Gunner’s Mate Walter Maranville was busy on board USS Pennsylvania at Norfolk, Virginia, as the battleship took on stores in preparation for setting to sea. The ex-Braves shortstop told shipmates November 10 to get ready for big news the next day. “Everyone kept asking me what the big news was going to be. I said, ‘Wait until tomorrow; I will tell you then.’ At six-thirty the next morning we got word that the armistice had been signed.” The ship’s captain soon called Maranville into his cabin, a rare and daunting summons for an enlisted sailor. He demanded to know how the Rabbit had come by such sensitive information.
I said, “I didn’t know anything about the armistice being signed. The reason I said the big day is tomorrow and they would hear great news is that today is my birthday.” With that the skipper laughed so much he almost fell out of his chair. When I reached deck the boys already had heard of my birthday, and did they give it to me! That was one birthday I will never forget.1
Lt. Grantland Rice remembered the day, too. He had spent part of October at the front with his battery, but November 11 found him at Third Corps headquarters, on the French coast near the Belgian border. “Everybody, from buck private to brigadier, immediately got drunk—on anything and everything, from cognac to sterno,” Rice recalled decades later.2
Capt. Christy Mathewson had reached the front just three days earlier, after recovering from his influenza and accidental gassing. He was assigned to the Twenty-Eighth Infantry, the “Iron Division.” Most of these men, like the captain, hailed from Pennsylvania. The Gas and Flame officer was with them in the trenches when the war ended, having never seen combat.
“It was at his request that he was attached to a division from his native State,” the New York Times reported. “Since the armistice was signed, Mathewson’s duties have been to mass the shells loaded with mustard gas which have been left behind by the Huns and inspect the dugouts for gas and bombs. In one sector alone, Matty has informed his friends in recent letters, he and his assistants came across sufficient mustard gas to kill an army.”3
Sgt. Pete Alexander and other Major Leaguers in the 342nd Field Artillery had a much closer view of the armistice than Mathewson, Rice, or Maranville. They had no champagne to share between them on the day the war ended. “I was a gunner the day the armistice was signed,” Alexander said later. “I had charge of the fighting of one of the guns of our battery which was sending over shells toward Germany. In fact I took it all the way through. I did pretty near everything in the battery. . . . None of our men was gassed and none was wounded, though we went through some heavy shelling at times. But I guess it wasn’t heavy compared with what some of the others got.”4
Sgt. Chuck Ward of the Dodgers believed he knew which gunners had fired the last big American shell of the war. “Chuck writes that his battery of the 342nd field artillery did, because he held the watch to prove it,” Sporting News reported. “That battery, according to Ward, shot its last load at 59 minutes and 59 seconds past 10 o’clock, and peace came at 11. He’d like to know how anybody could shoot later than that.”5 A regimental history later stated that the 342nd actually fired its final rounds at precisely ten seconds before the hour, the last of nearly 2,500 shells expended since nightfall.6
Stable Sgt. Clarence Mitchell, likewise of the Brooklyn club, shared a few additional details about the regiment’s hard campaign. “I am sorry I can’t explain my experiences while on the front, as that is forbidden,” he wrote to Charles Ebbets Jr., son of the Dodgers’ owner and secretary of the Flatbush club. “I will say, however, that we were in real hard fighting for 511/2 days, and with no let up at all. . . . Our men did very good execution with the big guns.”7
Sgt. Otis Lambeth, also of the 342nd, believed the Great War had changed all of them. “There’s one thing about this war. It takes all a fellow’s nervousness away,” the Indian pitcher cabled to a Stateside newspaper. “I don’t care how the Red Sox and Tigers try to ride me any more. And I won’t be a bit afraid of getting beaned in the future. Maybe [manager] Lee Fohl and the bunch in Cleveland will be glad to hear this.”8
With the country at peace, everyone suddenly was in a hurry—the magnates to reopen their gates in the spring, the ballplayers to return home and exchange their khakis or blues for home whites and travel grays. “I am proud of my present uniform, but it sure will feel good to get those old togs on again,” Yeoman Herb Pennock of the Red Sox cabled from England. “It will be one big day when we head for home and the Statue of Liberty. Tell the fans my fast one is faster than I ever thought it could be and wish them a Merry Christmas.”9
Many Major League magnates were chipper as well. John Heydler of the National League, Harry Hempstead of the Giants, and Barney Dreyfuss of the Pirates met for lunch in New York on November 21. Despite many uncertainties and unknowns, they were optimistic. “They feel cheerful regarding the outlook for 1919. . . . Dreyfuss said that he didn’t believe any club would have much trouble in getting fifteen players or more of caliber, though the developments of the next month would have to be awaited to give the clubs some definite idea of how matters stand.”10
Ban Johnson, as usual, disagreed. “Major league clubs would be at a great disadvantage in attempting a resumption of baseball next spring,” the American League president said a few days before the armistice. “The players are widely scattered in the Army and Navy service of their country and those immediately available would not appeal to the patrons of the game for reasons too obvious to name.”11 Hugh Fullerton was frankly worried, too, no matter when baseball resumed. “The reconstruction period in baseball,” the sportswriter warned, “promises to be as lively as the reconstruction in Europe, with as many rebellions.”12
The government quickly began discharging servicemen still in the United States, including several ballplayers. Tris Speaker of the Indians and Wally Pipp of the Yankees, both training as naval aviators, became civilians again just two weeks after the armistice. Jack Barry soon left the navy officers’ school at Harvard, but Ernie Shore stayed a while longer and received his ensign’s commission in December. Ten ballplayers at Great Lakes received discharges before Christmas.
Ballplayers in the AEF would take much longer to get home, but the Major Leagues soon had good news. Johnson received a letter from the army chief of staff December 4, saying there was no reason why the game shouldn’t resume a regular schedule in 1919. “The wholesome effect of a clean and honest game like baseball is very marked and its discontinuance would be a great misfortune,” wrote Gen. Peyton C. March.13
“The demobilization of ball players in the army who had not been sent overseas is already under way and it is probable that before the end of the current year most of the players called last summer will be mustered out of the service,” a wire report stated. “Reports have been received in New York of the demobilization at Camp Pike, Ark., which means the return to civil life of two former members of the Yankees and one member of the Robins [Dodgers]. All were young players who had shown great promise.”14
Capt. Ty Cobb, as aggressive in securing army transportation as in batting and stealing bases for the Tigers, somehow managed to return from France before Christmas, long before his fellow Major Leaguers in the Gas and Flame Division. “The chance to shoot gas into these Germans is gone,” Maj. Branch Rickey lamented from France, “and our detachment is as a bunt in a 9 to 0 ball game.” Much like Captain Mathewson, Rickey had been hospitalized with pneumonia after arriving overseas and hadn’t seen any action. “No, I’m not homesick and can stick it out with good spirit and cheer as long as there is any use for me over here,” he wrote, “but the first time they call for volunteers to return home I’ll be the first one over the top to say, ‘That’s me,’ and I am not ashamed to say it because there are two million other Americans over here who feel the same way about it.”15
Lt. Col. Til Huston reached Newport News, Virginia, on the Ryndam, a liner turned transport, just as the tumultuous year was ending. He was back in Manhattan by January 2, besieged by newsmen who wanted to hear about his war in France. Huston said he had no hair-raising tales to tell them. “Although I met several newspaper men over there,” he quipped, “I was not gassed. It isn’t true that the major league baseball players were in disfavor among the soldiers. The soldiers were so busy fighting that they didn’t take time to criticize any one but the Germans. Baseball stands in high favor among the soldiers. Since the armistice was signed they have talked about nothing else but the game. They are all anxious to get back home to see a good ball game. . . . I expect to continue my interest in baseball,” he said, “and let me say right now that my stock in the Yankees is not for sale.”16
The future looked less certain for Color Sgt. Hank Gowdy of the Forty-Second Division and Sgt. Grover Alexander of the field artillery. Their units were assigned to occupation duty in Germany, and no one had any good idea when the athletes might be discharged. It seemed possible they might miss most or all of the 1919 season. It was bad news for the Braves and the Cubs, which were eager for their stars to return. The Major Leagues offered what assurances they could. “After five years of war blight,” John Heydler said when elected president of the National League on December 10, “the big leagues will emerge again and give the nation some of the best baseball in history during the coming season.”17
With the armistice also came a revised attitude toward shipyard ballplayers. Connie Mack, for one, had spoken out for them even before the peace. He particularly defended his Athletics, about whom Mack had received good reports from Philadelphia area yards.
“There is not a Class One ball player at a shipyard or steel plant,” the Philadelphia skipper said. “Those in the essential employments are Classes Three or Four and haven’t been called. They were put in those classes for the reason they belonged there. . . . When these men went into essential employment they were obeying the work or fight order. That’s the reason the pennant races were closed a month early, so ball players could be doing just what they are doing today. Yet, some persons insinuate that a ball player who abandons all the comforts of life to put on overalls at 5 in the morning is unpatriotic.”18
Five days after the armistice, the New York World published a long article by writer-illustrator Robert Edgren about ballplayers working in shipyards along the Pacific Coast. Edgren had written positively about them during the summer and been in the minority. He pointed out now that the federal government, in fact, had encouraged the formation of industrial-league baseball to provide recreation for exhausted workers.
Incidentally nearly all of the minor league players were snapped up by ship yard club managers, who kept the wires and the mails busy carrying telegrams and letters urging ball players to accept jobs. Scores of big league players were brought from all over the country. These men didn’t go into the ship yards to play baseball and be listed as working men by way of camouflage. They went to work like any one else and were freely accepted into the membership of the various unions. They worked six days a week and played baseball on Sundays. If they had any time for practice at all it was only after supper, when, as a rule, they were too tired to play ball. The result, of course, was that big league form suffered. But the enthusiasm over baseball in the ship yards grew steadily. The ship builders’ league is playing better ball than the Coast League did and has more followers.19
Early in 1919 one of Joe Jackson’s old Chicago teammates, Alfred “Fritz” von Kolnitz, staunchly defended the slugger. Now an army major who had been injured during training, the ex-White Sox utility man believed that Jackson was as well qualified to hold a shipyard position as anyone. “During the draft period, I will venture, there were thousands of men walking the streets in civilian clothes with exemption papers in their pockets with far less claims than Joe,” von Kolnitz wrote to sportswriter George S. Robbins shortly before 1919 spring training. “I know that Joe lost practically all of his savings a few years ago in an unlucky investment. He is dependent upon his salary for the support of his family. It has always been a puzzle to me why Joe was picked out of the hundreds of shipyard workers and persecuted. You know and I know the main reason. He was a star in his profession and the small mindedness of some people makes them delight in blaming any one high up when they can criticise.”20
While not as understanding or forgiving as Mack or von Kolnitz, owner Charles Comiskey quietly reversed his banishment of shipbuilding players. “The first thing Kid Gleason, new White Sox manager, did when he got on the job was to pay a visit to the shipyards where Byrd Lynn, Lefty Williams, and Joe Jackson were at work and to arrange for them to return to the Pale Hose next season,” a Memphis sportswriter noted in mid-January. “And this is the trio which President Comiskey said would never put their gunboats in his park again.”21 The three ballplayers all eventually returned to the club for the new season. Even Sporting News managed to view Jackson in a changed light.
But times and sentiments change. Our war madness of six months ago has subsided to a great degree and we have learned—many of us having undergone the experience of enforced military service—to take a new view of the man, even though he be a ball player, who exercised his legal rights to consider first his family dependents. Joe Jackson can therefore, if he desires, return to the White Sox with no stigma attached to him. . . . After all, it was this or that: The government said work or fight; the magnates—at the moment—said play ball. The players obeyed the higher order. There’s nothing more to be said.22
Changing sentiments, his peerless play in the shipyard leagues, and von Kolnitz’s letter all helped to ease Jackson’s return to the White Sox during the spring. Many of his shipyard colleagues rejoined their clubs as well.
Even Fred Toney was ultimately welcomed back into the big leagues during the season after serving time in jail rather than in the army, navy, or an essential occupation. The Giants hurler pleaded guilty January 1 in federal court in Nashville to violating the Mann Act and was sentenced to four months’ imprisonment. Three days later a jury acquitted both Toney and the county official who allegedly had assisted him on the separate charge of conspiracy to evade the Selective Service Act. “The fact that the star pitcher is uneducated and unable to read or write is thought to have been largely responsible for his trouble.”
“I think I have just as good an arm as ever hung on a man’s body, but less brains than any man in the entire league,” Toney said later from his cell in Robertson County, Tennessee. “I attribute all my trouble to my lack of education and the fact that I have been taken advantage of.” The pitcher said he was through with baseball, but soon changed his mind—the Giants still needed his arm.23
When the convicted felon reported to the team a few days into the season, New York sportswriters would respond with wisecracks rather than outrage. Perhaps they also believed that Toney was as limited a person as he claimed to be. “Toney will need little work to get into condition,” Fred Lieb wrote. “The pitcher was not confined very closely while the State of Tennessee was boarding him and was able to warm up every day with other guests. A week or so of practice should put him in condition to take his regular turn in the box.”24 Toney pitched five more seasons in the Major Leagues.
The ballplayers, managers, and writers in the armed forces started for home in ones and twos over the winter. No special program returned them any sooner than other sailors or doughboys. Sportswriters made a point of interviewing them for columns or feature articles, especially when they had returned from overseas.
Chief Yeoman Bob Shawkey popped into the Yankees’ front office January 3. He didn’t regret his reassignment to the battleship Arkansas as punishment for pitching his two Saturday games for New York the previous summer. “I left Philly last July and saw the finish of the war, the last struggles of the U-boats, and then the surrender of the German fleet,” Shawkey said. “The surrender was the greatest sight I ever saw. Imagine getting a ticket for that as punishment for pitching two games for the Yankees.”25
Huston, who had beaten Shawkey into the office by only a day, gave the pitcher a hearty welcome. “I’ll bet you never regretted that you got in,” Huston said. “I can’t see how it is that all the players weren’t in.”26
Capt. Christy Mathewson reached New York in mid-February on the converted liner Rotterdam, too late to manage the Cincinnati Reds again in 1919. Garry Herrmann had hired Pat Moran to fill the post in late January, but Mathewson expressed no bitterness or regret. “My contract with Cincinnati terminated before I left for France last September,” he said. “I am under orders to go to Washington immediately, and as I see no further use of instructing any one how to throw gas, I expect to ask for my discharge and get back to civil life. The only persons I know of in need of gas are the umpires.”27
Matty soon returned to the New York Giants as John McGraw’s assistant and coach for young pitchers. “McGraw will stay at the helm this season and perhaps next,” the New York Times reported, “but he says that he has almost come to the end of his managerial career after nearly twenty years in the major leagues and is anxious that his successor should be the player who perhaps stands higher in the estimation of baseball fans than any other man the game has ever produced.”28 Mathewson’s compromised health deteriorated, however. He never managed again before his early death in 1925.
First Lt. Grantland Rice began his journey home with former press-box colleague Jack Wheeler on the Ryndam, the same ship that had brought back Huston. A flu epidemic broke out aboard the packed ship three days out of St. Nazaire. “It was a heart-rending sight, watching those men and boys dying like flies—knowing they were sinking but struggling that much harder to get home,” Rice wrote decades afterward. “Jack and I spent most of our time making our final papers on the listed dead—a list that grew daily. . . . A thankful, subdued Lieutenant Rice landed with an equally subdued Lieutenant Wheeler at Newport News, Virginia, on a drizzly day in February 1919.”29
Rice rushed home to New York City, only to learn that a lawyer the sportswriter had entrusted to safeguard his securities in 1917 had lost everything in bad investments. The man had taken poison and died. “I blamed myself for the poor fellow’s death; I shouldn’t have put that much temptation in his way.”30
Infielder Joe Harris of the Indians and pitcher John Miljus of Brooklyn, both of the 320th Infantry Regiment, almost didn’t make it home at all. Having survived the fighting, they nearly died together in an April traffic accident when their army truck rolled over near Le Mans. “Harris sustained a fractured skull, two broken legs and three fractured ribs, but his companion was more fortunate, his injuries being confined to several nasty gashes and a bad shaking up,” Stars and Stripes reported. “The two men were on their way to St. Aignan for embarkation to the United States.”31
“I was with both of the boys several times in France and learned they had narrow escapes while in action,” wrote Pittsburgh sportswriter Charles J. Doyle. “Joe was the sergeant in charge of a Stokes gun, and Miljus was his corporal. After the armistice was signed the two Allegheny county boys were sent to an officers’ training school, but they preferred to come home at the earliest opportunity.”32 Both players got home while the season was under way. Harris returned to the Indians’ roster in 1919, while Miljus pitched for AA Toledo before returning to Brooklyn in 1920.
Homecoming stresses like these, combined with the inevitable effects of prolonged combat, prompted many baseball insiders to wonder how well the returning ballplayers would fare back in the Major Leagues. Giants manager John McGraw was profoundly sympathetic, but skeptical about the prospects for such men as Grover Alexander. “I am afraid that Aleck and the other boys who have seen active service on the battle front will find it impossible to play the old game as they did before they went through that experience,” McGraw said. “The life which they have led for the last few months has been sterner than anything they ever knew before, and while they have gained the glory which is the due of all our fighting men they have lost something, I believe, which they can never get back. That which they have lost is the physical condition and the mental poise so necessary to the major league ball player.”33
The Minor Leagues were set to return after the most disastrous season in their history. The circuits bickered, as always, with the Major Leagues and with each other, but the outlook was bright. “In the Southern States the spring training exhibition games attracted more patronage than at any time for many years past,” John Farrell of the National Association said in the spring, “and the attendance at the opening series of these games between the Chicago Nationals and the San Francisco club in California was the greatest in the history of baseball on the Pacific Coast.”34
The entire top tier of the prewar Minor Leagues—the Class AA American, International, and Pacific Coast and Class A Southern and Western circuits—all roared back to life. The American Association and Pacific Coast League would even play a post-season 1919 championship series, won by the PCL’s once fatally troubled Vernon club. The Eastern League, with the change of a single franchise, rose from Class B to Class A.
Class B saw the return of the Texas and Indiana-Illinois-Iowa (Three–I) circuits, joined by the new eight-team Michigan-Ontario League. The New York State League, however, was finished. Two other leagues—the Northwest International (formerly the Pacific Coast International) and the New England—began the Class B season but were unable to complete it, ending in June and August, respectively. The Virginia, South Atlantic, and new four-club Western Canada Leagues comprised Class C, while the sole Class D representative was the new Florida State League. All four circuits completed their 1919 campaigns.
From Maine to California and from Canada to Texas all the reports were to the effect that professional base ball was enjoying an extraordinary season; and when the curtain fell upon the dozen minor league races the reports were uniformly to the effect that each had enjoyed its most prosperous season. This generous attendance everywhere can only be attributed to the fact that the mass of our people sought relief after two years of war, with its consequent anxieties and privations, and found it in the open air and in the field of sport.35
Overall 1919 was a good year for the Minors.
The Major Leagues began a shortened, 140-game season in Boston on Saturday, April 19. This was also Patriots’ Day, the traditional day for running the Boston Marathon. Baseball fans dressed for topcoat weather, sunny but cold.
Boston met Brooklyn at Braves Field in a split doubleheader, the first game in the morning, the second in the afternoon. National League president John Heydler came up from New York to see the season start. An estimated six to ten thousand fans turned out for the morning contest, including five thousand soldiers and sailors admitted for free by the ever-generous Braves. “Those up on baseball superstitions declare that the Bostonians did not have a chance from the start owing to the presence of that potent jinks [sic] a horseshoe floral piece, which was hung near their dugout.”36 The service members witnessed the return to the Major Leagues of eight of their recently discharged brethren, including Brooklyn starting pitchers Leon Cadore and Jeff Pfeffer and Braves shortstop Rabbit Maranville. The two hurlers proved less rusty than the infielder.
“A hearty greeting, extended Rabbit Maranville on his first appearance on the home diamond after his days of life on the briny deep, inspired the midget to do his best, but he had the same affliction as his brothers in arms,” the Boston Post reported. “He didn’t look exactly the Rabbit of other days, making misplays of an unaccountable sort. At times he could flash in his ancient estimable manner, but that was only at remote periods.”37 “The Rabbit was not quite up to form in his hitting but will come along all right later,” the rival Globe added. “He did some nice fielding, participating in three fast double plays.”38
Cadore went ten innings to win the morning game, 5–2. “Battle experience on the plains of Picardy evidently made no impression on that Brooklyn pitcher as he gave the locals no manner of a lookin [sic] until the game was well along to its closing stages. Cadore was as tough a nut to crack as could well be found until he met up with a slip in his defence and a mass attack.”39 One of two Maranville errors on the day contributed to the first Brooklyn win.
The afternoon game was slated to start at 3:15, but a large, late-arriving crowd jamming the concourse on Gaffney Street prompted the Braves management to push the first pitch back thirty minutes. Twenty thousand fans eventually filed in, nearly filling the ballpark. “The floral jinks was increased at this game, when the crew of the battleship Pennsylvania presented Rabbit Maranville with a huge floral token.”40 Brooklyn swept the doubleheader as Pfeffer went the distance and won the second game 3–2 despite his wildness in the eighth.
The Dodgers caught a train home that night to play a scheduled exhibition with the Yankees at Ebbets Field on Monday. No other regular games were scheduled in the Major Leagues until Wednesday, April 23, Opening Day for everyone else. A chance encounter in Chicago on Tuesday neatly symbolized the unique occasion.
A little bit of the Argonne forest was transferred right to the loop in Chicago last night at dinner, when Lieut. Joe Jenkins happened to be seated at the next table to Sergeant Grover Cleveland Alexander. Both had chased the boche through that historic wood in France.
Aleck arrived yesterday afternoon, after visiting his mother in Nebraska. He will pitch the first ball today at the opening game of the season at Cub park.
Jenkins left last night for St. Louis, to appear with the White Sox today against the Browns in their opening game. With Jenkins was Red Faber, recent petty officer at Great Lakes Naval station, and John Collins, outfielder, also going to St. Louis to join the Sox. With Alexander was Sergt. Killefer, captain of the Cubs, who will be back of the bat in the north side opening.41
Rain delayed the Cubs’ opener until Thursday. The afternoon was so chilly that the club reduced the opening ceremonies. Alexander, in a Chicago uniform, quickly trotted to the mound to throw out the first ball, “without half the crowd knowing who it was. Those who did see him hurl that first ball thought he did it in such stylish form that he will be on the rubber for a regular battle in a few days.”42
Alexander had big expectations for the coming season. “My object now is to win about 30 games for the Cubs and get them in to the next world’s series,” he had said on landing in New York. “I don’t think my absence from the game has hurt my pitching arm for I have had a little light work abroad. The only real practice we had was after the armistice when we played a few games near Trier, Germany.”43
The great right-hander had won thirty or more games in a season three times before, and hopes were high this year in Chicago. But Cubs fans didn’t know the man who had returned. Despite outward appearances, Alexander was in bad shape, suffering from hearing loss from the loud guns, muscle damage to his right arm from pulling the firing lanyard, a minor shrapnel wound, and worst of all, shell shock. The pitcher was a “human wreck,” according to biographer Jan Finkel.44 Alexander’s first start came at home May 9. Ray Fisher and the Cincinnati Reds beat him in a 1–0 heartbreaker.
“The big fellow wasn’t quite up to his old time standard, but seemed to lack nothing except control,” James Crusinberry wrote of Alexander in the Chicago Tribune. “He walked five batsmen, and it was one of those walks that was turned into the lone tally. He seemed to have the old curve ball working, and about 90 per cent of his old time speed. Another week of training and the great slab star should be right back in his form of ball and preceding years.”45
But Alexander never regained his pitching form of 1917, and he struggled in 1919 before settling down to post a record of sixteen wins and eleven losses, albeit with a dazzling 1.72 earned run average. He approached thirty victories only once more in his career, winning twenty-seven in 1920. Battling alcoholism and epilepsy, “Ol’ Pete” pitched in the Major Leagues until 1930.
“What the Cubs got when he came back from the war was a scarred, shell-shocked, half-deaf epileptic and alcoholic whose zest for life, without the inducement of liquor, was left somewhere on a muddy battlefield thousands of miles away,” biographer John C. Skipper has written.46 “Many men survived the war, but they didn’t recover from it,” adds Finkel. “One of the many cruel coincidences of the war is that it destroyed the two greatest National League pitchers of the Deadball Era, if not of the twentieth century, Christy Mathewson and Grover Cleveland Alexander.”47
The true emotional start of the 1919 major league season came late in May with the return of Hank Gowdy. The color sergeant arrived home April 25, reaching New York like so many others on the massive Leviathan. “The famous catcher and his genial smile loomed up conspicuously out of the sea of faces that limned the rails as the giant greyhound of the ocean was warped into her dock,” Bill Macbeth wrote. “But Hank was in too big a hurry to get from khaki into sporting white or gray even to tarry for an interview.”48
The catcher hurried to Grand Central Station to catch a train for Boston, planning to come to terms with the Braves as soon as possible. Nearly a month passed before he was under contract and in shape to play. The club designated May 24 at Braves Field as Hank Gowdy Day. “Hank is entitled to all the honor that can be heaped upon him,” the Boston Globe declared on its front page.49
As with Alexander, Gowdy’s first opponents were the Cincinnati Reds. Cheered by sixteen thousand fans, players from both clubs surrounded Gowdy on the field before the game. Boston’s mayor made a short speech before presenting him $800 in Victory bonds, along with a gold watch, chain, and cigar cutter, all bought with funds contributed by fans. The Ohioan’s reply was brief but heartfelt: “Holy cow, this is great.”50 His Braves teammates then gave him a traveling trunk and other gifts before trotting away to start the game.
“Former Sergeant ‘Hank’ Gowdy . . . hit the first ball pitched in the second inning to right field for a single. It was his first time at bat in a championship game since 1917.”51 His second time up, the catcher laid down a perfect sacrifice bunt. His return seemed to invigorate the seventh-place Braves, who went on to trim the Reds, 4–1. “They did it in such a way as to cause the every day brand of fan to emerge from the park in a daze and exclaim: ‘How did those birds ever fall down into the subway?’”52
The Boston Post neatly summed it all up. “All the greater and lesser gods of baseball, weather, fortune and everything else that can make ideal a day of days for a deserving individual,” sportswriter Ed McGrath wrote, “worked in entire accord to make Harry Gowdy’s long-awaited formal welcome of yesterday the uttermost word in perfection.53 Major League Baseball was back.