1938. Acknowledging this achievement, the Cincinnati Enquirer commented:

It’s only fair to warn Adolf Hitler that if he does march on Czechoslovakia one of these fine hot days, he won’t have the headlines in these parts if the Reds are playing – and particularly if Johnny Vander Meer is in the box.22

Also that year, Reds catcher Ernie Lombardi was named the National League’s Most Valuable Player. During the 1939 season, McKechnie enjoyed the success of his pitchers Bucky Walters and Paul Derringer, who together won 52 games.23 Walters led the league in wins, earned-run average, and strikeouts.

Before the 1940 season the Reds acquired pitcher Joe Beggs from the New York Yankees in exchange for Lee Grissom, and pitcher Jim Turner from the Boston Bees for Les Scarsella. With these additions, the Reds won 15 of their first 19 games24 and thus set the tone for their first-ever 100-win season.  Fans in attendance at Reds games had much to celebrate during the 1940 season, but superfan Harry Thobe further inspired the crowd with his antics and unique wardrobe. He:

Dressed in a white suit with red stripes and wore one red shoe and one white along with a straw hat and white parasol.  He cheered the Reds on with impromptu Irish jigs and ‘12 gold teeth,’ and was as much a fixture at Crosley Field in the 1940s as the famed Siebler Suit sign.25

As the club continued to play well, an unexpected tragedy struck. In late July, after a road loss to the New York Giants, Reds catcher Willard Hershberger blamed himself for failing to call the right pitch – his call, he believed, had given Giants catcher Harry Danning the opportunity to hit the game-winning home run off Bucky Walters. The Reds’ next stop was Boston, where they were to play two doubleheaders. After Hershberger had an unusually poor performance against the Braves, McKechnie sensed something was wrong. Hershberger was distraught, and mentioned to McKechnie that he contemplated suicide. After hours of conversation, McKechnie believed that the catcher had composed himself.  The following morning, Hershberger appeared to be in good spirits, but he did not arrive at the park for batting practice.  Hershberger’s body was later discovered in his hotel bathroom; he “had cut his throat with a safety-razor blade.”26 The club remained stalwart and played on to another pennant. 

The Reds ended the regular season in first place, 12 games ahead of Brooklyn.  They began that season’s World Series with two key players injured:  catcher Ernie Lombardi and infielder Lonny Frey.  They were replaced by 40-year-old catcher-coach Jimmie Wilson and Eddie Joost.  Wilson caught six of the seven World Series games, batting .353,27 and Joost helped solidify the infield. The Reds became World Series champions by defeating the Detroit Tigers in seven games. After the successful 1940 season, McKechnie correctly anticipated a letdown by his team in 1941.  The Reds, sporting few highlights that season, finished in third place with a record of 88 wins and 66 losses.28 McKechnie did see two 19-game winners in pitchers Elmer Riddle and the veteran Bucky Walters; however, he also saw a team batting average dip below .250.29

The Reds finished the 1942 season in fourth place, just reaching the .500 mark with a 76-76 record. Perhaps the only bright spot for McKechnie was the pitching of longtime minor leaguer Ray Starr. Starr won 15 games, while losing 13; he likely would have won more had the Reds been able to hit above .231, the team average.30

As the Cincinnati Reds played baseball, owner Powel Crosley, Jr. and his brother Lewis M. Crosley manufactured radios, refrigerators, other household appliances, and automobiles.  Already a major employer in the Cincinnati area, Crosley became the largest wartime employer in Cincinnati,31 adapting his manufacturing to serve the war effort. Ultimately, he contributed significantly to the Allied war effort. His production plants became an integral part of what some regard as the third most important element that led to victory for the Allies in World War II.  Following the development of the atomic bomb and the advancements in radar, Crosley’s manufacture of proximity fuses (or fuzes) was of utmost importance. While his Reds played baseball, his manufacturing efforts focused on “top secret, top priority”32 production and development of these fuses.33   

Crosley, commissioned as a lieutenant commander in the US Naval Reserve,34 also contributed with the manufacture of military radio sets and B-29 gun turrets.  Additionally, his enormously powerful radio transmitter became a basis for the international morale boosting Voice of America radio transmissions.35 He further served the war effort by opening his mansion, Seagate in Sarasota, Florida, to officers from the nearby Army air base.           

From 1943 to 1946, the war effort became the nation’s priority.  Major League Baseball, using patriotism as its guide, made concessions that included shorter seasons, travel restrictions, playing for nonpaying audiences – chiefly military.  In 1943, Commissioner Landis and Joseph B. Eastman of the United States Office of Defense Transportation agreed to new travel guidelines and relocation of spring-training sites – thereby creating the Landis-Eastman Line.36 Teams could not travel south of the Potomac and Ohio Rivers, or west of the Mississippi River (the Cardinals and Browns of St. Louis, on the Mississippi, were required to conduct spring training close to home). The military demanded uninterrupted railroad transportation for troops and supplies. Teams accepted this ruling, but some players referred to new spring-training venues as the “Long Underwear League.”37 Teams would not return to warmer climes for spring training until 1946.

The Reds became part of the informal Limestone League, with spring training in Bloomington, Indiana.  Other teams in the league, all of whom trained in Indiana, were the Chicago Cubs  (French Lick), Chicago White Sox (French Lick and Terre Haute), Cleveland Indians (Lafayette), Detroit Tigers (Evansville), and Pittsburgh Pirates (Muncie).38 The Reds stayed at the Graham Hotel in downtown Bloomington and walked to their training facilities at Indiana University.  When weather cooperated, they played games at the university’s Jordan Field. If inclement weather struck – rain or even snow – the Reds trained at the university’s Wildermuth Gymnasium.39

In 1943 the Reds finished in second place behind the St. Louis Cardinals.  The following season McKechnie’s club finished third, and in 1945, the Reds finished seventh. In 1946, his final year as manager, the Reds finished sixth.  McKechnie left the Reds as the team’s winningest skipper, accumulating a record of 744 wins and 631 losses40 in nine seasons.  He had two pennant-winning seasons and one World Series championship.  

During these war years, while baseball provided a much needed distraction, spectators noted a decline in talent on the ballfield. General manager Giles found it necessary, as did his counterparts, to sign players he would not normally consider; he would acquire players as he could – through trades, outright purchase, by chance, or even by permission of a high-school principal. McKechnie, it is told, added one player to his roster after a chance meeting in a Bloomington hotel.  McKechnie “found”41 Melvin Bosser in the hotel lobby; Bosser told McKechnie that he was a pitcher, and McKechnie needed arms.  It happened that “Bosser had so little on the ball that opposing batters found him hard to hit because of the novelty of his delivery.”42

Another memorable signing was that of 15-year-old Joe Nuxhall.  Having received permission from his Hamilton, Ohio, high-school principal to pitch, young Nuxhall entered a game against the Cardinals on June 10, 1944.  The Reds were already losing 13-0 when Nuxhall stepped on the mound.  He pitched two-thirds of an inning and gave up five runs on two hits and five walks.  The Reds finally lost 18-0. Joe Nuxhall had achieved his place in baseball history, but his career was not over: at the age of 24 he rejoined the Reds and had a 16-year major-league career, followed by a 40-year career as a Reds radio broadcaster.

A 1942 acquisition, Bert Haas, played third base, first base, and center field before entering the Army. Ray Mueller, who replaced catcher Ray Lammano, became a durable backstop – he caught the final 62 games of the 1943 season, and caught all of the 155 games of the 1944 season.  One player whom any general manager would likely have not considered in normal times was Jesus “Chucho” Ramos.  Ramos debuted on May 7, 1944, played in four games and was then sent to the Reds’ Double-A team in Syracuse.  He played in Syracuse for two seasons. Others who joined the team at this time included outfielders Eric Tipton and Frankie Kelleher from the Yankees; pitchers Frank Dasso, a “castoff of the Red Sox,” and Ed Heusser, a “much traveled veteran;”  pitcher/infielder/outfielder Al Libke from the Pacific Coast League; and outfielder Dick Sipek, a “deaf-mute from the farm chain.”43

Few of the players who debuted with the Reds between 1942 and 1945 played more than one season – in fact some played only one game.  Ray Medeiros, signed at the age of 18 in 1945, played his first and last major-league game with the Reds on April 25, 1945; he entered the game as a pinch-runner and did not have an at-bat.  Buck “Leaky” Fausett was signed at the age of 36 on April 18, 1944, and was released on June 10, having played only 13 games as a pitcher and third baseman. Reds infielder Jodie Beeler debuted on September 21, 1944, only to be released on October 1. He appeared in three games as a pinch-hitter. A Cuban-born player, pitcher Tommy de la Cruz, began his career with the Reds on April 20, 1944 at the age of 32.  After 36 games, his career ended, with an ERA of 3.25 and a .500 winning percentage, on September 26, 1944.

Players besides Nuxhall who debuted at this time and who had successful major-league careers either with the Reds or other teams included Howie Fox, nine years; Jim Konstanty, 11 years; Kent Peterson, eight years; and infielder Kermit Wahl, five years.

All teams claimed financial losses during the war years, but they played on.  In Cincinnati, the average attendance at games from 1940 to 1947 was just under 5,000.  The most significant reduction happened between 1942 and1945, and it bottomed out at an average of 3,767 per game in 1945.44 The turnaround for the major leagues would not be immediate after the war ended. Most teams did not see higher attendance until 1947. The Reds, however, enjoyed a relatively quick recovery, seeing nearly 10,000 fans per game in 1946 and almost 12,000 in 1947.45      

During the war Crosley Field became home for Negro League teams,46 including the Cincinnati Clowns (1942-1943) and the Cincinnati-Indianapolis Clowns (1944-1945).47 These teams provided baseball and a picnic-like atmosphere48 for people seeking relief from the war.

Fifteen Reds players,49 as well as traveling secretary, Gabe Paul,50 enlisted in or were drafted into the US military during the war. Some saw combat action. Several, including Joe Beggs and Johnny Vander Meer, returned to the major leagues after the war either with the Reds or other organizations; Hank Gowdy, who had played with the Giants and the Braves, came to the Reds as a coach. Gabe Paul returned to major-league baseball and would become the general manager of the Reds in 1951. 

JAY HURD, a resident of Medford, Massachusetts, is a long time Boston Red Sox fan and has been a member of SABR since 1998. In 2008, he retired from Harvard University where he worked as the Preservation Review Librarian for Widener Library. He is currently an educator at the Concord Museum, Concord, Massachusetts.

Notes

1 “Lesson 3: U.S. Neutrality and the War in Europe, 1939-1940,” EDSITEment, National Endowment for the Humanities, last accessed August 19, 2014, edsitement.neh.gov/lesson-plan/us-neutrality-and-war-europe-1939-1940.

2 Lee Allen, The Cincinnati Reds (New York: G.P Putnam’s Sons, 1948), 290.

3 Gerald Bazer and Steven Culbertson, “When FDR Said ‘Play Ball’: President Called Baseball a Wartime Morale Booster,” Prologue Magazine, Spring 2002, last accessed August 19, 2014, archives.gov/publications/prologue/2002/spring/greenlight.html, August 19, 2014.

4 Jonathan Fraser Light, The Cultural Encyclopedia of Baseball (Jefferson, North Carolina: Mcfarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 1997), 800.

5 Bazer and Culbertson.

6 “Biography 31: Herbert Hoover,” WGBH American Experience, last accessed August 19, 2014, pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/biography/presidents-hoover/.

7 Robert W. Creamer, “Thirties Baseball,” Baseball: A Film by Ken Burns, last accessed August 19, 2014, pbs.org/kenburns/baseball/shadowball/creamer.html.

8 Year in Review: 1922 National League, Baseball Almanac, last accessed September 16, 2014,  baseball-almanac.com/yearly/yr1922n.shtml.

9 Ibid.

10 James L. Kilgallen, “Sid Weil Denies He Plans to Sell Reds,” last accessed August 19, 2014, news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2293&dat=19320320&id=69ImAAAAIBAJ&sjid=hgIGAAAAIBAJ&pg=4178,6230285.

11“Cincinnati Reds Attendance Records,” Baseball Almanac, last accessed August 19, 2014, baseball-almanac.com/teams/redsatte.shtml.

12 Allen, Cincinnati Reds, 225.

13 “Powel Crosley, Jr., Cincinnati.com RetroC, last accessed August 19, 2014, http://retro.cincinnati.com/Topics/Powel-Crosley-Jr

14 Baseball Almanac, last accessed August 7, 2014, baseball-almanac.com/stadium/st_crosl.shtml

15 “Reds Radio History,” Baseball Fever, last accessed August 19, 2014, baseballfever.com/showthread.php?14494-Reds-Radio-History.

16 Reds.com: History, Reds All-Time Broadcasters, cincinnati.reds.mlb.com/cin/history/broadcasters.jsp.

17 “Crosley Broadcasting Corporation,” Ohio History Central, last accessed August 19, 2014,,ohiohistorycentral.org/w/Crosley_Broadcasting_Corporation.

18 Light, 159.

19Allen, 211.

20 “Cincinnati Reds Team History and Encyclopedia,” BaseballReference.Com, last accessed August 19, 2014, baseball-reference.com/teams/CIN/.  

21 “Hall of Famers, National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, last accessed August 19, 2014, baseballhall.org/hof/mckechnie-bill.

22 Allen, 261.

23 Allen, 269.

24 Allen 277.   

25 Brian Mulligan, The 1940 Cincinnati Reds: A World Championship and Baseball’s Only In-season Suicide (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2005), 187.

26 Allen,  279.

27 Gary Livicari, “Jimmie Wilson,” Society for American Baseball Research Biography Project, last accessed, August 5, 2014, sabr.org/bioproj/person/e9fa0e9d.

28“1941 Cincinnati Reds,” Baseball reference.Com, last accessed August 19, 2014, baseball-reference.com/teams/CIN/1941.shtml.

29 Allen, 290.

30 Allen, 291.

31David D. Jackson, “ Crosley Auto in World War Two/WWII,” in The U.S./American Automobile Industry in World War two/WWII: An American Auto Industry Tribute, last accessed August 19, 2014, usautoindustryworldwartwo.com/crosley.htm.

32 Ed Jennings, “Crosley’s Secret War Effort,” Crosley Auto Club, last accessed August 19, 2014, crosleyautoclub.com/Proximity_Fuze.html.

33 The fuzes, in theory, and by 1943 in fact, “contained a miniature radio transmitter-receiver which would send out a signal.  When the signal reflected back from the target reached a certain frequency, caused by the proximity of the target, a circuit in the fuze closed, firing a small charge in the base of the fuze that detonate[s] the projectile.” The US Navy accepted its first batch of fuzes in September 1942.  On January 5, 1943, shells with the proximity fuzes, fired from the USS Helena near Guadalcanal, brought down Japanese dive bombers.  Due to the effectiveness of the fuze when used against enemy aircraft, fuzes were at first used only by the Navy.  However, by 1945, the proximity fuzes were utilized by Great Britain. According to British Prime Minister Winston Churchill: “These so-called proximity fuzes [sic], made in the United States … proved potent against the small unarmed aircraft (V-1) with which we were assailed in 1944.” In the Battle of the Bulge (December 1944-January 1945) the fuzes proved invaluable in exploding shells and thereby scattering shrapnel on enemy ground forces. General George S. Patton said, “The funny fuze won the Battle of the Bulge for us.” Ed Jennings, “Crosley’s Secret War Effort,” Crosley Auto Club, last accessed September 16, 2014, crosleyautoclub.com/Proximity_Fuze.html.

35 “Voice of America,” Ohio History Central, last accessed August 19, 2014, ohiohistorycentral.org/w/Voice_of_America?rec=1673.

36 Bucky O’Connor, “’Landis- Eastman’ Line to Hold on Training Camps,” Ellensburg (Washington) Daily Record, October 21, 1943, last accessed August 19, 2014, news.google.com/newspapers?nid=860&dat=19431021&id=QEoKAAAAIBAJ&sjid=1EoDAAAAIBAJ&pg=6528,1852782.

37Frank Jackson, “ Back Home Again in Indiana,” The Hardball Times, last accessed August 19, 2014, hardballtimes.com/back-home-again-in-indiana/.

38 “The Limestone League: Spring Training in Indiana During WWII,” Indiana Historical Society – Manuscripts & Archives, last accessed August 7, 2014, indianahistory.org/our-collections/collection-guides/the-limestone-league-spring-training-in-indiana.pdf.

39 Joe Hren, “Why MLB Teams Held Spring Training in Indiana in 1943,” Indiana Public Media, last accessed August 12, 2014, indianapublicmedia.org/news/history-headlines-1943-spring-training-indiana-63655/.

40 William Boyd McKechnie, Baseball Reference, last accessed September 16, 2014, baseball-reference.com/managers/mckecbi01.shtml

41 Allen, 296.

42 Ibid.

43 Ibid.

44 “Cincinnati Reds Attendance,” Baseball Almanac, last accessed August 19, 2014, baseball-almanac.com/teams/redsatte.shtml.

45 Ibid.

46 Greg Rhodes and John Erardi, Crosley Field: The Illustrated History of a Classic Ballpark (Cincinnati: Clerisy Press, 2000), 88.

47 “Negro League Ball Parks,” Center for Negro League Baseball Research, last accessed August 20, 2014, cnlbr.org/Portals/0/RL/Ball%20Parks.pdf.

48 Rhodes and Erardi, 89.

49 Gary Bedingfield, “Those Who Served,” Baseball in Wartime, last accessed August 19, 2014. baseballinwartime.com/those_who_served/those_who_served_nl.htm.

50 Allen, 294.

The New York Giants’ four-year wartime run effectively began on December 3, 1941 – a mere four days before the attack on Pearl Harbor – when the iconic Mel Ott was named to succeed Bill Terry as manager.  And his game-time office would continue to be right field.

A week later, the Giants pulled off a remarkable trade with the Cardinals, acquiring Johnny Mize, one of baseball’s top sluggers, for three players and $50,000. Mize and Ott would form a fearsome long-ball duo until the big first baseman was drafted before the 1943 season.

A right-hander from an improbable place called Ninety-Six, South Carolina, might have epitomized the Giants’ dire need for wartime pitching. Bill Voiselle was a lumbering, hard-of-hearing, soft-spoken pitcher who was called up from Jersey City to start the 1944 season, earning the promotion after losing 21 games the previous year in the Triple-A International League. And Ott handed him the ball to pitch Opening Day in New York. 

The rookie Voiselle went on to win 21 games for a team that finished 38 games out of first place and he was named National League Pitcher of the Year by The Sporting News. He would never again enjoy such success.

Ott was dubbed “Master Melvin” when he joined the Giants at age 17 in 1926, and at 32 had long since etched his place on the ballclub’s Mount. Rushmore, joining legends Mathewson, McGraw, McGinnity, Terry, Hubbell, and Travis Jackson. But player-manager Ott’s Giants were a long way from that mountain. Names like Gardella, Weintraub, Zabala, Hausmann, Luby, Schemer, and Rucker graced their lineups.

1942

Ott’s Giants actually improved their standing during the 1942 season, finishing in third place with 85 wins, 11 better than the fifth-place ’41 team. Morrie Arnovich and John Davis were both inducted into the Army before the season; near the end of the year, rookie Willard Marshall enlisted in the Marines and Babe Young joined the Coast Guard. One of their first replacements was outfielder-third baseman Sid Gordon, who appeared briefly that year and became a regular in 1943.

Three Giants had noteworthy seasons. Ott led the league in home runs, walks, and runs, while Big Cat Mize, in his first year with the ballclub, was the NL leader in RBIs and slugging percentage. Relief pitcher Ace Adams, so named at birth, led the league in games pitched for the first of three straight years. (He was runner-up in 1945.) His 61 appearances in 1942 set an NL record.

The All-Star Game was played at the Polo Grounds that first war year and Ott was the only National Leaguer to play all nine innings. Mize started at first base and Marshall pinch-hit.

Two more Giants were lost to the team via deferments for essential occupations. Outfielder Hank Leiber raised chickens in Arizona and pitcher Fiddler Bill McGee was a farmer.

1943

Spring training in 1943 – and for the duration of the war – was restricted to northern locales due to travel limitations. All 16 teams were forced to brave the cold weather. The Giants settled in at Lakewood, New Jersey, at the former Rockefeller estate. Ballfields were laid out on the estate’s spacious golf course and the Giants were joined by their Jersey City farm team, affording both clubs a series of exhibition games.

One week into the season, the Giants traded for catcher Ernie Lombardi, sending Hugh Poland and Connie Ryan to the Boston Braves. From Jersey City the Giants recalled Johnny Rucker, who stuck with the big club in center field until war’s end; and, desperate for outfielders, they claimed veteran Ducky Medwick on waivers from Brooklyn in July. With Mize in the Navy, they tried Joe Orengo and Nap Reyes at first base, neither of whom succeeded.

The season was disastrous for the Giants; they lost 98 games and plummeted to last place for the first time since 1915. They trailed the first-place Cardinals by an astonishing 49½ games, due in no small part to the loss of Mize, catcher Harry Danning, and pitcher Hal Schumacher to the military before the start of the year.

Carl Hubbell, hanging on at age 40, didn’t win his first game until June 5, screwballing the Pittsburgh Pirates with a one-hitter. It was his 250th win; he would win three more games before the end of the year and his Hall-of-Fame career. 

Adams the Ace extended the record he set in ’42 by appearing in 70 games and finished second in the NL in saves. His 11 wins out of the bullpen were more than any starting pitcher on the staff. He, Ott, and Lombardi made the All-Star team. 

The combination of Ott’s advancing age and the stress of managing a futile team seemed to have finally taken its toll. A lifetime .300 hitter, he sank to .234 with 18 homers and only 47 RBIs. First baseman Orengo batted .218 and veteran shortstop Billy Jurges was at .229. But second baseman Mickey Witek finished at .314 and his 195 base hits were second only to the Cardinals’ Stan Musial.

1944

Prior to the start of the new season, the Giants lost another group to the military, including Witek, Gordon, Buster Maynard, Ken Trinkle, Dick Bartell, and Van Lingle Mungo. Still, despite the ignominy of leading the league in 4-F players (16), the club bounced back from the cellar and finished in fifth place.

Rookies Buddy Kerr and George Hausmann, at short and second, became regulars for the next two years and remained so through 1948, old-timer Phil Weintraub took over at first, and third baseman Hal Luby, who had played with the Philadelphia A’s in 1936, was at third. They were also joined by the likes of Leon Treadway, Bruce Sloan, Charlie Mead, and Steve Filipowicz, a former football standout at Fordham University. And New York’s pitching staff included 43-year-old Louis Polli, who played with the St. Louis Browns back in 1932, and another aged veteran, Johnny Allen. The Giants’ trio of catchers, Gus Mancuso, age 38, Ernie Lombardi, 36, and Ray Berres, 36, were all 4-F.

Voiselle, the pitcher who lost 21 minor-league games in ’43, won 21 and led the league in strikeouts and innings pitched. His 313 innings made him the last rookie in major-league history to pitch 300 or more innings.

Ott himself had a comeback year: .288/26/82. He drew 90 walks and appeared in another All-Star Game, along with Medwick and Voiselle. Adams continued his bullpen domination, leading the league in appearances and saves; and Medwick’s .337 average was third highest in the NL. 

On April 30 the Giants were home to the Brooklyn Dodgers for a Sunday doubleheader. The opener was a game for the ages. The Giants pummeled their bitter rivals, 26-8, setting a number of records along the way: They scored the most runs in a game since 1929; Brooklyn walked six consecutive batters in the second inning and 17 Giants throughout the game, tying both records; Phil Weintraub, out of the majors since 1938, knocked in 11 runs, combining with Lombardi’s 7 for a record 18 RBIs by two teammates in a game; Ott scored six runs, Weintraub and Medwick each had five; Dodgers pitcher Tommy Warren pitched the last five innings and yielded 15 runs. The starting pitchers that day were first cousins: Cliff Melton of the Giants and Brooklyn’s Rube Melton. (Six weeks later in another rout of the Dodgers, Ott and Weintraub each scored five of the team’s 15 runs.)

On July 22 the Cubs came in for a four-game series. Chicago’s Bill “Swish” Nicholson had led the league in home runs and RBIs the year before and would repeat in ’44.

Nicholson homered on Saturday and hit four more during Sunday’s doubleheader. Late in the second game Nicholson came to bat with the bases loaded.  Defying every word in baseball scripture known as The Book, Ott would have no more of Mr. Nicholson and ordered an intentional walk, conceding a run. (The Giants held on to win and earn a split of the doubleheader.)

1945

The Giants began the year a promising 21-5, with Ott and Weintraub each hitting seven home runs, and Lombardi, six. They predictably leveled off and repeated their fifth-place finish, four games over .500, with a lineup that included the same infield as the year before: Weintraub, Hausmann, Buddy Kerr, and Napoleon Reyes. Rookies Mike Schemer and Roy Zimmerman were added to the roster.

Size-wise the team ranged from the 5-foot-5 Hausmann to 6-foot-9 pitcher Johnny Gee, among the shortest and tallest of all big leaguers in history.  With Medwick gone, the Giants brought up Danny Gardella to play left field next to Rucker and Ott. Midway through the season they promoted 28-year-old pitcher Sal Maglie, not yet “The Barber,” and outfielder Whitey Lockman, age 18, who batted .34l in 32 games, and would go on to be a mainstay of the ballclub for many years to come, but who was drafted in the fall of ’45.

On August 1 Ott became the first National Leaguer to hit 500 home runs, joining only Babe Ruth and Jimmie Foxx of the American League. It came off Johnny Hutchings of the Braves in the third inning at the Polo Grounds.

Gardella was a circus act, a flake. He did well at the plate, batting .272 and banging out 18 home runs. But every fly ball hit his way was an adventure. And dealing with his off-field antics was a challenge.

On a road trip soon after his brother Al was called up for a quick cup of coffee, the Gardella boys roomed together. One night Al came out of the shower and couldn’t find Danny. He called his name, looked in the closets and under the bed.

Alarmed and about to call the front desk, Al heard his brother’s voice from outside the building. He looked out the window and there was left fielder Danny hanging by his fingers from the hotel’s windowsill, many stories above the street. The Giants didn’t think it was funny.

Voiselle dropped from 21 wins to a 14-14 record; his ERA was 4.49.  Ott finished the year at .308 with 21 homers. Travel restrictions negated the All-Star Game but Ott, Lombardi, and Mungo were selected as honorary members by the Associated Press.

Coda

In 1946, the first postwar season, Ott and Lombardi each hit home runs in their first at-bats, in the first inning, in the first game of the year. Still, the Giants finished in last place, losing 93 games. Down the road, Ott, Hubbell, Mize, and Lombardi, all wartime Giants, would join hands again in the Hall of Fame.

BOB MAYER, a SABR member since 1983, has published articles in USA Today Baseball Weekly and Baseball Digest, as well as The National Pastime and the Baseball Research Journal. He currently writes about thoroughbred horse racing for American Turf Magazine. He is a retired educator and former college baseball player whose collectibles were displayed at a recent exhibition at the Museum of The City of New York (“The Golden Days: New York Baseball 1947-1957”). He was a contributor to Paul Dickson’s Baseball’s Greatest Quotations. Bob is a Greensward Guide in New York City’s Central Park. He and his wife Pat live in Westwood, NJ, and enjoy their six grandchildren.

Sources

The Baseball Encyclopedia, Ninth Edition (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1993).

Graham, Frank, The New York Giants (Carbondale, Illinois: Southern Illinois University Press, 1952).

Mayer, Bob, “Bill Voiselle and the $500 Pitch,” The Baseball Research Journal, No. 26 (Cleveland: Society for American Baseball Research, 1997).

Mayer, Bob, “Swish Nicholson,” The National Pastime, No. 15 (Cleveland: Society for American Baseball Research, 1995).

Mead, William B., Baseball Goes To War (Washington, D.C.: Farragut Publishing Company, 1985).

Nemec, David, et al.; The Baseball Chronicle (Lincolnwood, Illinois:  Publications Int’l. Ltd., 2002).

Turner, Frederick, When The Boys Came Back (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1996).

Vincent, David, Lyle Spatz, and David W. Smith, The Midsummer Classic (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001).

The Philadelphia Phillies’ travail during World War II is mind-boggling: Within four seasons their owners, managers, players, and fans came and went.  From 1942 to 1945 the Phillies had three owners, four managers, and 124 new players. New players averaged nearly 31 per year! Attendance doubled in 1943, dropped 100,000 in 1944, and dropped another 85,000 in 1945.

Adjectives befitting their journey from 1942 to 1944 range from terrible to hopeful to still hopeful.  The last wartime season, however, lurched back to terrible as the Phillies of 1945 almost matched their all-time record for losses, set in the prewar season of 1941.

Of course, the Phillies performed terribly even before the World War II seasons.  They had suffered through 23 of 24 seasons playing under .500 ball, and were in the midst of five consecutive last-place finishes when the fighting commenced.  Amazingly, it was during the gloomy war years that the Phillies’ future brightened.  New owners and new money infused the team with hope – but with a few bumps along the way.

After the 1942 season (42-109), the talented, thrifty, but resourceless majority owner, Gerry Nugent, surrendered.  He allowed the National League to take over his debt-ridden Phillies.  The new owner, resourceful (from lumber wealth) but gambling-prone William Cox, well, he just did not measure up to being the savior of the franchise.  He improved the team, adding 22 more wins (and 19 fewer losses) in 1943 than the ’42 group.  The franchise’s performance showed promise.  But Cox was out after one year — one that featured a faux soap opera involving egos, gambling, and public-relations bungles too intricate to detail in this essay. 

Had Cox not been such a ninny when it came to personality, the Phils could have acted on that promise and his tenure with the franchise could have been more positive.  But his interference with the manager, his public-relations bungles, and, far worse, his betting on his own team forced Commissioner Kenesaw Landis to remove him from ownership.

The next new owner brought renewed hope to the despairing franchise and populace. And it helped that he brought money – a fortune, really – to the Phils.  Multimillionaire Bob Carpenter, Sr. did something only the rich can do.  He bought the team in 1944 to give to his sports-minded son, Bob Jr., even though Jr. was soon drafted.  Fortunately, Jr. had the foresight to hire the baseball-savvy Herb Pennock as the team’s general manager before he left for the Army. 

Pennock used the Carpenter money and improved some initiatives inherited from Cox, namely a better scouting and farm system. But the war impinged on his efforts as the better ballplayers were either in the armed forces or facing the draft. With few exceptions, the country’s baseball talent was subject to the Selective Service draft and both veterans and budding minor leaguers served in the armed forces. Every team suffered from the depletion of talent.

Logically, this situation could actually have benefited the Phillies because of the leveling of talent.  But the Phils were never rich in upcoming talent and their rosters were overladen with lackluster performers during the war years.  This was true in the Nugent season, that of Cox’s season, and in the two Carpenter World War II years.  The team escaped last place only once during the war years, finishing seventh in 1943.

The Phillies occupied last place after the first war year of 1942 as the team almost matched the losses of the previous season, losing two fewer than 1941’s 111.  They were wretched in a lot of measurable categories, at or near the bottom of offense and pitching stats in the National League.  The stars were few: first baseman Nick Etten, versatile Danny Murtaugh, left fielder Danny Litwhiler and pitcher Tommy Hughes. A newcomer, right-fielder Ron Northey, hit well for a rookie and showed some promise.

Of course, the biggest news for the franchise in the offseason was the National League forcing the sale of the Phillies to William Cox.

The 1943 season suggested a brighter future as Cox’s commitment to Philadelphia baseball, along with his spending money to make improvements, made the Phils a better franchise.  He cleaned house and brought in new players.  The team fielded better talent (Northey, Coaker Triplett, Buster Adams, Schoolboy Rowe, Babe Dahlgren, Jimmy Wasdell), lost some to the draft (Tommy Hughes), and gave up Etten in a trade.  They improved in wins and moved up in the National League’s measurable statistics in runs, hits, batting average, and ERA.  Their runs scored increased by more than a run a game (1.08). Rowe led an improved pitching staff with 14 wins – and led the NL in pinch hits with 15.  The team ERA improved by a third of a run a game, led by Dick Barrett’s 2.39.  Northey and Triplett’s total of 30 home runs enabled the team to rank third in the National League.

Although their record topped out at 64-90, the win total was the highest since the 1935 season and lifted the Phillies out of the cellar.  The 22-win improvement lent optimism over the franchise’s fortunes. It also didn’t hurt that attendance doubled to 466,975 – the first time in 22 years they outdrew their ballfan-favorite American League rival Philadelphia Athletics.  It seemed Philadelphians agreed to the new ownership – too bad Cox was not around to savor the success he wrought.

It is remarkable that this improvement occurred during a year when an in-season change of managers opened a rift between the team and the front office. It seemed that Cox could not resist playing with his new toy and visited the clubhouse too often for manager Bucky Harris’s liking. Harris objected and Cox fired him. The team sided with Harris and threatened to strike. But the players listened to Harris’s plea to play and their subsequent performance did not suffer.  They played almost as well for the new manager, Freddy Fitzsimmons (.424 for Harris to .403 for Fitzsimmons).  Fallout from recriminations between the fired Harris and Cox resulted in the discovery that Cox bet on his team – a no-no with Commissioner Landis, who banned Cox from baseball for life. 

Of course, the biggest news for the franchise in the offseason was the National League forcing the sale of the Phillies to Bob Carpenter, Sr.

The 1944 Phillies could not improve on Cox’s franchise achievements but they did not backslide either. In the first season of the long Carpenter era (1944-1981), they finished at 61- 92.  But Herb Pennock’s first team did not improve at the gate; attendance declined by almost 100,000.  It seemed they treaded water, instead hoping to improve in 1945.   Their team stats for the year proved similar to 1943’s. Northey and Adams led the better performances for the Blue Jays* – the two hit 39 of the team’s 55 home runs.  Ken Raffensberger led the starters in wins, ERA, and WHIP (walks and hits per inning pitched).  First baseman Tony Lupien chipped in with a .283 batting average.  

However, the 1945 Phillies (46-108) definitely backslid.  They performed like the 1942 squad as their stats and win total plummeted to league-low levels. The team again finished last in the National League and at the bottom of many measurable offensive and pitching statistics. The best of the Phils appeared to be the “Wrong Brother,” Vince DiMaggio. Though he didn’t hit for average (.257), he slugged the ball well (19 HRs, 84 RBIs).  First baseman/right fielder Wasdell joined the small list of good performers as did pitchers Andy Karl (lowest ERA and WHIP) and Dick Mauney, who pitched well after his June callup. 

The war ended with the Phillies in the familiar last-place slot of the National League.  But in 1946 Philadelphians thought more of the Phillies’ future than the American League A’s, as attendance more than tripled to over a million visitors to Phillies games at Shibe Park. The A’s saw only a modest increase that did not reflect the surge in fan attendance throughout major-league baseball. 

After the World War II travails, Philadelphians saw promise in the Phillies. 

Who’da thunk it.

* For two seasons the Phillies tried to convince Philadelphians that Blue Jays was a better moniker than Phillies. Fans disagreed and the team dropped the folly after 1945.

SEAMUS KEARNEY is the Co-Chair of the Connie Mack Chapter in Philadelphia. He is the veteran of many SABR conventions and coordinated the Boston and Philadelphia conventions, 2002 & 2013, respectively. A native of Philadelphia, he hitch-hiked to Boston, stayed nearly four decades, founded the Boston Chapter of SABR, served on the Boston Red Sox Hall of Fame Selection Committee, researched Vermont baseball—and returned home to Philly in 2007. He co-authored The Philadelphia Phillies (Arcadia, 2011) with Dick Rosen. He lives with his wife, Joan, near his old Philly neighborhood and is currently researching Philadelphia baseball, cultural, and industrial history—among other things.

Sources

Books:

Jordan, David M., Occasional Glory (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland and Company, 2002).

Lewis, Allen, and Larry Shenk, This Date in Philadelphia Phillies History (New York: Stein and Day, 1979).

Lieb, Frederick G., and Stan Baumgartner, The Philadelphia Phillies (New York: G.P. Putnam, Sons, 1953).

Newspapers:

Philadelphia Bulletin

Philadelphia Inquirer

Philadelphia Public Ledger

Philadelphia Record

Websites:

Baseballalmanac.com

Baseball-reference.com