Steve Gann
Sandra 1When Baseball Put The Bats Away For Freedom
April 23rd 2009 05:50
When war threatened the game in 1941, it was President Roosevelt, who saw the need to keep baseball for the good of the country. He even thought enough of the game to write a so-called “Green Light Letter” to baseball commissioner Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis. Roosevelt remarked, “I honestly feel that it would be best for the country to keep baseball going.”
He went on to encourage Landis to play more night games so day shift factory workers could attend more games.
Landis agreed and responded with the wish that, “I hope our performance will be such as to justify the President’s faith.”
The game would continue through one of our countries darkest times. Americans had their beloved baseball and something to keep their minds off the evils in Europe and Asia.
Three events this week inspired this article. The first was the sixty-third anniversary of Operation Neptune, also known as the D-Day invasion. The second was the seemingly weekly ignorant remarks made by today’s Major Leaguers, who seem so different from the men who played the game during the war years. The last event is one that really made me think how much our society - and baseball - has changed in the last sixty years.
There was a man on a plane that was harassing the flight attendants as well as other passengers. The crew wanted to subdue the man until the plane could be landed safely and the authorities called. One of the crew tried to find some passengers to assist in controlling the man, but the only help offered was from a sixty-something former marine. This senior citizen and veteran helped control the out of control man while younger men in their twenties and thirties looked the other way.
How could our country and its men change so much in a little over half a century?
I wanted to return to a time when baseball players were citizen’s first and baseball players second. A time before steroids and selfish players threatened the game that is America’s sport. There was a time when men would turn away from the game to matters that needed their attention more.
During World War II over five hundred Major League players or ninety-five percent of the total players at that time enlisted in the armed services. Of this total that risked not only their careers but also their lives were thirty-five future members of the Hall Of Fame.
Many of the names are players that all baseball fans recognize instantly as being among the greatest in history, but may not know that they were also veterans. Luke Appling, Bobby Doerr, Robin Roberts, Jackie Robinson, Hoyt Wilhelm, and Early Wynn are the most well known of the eleven veterans of the Army.
The Navy had the largest contingent of Hall Of Famers, accounting fourteen of the total, including Yogi Berra, Mickey Cochrane, Bill Dickey, Larry Doby, Bob Feller, Charlie Gehringer, Billy Herman, Ralph Kiner, Bob Lemon, Johnny Mize, Stan Musial, Pee Wee Reese, and Duke Snider.
Feller was the first major leaguer to volunteer for the armed services. He enlisted just two days after the Pearl Harbor attacks. He would serve four years as an anti-aircraft gunner aboard the battleship Alabama. I have personally seen his bunk aboard the ship and can attest that he slept and ate just like any other man on that ship.
The Air Force also can boast of having four of the games greatest as veterans. Joe DiMaggio, Hank Greenberg, Red Ruffing, and Enos Slaughter all served their country well as enlisted pilots.
The Marines, may be few in number but not in their service to this country. Their slogan of “once a Marine always a Marine” can be changed here to “a Hall of Fame player and a Marine” can be given to a pair of Teds. Ted Lyons and Ted Williams earned both of their titles with their sacrifice. Ted Williams is not only a WWII vet but also the only Major Leaguer who is a veteran of WWII and the Korean War.
In 2002 the Hall Of Fame in Cooperstown unveiled a bronze plaque honoring the sixty-four players, who not only had earned the plaque on the baseball field but also in the field of battle. It was the first plaque not attributed to an individual in the history of the museum.
This was a different time, the generation was called “The Greatest Generation” and they could not have been around at a more needed time. I hope it is not the last great generation we still need great men like those on the plaque in Cooperstown.
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