10

Baseball Goes to War (1941 to 1945)

the japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, drew America into World War II. In addition to a military comprising nearly sixteen million men, the government required a civilian labor force of about sixty million workers to manufacture the weapons, uniforms, and supplies needed by the troops. Many of the seven million workers who were unemployed in 1940 helped meet this need, as did retirees, African Americans from the rural South, and women. Six million women took jobs in defense plants, performing every kind of task, including tending to blast furnaces, running lathes, operating cranes, welding ship hulls, loading shells, and riveting airplane parts. In order to pay for World War II, the government borrowed money by issuing war bonds. To help sell the bonds, it recruited more than three hundred movie stars to appear at rallies staged at various venues, including ball fields, in more than three hundred cities across the United States. In addition, to overcome shortages due to military requirements, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt imposed rationing. Citizens also held scrap drives, collecting metal, rubber, and paper for reuse during the war. While Americans were fighting oppression abroad, racial unrest increased at home. The government rounded up 110,000 men, women, and children of Japanese descent, 40 percent of whom were American citizens, and shipped them to internment camps in the Rocky Mountain states. In May 1943, during the Zoot Suit Riots, named after a fashion popular with Latino men in California, sailors and marines on leave in Los Angeles attacked young Mexican American men. And throughout the war, the United States still denied equal rights to thirteen million African Americans at home. In January 1941, African American labor leader A. Philip Randolph, demanding the integration of the US military and an end to racial discrimination in the defense industry, threatened to lead black workers on a march on Washington. President Roosevelt established the Fair Employment Practices Committee (FEPC), and in exchange, Randolph canceled the march. Racial tensions persisted, however. In June 1943, violence between whites and African Americans in Detroit erupted into a riot that left thirty-four people dead. Despite the unrest, the military remained segregated—as did baseball.

On the morning of September 28, 1941, before the start of a season-ending doubleheader against the Athletics, a nervous Ted Williams sat in the visitors’ dugout at Shibe Park in Philadelphia biting his fingernails. Although the games had no bearing on the American League standings—the Yankees had clinched the pennant on September 4, more than three weeks earlier—for the Red Sox left fielder there was a lot riding on the final two games. Williams had woken up that morning batting .39955. No major leaguer had hit .400 since Bill Terry of the Giants did it in 1930. According to some reports, Red Sox manager Joe Cronin offered to let Williams sit out the last two games. As batting averages are rounded to three digits, if he did not play Williams would have ended the season with an average of .400. But Williams wanted to have more than his “toenails on the line.” Williams played both games and collected six hits in eight at-bats that afternoon, finishing with a .406 batting average. As of 2016, no one has hit over .400 since.

After a decade of half-empty ballparks, the Depression had finally ended, and baseball had come back more popular than ever. In 1941 almost 9.7 million fans had attended a major league game, one hundred thousand more than had attended a ball game in 1929, the season before the Great Depression started. And in 1941, baseball gave fans plenty of excitement, and not just because of Williams’s hitting performance. For more than two months, from May 15 through July 16, Joe DiMaggio of the Yankees managed to get a hit in every game he played. DiMaggio’s feat of hitting safely in fifty-six straight games shattered the old record of forty-four games set in 1897 by Wee Willie Keeler of the National League’s Baltimore Orioles. Indians pitchers Al Smith and Jim Bagly held DiMaggio hitless on July 17 in Cleveland, ending the streak. The next day DiMaggio began a new streak, collecting hits in each of his next sixteen games. DiMaggio took the streak in stride, however; as a member of the minor league San Francisco Seals in 1933, he had hit safely in sixty-one straight games. When the season ended, sportswriters had the difficult task of deciding whether Williams or DiMaggio should receive the American League’s Most Valuable Player Award. Although hitting .400 is rare, no major leaguer before (or since) had hit safely in fifty-six consecutive games, so the sportswriters gave the award to the Yankee Clipper.

Joe DiMaggio of the Yankees (left), who hit safely in 56 straight games, and Ted Williams of the Boston Red Sox, who finished the season with a .406 batting average, helped make the 1941 baseball season memorable. National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. Cooperstown, N.Y.

With the enthusiasm generated by Williams and DiMaggio, baseball’s future seemed bright. But the United States’ entry into World War II in December would create new challenges for the sport. As America entered the war, Major League Baseball faced three monumental questions: Was it appropriate for Major League Baseball to operate during the war? How could Major League Baseball promote patriotism and assist in the war effort? And if baseball did continue during the war, with so many players drafted into the military, where would the major leagues find players to fill the rosters?

Five weeks after Pearl Harbor, remembering the confusion surrounding the “work or fight” order of World War I, Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis sent a letter to President Roosevelt asking if baseball should play the upcoming season. Roosevelt’s immediate response to Landis is known as the Green Light Letter. The president, responding with his personal opinion rather than an official edict, replied that he believed baseball was important to American society. Roosevelt wrote, “I honestly feel that it would be best for the country to keep baseball going.” He pointed out that because of the war, Americans would be working longer hours and would need a form of recreation to take their minds off work. Because ball games lasted two to two-and-a-half hours, which meant Americans would still have plenty of time to tend to their defense jobs, and because it was not expensive to attend a ball game, Roosevelt believed baseball was an ideal form of recreation for Americans during the war. He also expressed his hope for more night games, which would allow more workers to attend. Roosevelt stated that baseball players of military age could not be excused from military service, but he encouraged the use of older players, “even if the actual quality of the teams is lowered.” Roosevelt, obviously including the minor leagues and Negro leagues in his calculation, acknowledged that professional baseball included about “600 teams with 5,000 or 6,000 players,” which he said were a “definite recreational asset” to twenty million Americans.

Major league teams promoted patriotism during the war. Teams added a patriotic patch to the sleeves of their uniforms, and clubs admitted soldiers and sailors in uniform to games free of charge. Baseball teams also found ways to help with the war effort. They often donated used bats, balls, and uniforms to the military so that baseball could be a form of off-duty recreation for soldiers and sailors. As noted in chapter 9, Cubs owner Philip K. Wrigley even donated the lights he had planned to install at Wrigley Field to the war effort. Clubs encouraged fans to buy war bonds and found other imaginative ways to raise money for the war. In 1942, two days after defeating the National League in the All-Star Game, the American League all-stars played a benefit game against a team of major leaguers in the military. The game, held in Cleveland’s Municipal Stadium, drew sixty-two thousand fans. The most unusual benefit game was held at the Polo Grounds in New York City on June 26, 1944. In the only tricornered game in major league history, the Yankees, Giants, and Dodgers all faced each other in the game. Each team played six innings, three against each opponent. The Dodgers won the game with five runs; the Yankees only scored one run and the Giants were shut out. More than fifty thousand fans attended the game, which raised $5 million for the war effort. The Negro league teams helped out, too. Effa Manley arranged for the Newark Eagles’ team bus to take jazz musicians from Harlem to Fort Dix, New Jersey, to entertain the troops.

As baseball had come to represent America, it was often used in propaganda. The 1942 combat movie Guadalcanal Diary captured the impact of baseball in a scene where, after being cut down by Japanese machine gunfire, Corp. Taxi Potts, a Brooklyn cab driver fighting with the marines in the South Pacific, died happy because he had just heard on the shortwave radio that the Dodgers scored four runs in the ninth inning.

Baseball even had a role in combat. It not only offered soldiers a connection to home, but also provided American troops a means to confirm the nationality of strangers dressed in US uniforms. When encountering an unfamiliar soldier, American troops would often ask him who won the most recent World Series. There were only two possible correct responses—the Yankees in 1941 and 1943 and the Cardinals in 1942 and 1944—and German spies dressed in American uniforms did not know the answer, but presumably all true Americans did. Baseball could also cut the other way: In the jungles of the Pacific, Japanese soldiers taunted US Marines with chants of “To Hell with Babe Ruth,” who was familiar to many Japanese baseball fans because he visited that country with a team of all-stars in 1934.

Anticipating that the United States might be drawn into the war, sixteen months before Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt convinced Congress to pass the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940, the first peacetime draft in American history. Hundreds of major league players were drafted during the war. In March 1941, Pirates pitcher Hugh Mulcahy became the first major leaguer conscripted under the new law. Mulcahy—who, because of his less than stellar won-loss record, had picked up the unfortunate nickname “Losing Pitcher”—applied for a deferment in order to finish the baseball season. The military, apparently believing he was more valuable in the battlefield than on the pitching mound, rejected his application. By August 1941, still more than three months before Pearl Harbor, nearly two hundred players had received a draft notice. By the end of the war, around five hundred big leaguers and more than four thousand minor league and Negro league players served. Two former major league players—Elmer Gedeon, who played five games for the Senators in 1939, and Harry O’Neill, who played a single game for the Athletics that same year—were killed in the conflict, as were 125 minor lea-guers. Red Sox great Ted Williams enlisted in the military in May of 1942, becoming a navy pilot. The navy announced that Williams’s physical exam indicated that he had 20/10 vision, which helps to explain his phenomenal hitting ability. Moe Berg, a catcher who bounced between six major league teams from 1923 to 1939—and was a Princeton graduate who spoke seven languages—became a spy with the Office of Strategic Information. Because he had twice visited Japan with traveling baseball teams, including the 1934 all-star team that featured Babe Ruth, the military intelligence service consulted him before the Doolittle Raid that bombed Tokyo in April of 1942. As a spy, Berg was dispatched to the Caribbean, Latin America, and even the Balkans during the war.

Cleveland Indians pitcher and future Hall of Famer Bob Feller became the first American athlete to voluntarily enlist in the military during the war when, hoping to become a fighter pilot, he joined the US Navy two days after Pearl Harbor. Denied his wings because he failed the hearing test, Feller became a gunner on the USS Alabama. As a crew member of the Alabama, Feller participated in a number of combat operations, including the Battle of Tarawa and the Battle of the Philippine Sea.

Ballplayers in the military continued to play when not on duty. After his combat tour ended in January 1944, Feller pitched for a team representing the Great Lakes Naval Station near Chicago, where Feller was assigned as a navy instructor. In 1945, major leaguers in the navy stationed in Hawaii played a seven-game all-star series that pitted stars from the American League against stars from the National League. Ted Williams of the Red Sox and Stan Musial of the Cardinals were among the airmen and sailors to play in the series.

The war hit all major league teams hard. The Cleveland Indians and Chicago Cubs got off easy, losing only twenty-three and twenty-four players, respectively, to the war, while the Washington Senators and New York Giants both had thirty-one players in the military. The Philadelphia Athletics were perhaps hit the hardest, with forty members of the A’s in the service at some point during the conflict. But players were not the only people Major League Baseball lost to the war. In 1942, Brooklyn Dodgers president and general manager Larry MacPhail enlisted in the army, opening the door for St. Louis Cardinals general manager Branch Rickey to take his place in Brooklyn. With so many players serving in the military, major league competition declined dramatically during the war, so much so that the perennial cellar-dwelling St. Louis Browns won their first and only American League pennant in 1944.

The greatest challenge facing big-league clubs during the conflict was finding players to fill the roster spots vacated by major leaguers serving in the war. With sixteen million men between the ages of eighteen and forty-four serving in the military, ball clubs resorted to employing teenagers too young for the draft, veteran ballplayers too old for the draft, and other men who were not healthy enough to join the military. Joe Nuxhall, a fifteen-year-old kid, became the youngest major leaguer of all time when he pitched for the Reds in 1944. The St. Louis Browns attracted some attention in 1945, when they signed a one-armed outfielder named Pete Gray. Gray, who had enjoyed two successful seasons with the minor league Memphis Chickasaws before advancing to the major leagues, could easily swing a bat with one hand. Playing defense proved to be a little more difficult, but Gray devised a technique where he would catch a baseball with an undersized glove, then stick the glove under the stump of his right arm while transferring the ball to his hand. Gray became proficient enough with his method to be able to catch a fly ball and return it to the infield almost as quickly as a two-armed player. The Browns released Gray at the end of the season—not because of his play in the outfield but because of his difficulty hitting a curveball. Gray may have inspired Senator William Langer of North Dakota in June of 1945 to introduce a bill in Congress that offered hope for wounded veterans by requiring 10 percent of major league players to be amputees.

Discharged ballplayers who returned to the major leagues received a special patch to wear on their baseball uniforms. The patch replicated the Honorable Service Lapel Button worn by former soldiers, sailors, and marines to indicate that they had been honorably discharged. The medal was important for recently discharged servicemen who did not have access to civilian clothes, as it indicated that the person in uniform was not absent without leave. Because of its unattractive design, former servicemen often referred to the medal as the “Ruptured Duck.” For that reason, many World War II veterans declined to wear the patch on their baseball uniforms.

Major League Baseball, like the rest of America, also endured shortages and restrictions. Limits on travel forced the cancellation of spring training in Florida during the war, and major league teams instead prepared for the season in the North. In 1943 and 1944 the Red Sox held spring training at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts, while the Boston Braves held spring training at Choate Preparatory School in Wallingford, Connecticut. During the war, the Brooklyn Dodgers held training camp at Bear Mountain Inn in upstate New York, where the indoor athletic facilities of the nearby United States Military Academy at West Point were available during inclement weather.

Because of the war, Major League Baseball canceled the 1945 All-Star Game, ostensibly to save resources and avoid the need to travel. This excuse was bogus. Germany had already been defeated in May of 1945, and the major leagues had played the All-Star Game in 1942, 1943, and 1944, when the United States was fighting a war in two theaters. The real reason the 1945 All-Star Game was canceled is that there were not enough stars still playing baseball to hold a legitimate all-star contest. In place of the All-Star Game, Major League Baseball organized a series of interleague exhibition games to raise money for the war. In all but two cases, the games featured teams from the same city or the same state, with only the Brooklyn Dodgers–Washington Senators and Pittsburgh Pirates–Detroit Tigers games featuring teams that did not share the same market.

Despite the Green Light Letter, Cubs owner Philip K. Wrigley worried that a lengthy war might still shut down Major League Baseball. Wrigley was especially concerned about his ballpark not being able to generate revenue, so he decided to have a potential tenant ready if the Cubs stopped playing. Wrigley formed a new league called the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL). The AAGPBL was not meant to rival Major League Baseball. The caliber of play would not equal even that of the men who played in the majors during the war, and the league did not place teams in major cities. Instead it was organized to be a ready substitute should the major league teams shut down. If the baseball season were canceled due to a lack of players, a team of women could move their games to Wrigley Field. If Rosie the Riveter could fill in for men in shipyards and airplane plants, Rosie the Right Fielder could fill in on the baseball diamond.

Wrigley wanted to groom the “right kind” of women to play in the AAGPBL. Because he wanted good athletes, he sent scouts across the United States and Canada to find the best female baseball and softball players in North America. But he also wanted the women in his league to appear ladylike. He was afraid that Americans would be put off by women who dressed and acted like men, so he wanted his players to appear feminine and sexy. Even images of the famed Rosie the Riveter showed her with muscles and makeup, conveying the message that she was both tough and feminine. The women of the AAGPBL were not permitted to smoke or drink in public or to wear their hair short, and every player in the league was sent to charm school to be sure they knew how to “act like ladies.” Wrigley ordered that the uniforms in his league feature skirts. He did not want the women in the AAGPBL to wear pants, even though skirts made it difficult to slide.

“Rosie the Right Fielder.” With the threat that World War II might eventually shut down Major League Baseball, Cubs’ owner Philip Wrigley formed the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. Here AAGPBL star Mary “Bonnie” Baker takes a swing, while catcher Irene Hickson of the Racine Belles waits for the ball. National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. Cooperstown, N.Y.

Rather than place AAGPBL teams in major league cities, Wrigley initially put the franchises in small midwestern cities. The league opened in 1943 with four teams—the Kenosha Comets and Racine Belles in Wisconsin, the Rockford Peaches in Illinois, and the South Bend Blue Sox in Indiana. The following year, the league expanded to six clubs, adding teams in Milwaukee and Minneapolis, two large minor league cities. The new teams, however, found it difficult to compete against high-level minor league baseball. In 1945 the Milwaukee Chicks moved to Grand Rapids, Michigan, while the Minneapolis Millerettes moved to Indiana and became the Fort Wayne Daisies. Wrigley gave the task of managing the day-to-day matters of the league to his associate Arthur Meyerhoff, a man best known for introducing America to the nonstick cooking spray PAM.

To manage its teams, the AAGPBL recruited former major lea-guers, including Josh Billings, who managed the Kenosha Comets, and Max Carey, who managed the Milwaukee Chicks. Catcher Mary “Bonnie” Baker of the South Bend Blue Sox was perhaps the biggest star of the AAGPBL, which often used Baker, a former model and three-time all-star, in publicity photos and as a league spokesperson. Dottie Wiltse, a pitcher for the Minneapolis Millerettes and Fort Wayne Daisies, was probably the best pitcher in the league. She struck out 205 batters in her rookie year, compiling a 20-and-16 record with a losing team.

In 1945, with the war winding down and baseball still in operation, Wrigley decided the league was no longer necessary. But the women in the league were unwilling to put down their gloves just because the men were coming back—and neither was Meyerhoff. In 1945 Wrigley sold his interest in the league to Meyerhoff, who continued to run the league for another nine years. Although the league remained popular in the late forties—the combined attendance of ten teams exceeded nine hundred thousand fans in 1948—by the 1950s baseball no longer fit into the role most Americans envisioned for women. The AAGPBL went out of business after the 1954 season. Like the women who lost their jobs in the defense industry when the war ended, the athletes of the AAGPBL returned to their former lives.

But would the war’s end usher in opportunities for baseball, and the nation as a whole, or would it bring a return to the struggles of the Great Depression? That was the key question as Americans—and baseball—readied themselves for the challenges and changes of the postwar world.