Welcome To FC Associates

BALLFIELDS TO BATTLEFIELDS

                                                                   A FILM PROPOSAL:
FROM THE BALLPARK TO THE BATTLEFIELD

For well over a century and a half, baseball has earned its standing as America’s National Pastime, enjoying great success during peacetime but contributing during wartime as well. Large numbers of ballplayers served in both world wars of the 20th century, and arguably played an especially key role in the American war effort during World War II.  The story of how baseball became inexorably intertwined with our nation’s war efforts has been addressed in a number of books, and referenced on the occasional television program, but has never been tackled in a comprehensive manner by the film industry. And yet there are rich resources available, some of which have not yet been tapped, which would permit the story to be told in a visually appealing way to a broad-based audience through rare film footage, images, interviews, and dramatic performance. As in any broad history, there are numerous individual stories which make up the whole. These stories are integral to our very history, and the medium of film offers promising ways to present the stories of these men and women to a larger audience.

 

 

BASEBALL FROM THE CIVIL WAR ERA ON

It was during the Civil War era that the game of baseball exploded in popularity and became identified as uniquely American.  It is no exaggeration to say that our nation first became baseball happy during the Civil War.  The movement of large numbers of troops from their home communities to other parts of the still-young but fractured country helped spread the baseball gospel to all parts of the land, and returning war vets often showed off their newly developed ball playing skills to their friends and families back home.  By the end of the 1860’s, the game was played in all states and was even catching on north in Canada as well as in the southern islands off our coast.  It became, in no uncertain terms, our National Pastime.  Even the great chronicler of the times, Walt Whitman, dubbed baseball “America’s Game.”

Excursions of American servicemen to Cuba, The Philippines, Japan, and elsewhere spread the reach and popularity of this game, during such times as the Spanish-American War.           

The baseball and war connection continued unabated during World War I, when it was not uncommon for a major league team to see 20-30% of its ballplayers enter military or defense work. Major league ballplayers were some of our nation’s most publicized citizens, and significant numbers saw combat. Harvard-educated Eddie Grant, a solid third baseman for the New York Giants, died in battle when he led a mission in the Argonne Forest offensive to rescue the “Lost Battalion” that was trapped behind enemy lines. A number of the game’s earliest stars such as Hall of Famers Ty Cobb, Branch Rickey, and Christy Mathewson joined the military to serve in the famed Chemical War Service, a special force whose sole mission was to combat the terrors of German “death gas” attacks.  In fact, Mathewson, a beloved national hero known as the “Christian Gentleman” because of his gentle ways, eventually died of complications from being gassed in France shortly before the war’s end in 1918.

Branch Rickey, of course, went on to bigger and better things.  He helped break baseball’s decades-old color barrier when he signed Jackie Robinson to play for his 1947 Brooklyn Dodgers.  An all-around great athlete, Robinson was educated at the University of Southern California and was seemingly the perfect choice for Rickey. Robinson was a military veteran who served during World War II, and had the self-discipline to withstand the slings and arrows that would be thrown his way.

 

Cecil Travis c. 1941

 

WORLD WAR II BREAKS OUT

As World War II broke out, from the frozen tundra of Iceland to the jungles of the South Pacific, from the hot deserts in North Africa to a Nazi stadium in Nuremberg, American soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines played baseball whenever and wherever, they could.  All told, over 500 major league and more than 2,000 minor league baseball players went into the armed forces during World War II to serve their nation.  Scores of others from the Negro Leagues and semipro teams joined the swelling military ranks of fighting men as well.  

Amongst the first of those major leaguers to roll up their sleeves and join in the war effort was Bob Feller, then a youthful right-handed star pitcher for the Cleveland Indians.  Feller was not even out of high school in 1935 when he pitched his first major league ball game.  His fastball was favorably compared to that of the great Walter Johnson, and for six years he proved his mettle by dominating the best the American League could throw at him.  By 1941, with the clouds of war swirling all around, Feller was the sole support for his family because his father, an Iowa farmer, was dying of cancer.  “Rapid Robert” could have easily merited a deferment and avoided military service altogether. Instead, upon hearing of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 on his car radio as he was driving from Iowa to Cleveland to sign his contract to play the upcoming season, Feller literally turned the car around, drove to Chicago and immediately reported to a Navy recruiting office.

“We were losing the war,” Feller said. “We needed heroes. Gee, we needed men!”  He subsequently served as a gun captain on board the battleship Alabama and saw considerable action in the Atlantic, and then in the Pacific theater, while participating in numerous battles.  But even across the seas, the game of baseball, Feller’s ticket out of Iowa years before, was still part of his life. Despite seeing action, Feller still managed to play baseball and even some softball in Scotland, Iceland, and on numerous islands in the Pacific.
Hank Greenberg had just been mustered out of the service; he returned and re-enlisted.

Amongst the many other major league baseball stars serving in the armed services during that time period were Stan Musial, Joe DiMaggio, Ted Williams, Warren Spahn, Yogi Berra, Pee Wee Reese, Cecil Travis, and Phil Rizutto. There were also others, too numerous to name, who without hesitation joined the effort. One such was former major league player and coach Hank Gowdy.  Decades earlier Gowdy, the star of the 1914 “Miracle” Boston Braves, had the distinction of being the very first major league ballplayer to volunteer for the military draft at the outbreak of World War I.  Gowdy had fought in Europe during the bloodiest time of that conflict as a member of the famed Rainbow Division.  He re-joined the Army when World War II broke out.  Legendary greats like Branch Rickey and Ty Cobb, vets from the first World War, and others like Babe Ruth worked hard supporting the war effort by volunteering their services in war bond drives and the like.

 

BASEBALL ON THE HOME FRONT

Given the tenor of the times, a number of owners of major league teams stood ready to suspend major league baseball for the duration of the war.  In the famous “green light” letter to Major League Baseball Commissioner Kennesaw Mountain Landis, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, responding to Landis’ offer to cease major league baseball “upon the President’s order,” expressed his personal desire that the game continue during the war because of its positive impact on the citizenry and the morale of those serving in the armed forces.

Landis responded to the President’s request, maintaining a full schedule of games.  The game did allow for some recreation and stability during a time of uncertainty.  Eventually, as the ranks of the majors dramatically thinned, the big leagues gave opportunities to “star” teenagers like Joe Nuxhall who started in his first game at the tender age of 15, as well as some otherwise “over-the-hill” veterans to fill out team rosters.  Among the more unusual replacement players was Pete Gray, an outfielder for the St. Louis Browns.  Gray had lost his right arm in an accident, but nonetheless managed to bat one-handed, as well as field fly balls and grounders in the outfield, and then throw them into the infield by a remarkable method of flipping and rolling the ball.

Although the quality of play in the professional ranks may have suffered during the war years, the fans still turned out in droves to follow their favorite teams.  Baseball, as President Roosevelt predicted, allowed the citizens of this country to temporarily forget about the horrors of war and just enjoy time at the ballpark!  The ballpark was a place where the men and women who joined the service could be thanked for their sacrifices.  Everywhere, at all levels of play, servicemen in uniform would have a free pass to enjoy the National Pastime.

Major league baseball also enabled its considerable fan base to support the war effort financially by staging a number of fundraising events.  In one notable war-related extravaganza, noted columnist Shirley Povich, who covered sports for the Washington Post for years, helped pack over 30,000 fans into Griffith Stadium in Washington D.C. for an exhibition game pitting the Washington Senators against a team of Navy All-Stars featuring such players as Bob Feller, Phil Rizutto, and Joe DiMaggio.  Also helping to attract the crowd were singers Kate Smith and Bing Crosby, both crooning “God Bless America.” Even the Bambino himself, Babe Ruth, having retired from the game some eight years earlier, made a guest appearance.  The event raised $2 million – enough to construct a Navy cruiser.  Many other war-related benefits such as two hugely popular games in which the old warhorse Walter Johnson, for old times’ sake, faced baseball’s biggest drawing card, Babe Ruth, were held across the land.  All told, fundraising events such as these were very important to our nation’s morale while raising millions of needed dollars for armaments.

Another successful innovation of the war years was professional women’s baseball, specifically the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League formed by Chicago chewing gum magnate and Cubs owner William Wrigley.  Initially working on the assumption that professional baseball would eventually be suspended at some point, Wrigley organized a women’s league as a way of maintaining fan interest in the game. The games were not suspended, but the league thrived anyway. 

Teams were organized in six Midwestern cities (eventually the “league of their own” grew to eight), and the women chosen were instructed to “look like ladies and play like men.”  That led to a bit of a predicament.  All players were required to attend charm school classes and to wear short skirts and knee socks. However, the latter provided precious little protection on the baseball diamond when sliding into base.  Scuffed up knees and bandages worn before and after the games were the order of the day!  Heavily chaperoned and forced to endure long bus trips from city to city, the players nonetheless thrived on the rugged routine, and they became a popular attraction for millions of people throughout the region.  Best yet, many of the games also featured “money drives” where fans and the ladies themselves would toss cash into barrels between innings for the war effort.

 

 

BASEBALL IN THE EUROPEAN THEATRE

By early 1942, American servicemen began to pour into Britain in preparation for the eventual invasion of the Continent and the push towards Berlin.  By 1944, a million and a half Americans were in Britain.  Not surprisingly, the Yanks brought with them the game they loved.  Within a year, they played baseball all across Great Britain.

The British people, deprived of professional sports for the duration of the war, flocked to watch these games which were reported on regularly by the press.  Numerous eminent personages including Queen Mary, Mrs. Winston Churchill, and assorted dukes, bishops, and local officials attended these games and often threw out the celebratory “first pitch.”

Following the Normandy invasion, baseball traveled across the English Channel and was soon being played all across Europe in the wake of the advancing U.S. troops.  Among those soldiers plowing into Europe was Private Warren Spahn of the United States Army, a man who prior to the war was just developing his pitching skills, but after the war would win more games than any other left-handed pitcher in major league history.  Spahn participated in the battle of the Hurtgen Forest and fought valiantly during the infamous Battle of the Bulge. In both campaigns, Spahn later related that the game of baseball was, in a sense, used as a creative weapon of war. In an effort to infiltrate U.S. lines, German soldiers sometimes donned American uniforms once worn by captured U.S. troops.  Spahn and others notes how questions about “baseball terms from back home, league statistics and the lore of the game” were frequently used by Americans to pierce Nazi attempts at deception.

“If you saw an unidentified man approaching the lines,” the decorated combat veteran said, “you might yell out ‘who plays second sack for the Bums?’ (Translation: “Who plays second base for the Dodgers?”)  “If he didn’t know the answer, he was a dead man.”

The thirst of servicemen for news about baseball was pervasive. Bert Shepard, an Army Air Corps pilot who was shot down by the Germans over France, seriously wounded, and imprisoned in a German POW camp said, “Every time a new prisoner came into the camp he was besieged by guys wanting to know how their favorite team was doing back home.”

Shepard himself provided one of the most amazing baseball stories to come out of World War II.  When his plane was shot down after being hit by German anti-aircraft fire during a strafing run, his leg was shattered.  After parachuting to the ground, the wounded pilot was rescued from an angry mob of German villagers by a German medic who amputated the leg, and according to the war hero, likely saved his life.

Following the liberation of the POW camp where he was housed and kept, Shepard returned home to the United States and was fitted with a prosthetic. Prior to the war, the former pilot had been a talented pitcher with the Washington Senators farm system - but that was before suffering the horrors of war.  Upon his return home, Shepard persevered on the baseball diamond and, with the support of one of his greatest admirers, Senators owner Clark Griffith, Bert pitched five impressive innings during a major league game in Washington D.C. against Ted Williams’ Boston Red Sox on his artificial leg.  A few weeks later, he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for his service during the war.

 

BASEBALL IN THE PACIFIC THEATRE

As in Europe, baseball was similarly played throughout the Pacific during the war.  As the Marines went ashore on island after island across the ocean, the Seabees followed, clearing land for baseball fields in such exotic locales as Tarawa, Guadalcanal, Saipan, and Guam.  Army troops and Navy sailors also played the game extensively in Australia, the Philippines, New Guinea, and elsewhere.  Every ship of any size had at least one team, and virtually every port visit resulted in games against Army or Marine teams or Navy teams from other ships.

Perhaps the most famous war-time competition was the Pacific World Series held in Hawaii between teams of Army and Navy All-Stars featuring stars who once dotted the majors leagues.  Admiral Chester Nimitz threw out the first ball.  Not to be outdone, the Marines had their own “Little World Series” in January of 1945 between the All-Stars of the Second Marine Division, based on Saipan and Third Marine Division All-Stars based on Guam.

An interesting sidelight to the story of baseball in World War II is that involving Japanese baseball.  Americans had previously introduced baseball to the Japanese in the late 19th century, and in the years immediately leading up to the war our national game grew steadily in popularity in the very country that, by late 1941, was our declared enemy.  In fact, a few short years prior to the bombing of Pearl Harbor, organized baseball clinched Japan’s love of the game with wildly successful tours by established major leaguers during 1933 and 1934.  Some of America’s biggest stars like Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig toured Japan, touting their ball playing skills while being feted by Japanese royalty.  It was said that Babe Ruth was even more popular than the emperor himself!  During the 1934 tour, Moe Berg, an average ballplayer and third string catcher for the Washington Senators, provided enough dramatic fodder for a movie himself.   It seems that Berg was actually a spy for the United States for his “role” during the tour was not to teach the islanders how to play ball but to take photographs and gain intelligence for the United States government.  Later during the war years, Berg was assigned to the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the forerunner of the CIA, and again gained performed valuable services for U.S. intelligence.

Esteemed baseball historian Gary Bedingfield opined that even the ravages of the war did not stifle the Japanese love of the game but, interestingly, seemed to have actually accelerated it!  “During World War II,” Bedingfield notes, “the Japanese professional league continued to play unabated until August 1944.  Just as in the United States, the game served as a major morale booster to civilians and servicemen, and despite being at war with the nation that introduced them to baseball, the Japanese people could not curb their insatiable appetite for the game.”

 

 

WAR, THE “COLOR BARRIER” AND CIVIL RIGHTS

Before the war, segregation in public places in many places in America was a woeful fact of life.  Even the armed services remained racially segregated until President Truman ended the practice by fiat near the end of the war.  In their separate units, black soldiers, sailors, and airmen formed baseball teams and leagues just as their white counterparts did.  African Americans had, of course, played baseball for nearly a century, and some of the top-flight talent in the Negro Leagues joined the service without hesitation.

One such man was Buck O’Neil.  Despite qualifying for an exemption from military service, the Kansas City Monarch great insisted on doing his part.  He joined the Navy Seabees and was sent to the South Pacific.  Buck was certainly proud of his military service but also spoke eloquently of the insidious nature of race discrimination even during wartime.  Assigned to Subic Bay in the Philippines towards the end of the war, O’Neil recalled an incident there in which he and his fellow soldiers took a load of ammunition to a destroyer.  “We got there in an LST, and started sending ammunition up. Then somebody started blowing taps.  The little ensign on the deck got on and said, ‘Attention Niggers!’  When he said that I went up that ladder and said, “Do you know what you’re saying? I am a Navy man!  I just happen to be black.  I’m fighting for the same thing you are.”

The captain was called and the ensign berated. O’Neil continued, “The thing about it was when he sat back and thought about it, the soldier started to cry.  I said, “Don’t cry, and just don’t do it anymore.  He didn’t!”  What was the lesson of this exchange?  Buck O’Neil stated flatly that it was World War II where blacks and whites both served together, united in their desire to defend their nation, that lessons of tolerance were learned, lessons that would lay the groundwork for the acceptance and desire for civil rights and equal treatment under the law. The integration of major league baseball followed rapidly, with both leagues seeing the “color barrier” come down in 1947.

 

WAR’S END

With the notable exceptions of men like pre-war Washington Senators outfielder Elmer Gedeon (a bomber pilot shot down and killed in action while piloting on a mission over France in 1944) and Philadelphia A’s outfielder Harry O’Neil (killed at the Battle of Iwo Jima in 1945), after the war’s end most major leaguers returned home to start anew.  It was impossible for many to pick up where they left off in baseball.  Many of the players simply retired because they had become too old during the war years or because of war injuries. This part of the story has never been explored in any meaningful way and is ripe for the telling.

Others, however, returned to the ballparks they left behind to at least try to play the game that they so loved.  Some faced tough re-adjustments on the diamond, like perennial pre-war All-Star Cecil Travis whose feet were frozen in battle and who never fully recovered.  Still others seemingly did not miss a beat. Bob Feller won 26 games the very first year of his return from World War II and even pitched a no-hitter at Yankee Stadium against a team featuring fearsome hitters like fellow war vets Joe DiMaggio, Tommy Henrich, and Yogi Berra. Ted Williams won the Most Valuable Player award his first year back. Little did he know that just a few years later, he would be recalled and fly 39 combat missions in the Korean War.

Unquestionably, all who served abroad lost years of prime playing time to the war.  How losing those years might have affected their ultimate statistics is, of course, debated to this day.  How many home runs would Ted Williams have hit had he not lost nearly five years during service in two wars?  What about Bob Feller - who nevertheless notched 266 victories?  With five or so more prime years, he likely would have won close to 350.  Over time, many of the men spoke of their service to the country and were frequently asked about those “lost years.”  To a man, without a trace of bitterness or regret, the former soldiers stated flatly that they would have done the same again, and missing years playing baseball meant little compared to the pride of serving their nation during a time of its greatest need.

Bob Feller recently said, “I am very proud of my war record, just like my baseball record.  I regret nothing and would gladly do it again.  In fact, if I had not spent my time in the service, time for which I am proud, I would have never been able to face anybody and talk about my baseball record or even what this great country means to me.”  Those are pretty eloquent words from a man who has seen much during his lifetime.  This is a story that needs to be documented and not forgotten.

 

“Ballfields To Battlefields” is a collaboration of efforts by the following individuals: Frank Ceresi, James Roberts, Todd Anton, Bill Nowlin, and Gary Bedingfield. The material herein is subject to international copyright protection and cannot be replicated in any fashion without express written permission. This writing has been registered with the Writers Guild. For more information about baseball during the war please see www.baseballinwartime.com and be sure to obtain When Baseball Went To War (Triumph Books). If you have any questions, please contact Frank Ceresi at fceresi@fcassociates.com or call (703) 558 3699.