22 June, 2010
Play Ball
Big League Baseball at Isley Field, Saipan, 1945
Bill McCullough was part of the world of Friday Night Lights, the religion that is Texas high school football for 34 years after he got back from Saipan. He coached ball and track, and he recalled some of the best baseball he had seen was right there at Isley Field in the Marianas in 1944.
I asked him how that could be, when the question of whether Big League ball would survive the war was a real question.
It was one that was unresolved from the War to End Wars.
In 1917, German submarines sank seven U.S. merchant ships and the Brits leaked the de-crypted contents of the Zimmerman telegram, a overture from the Kaiser’s Foreign Office to Mexico that promised restoration of the American Southwest in exchange for support.
President Wilson called for action against Germany. The Congress agreed, declaring war on Germany on 6 April 1917.The War to End Wars began to absorb small town jocks like my Grandfather immediately, and Big League players in July, when Boston Braves catcher Hank Gowdy reported for duty with the Ohio National Guard.
The professional baseball season of 1918 ended early, though the Boston Red Sox defeated the Cubs 2-1, in Game 6 of the world Series to win their fifth World Championnship. and third in four years, four games to two. As you well recall, it was the start of the “curse of the Bambino,” for the Red Sox, who would not win another until 59 years after the next world war.
Only the armistice that stilled the guns on November 11th, 1918, ensured that the Spanish Flu season of 1919 would continue as scheduled.
The Big Leagues in the Golden Age of Baseball were a popular fixation bigger than football is today. The games were fueled with the exuberance of the Roaring Twenties and helped buoy civic spirits in the dark days of the Depression. Even as preparations for war began to make the factories hum, the first steps toward mobilization had clear implications for the national pastime.
President Roosevelt signed the Selective Training and Service Act, or the military draft, on September 16, 1940. Every American male between the ages of 21 and 36 was required to sign up for a period of twelve months service. Conscription put nearly two million men in uniform by the end of 1941. The Big Leagues had to contribute just as every other profession did.
The events of 1941 in Europe were horrifying, and the Japanese were savaging the Chinese in their puppet state of Manchuko. But the Bigs at home were putting on a show whose records still resonate down through the years: Terrible Ted Williams batting over .400, Joe DiMaggio’s fabulous Streak of hits in 56 straight games, Lefty Grove’s 300th career triumph on the mound.
(PFC Hank Greenberg)
Detroit Tiger’s Hammering Hank Greenberg was the second Big Leaguer called up on May 7, 1941. Greenberg traded his $55,000 yearly salary for $21 per month Army pay at Fort Custer, Michigan.
After Pearl Harbor, Baseball Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis, sent FDR a note asking what was better for the country: play or suspend the schedule for the duration. Roosevelt responded that it “would be best for the country to keep baseball going," and recommended more night games so war-plant workers could attend.
(Joltin’ Joe makes Staff Sergeant)
The overwhelming sentiment was for baseball to continue, but the real talent went to war. More than 500 major league players enlisted or were drafted for service, along with more than 4,000 minor leaguers. The list included superstars, like Stan The Man Musial, Joe DiMaggio, Ted Williams and Enos Slaughter, who served briefly with Bill and Hal McCullough in the Mariannas.
I will get to that in a minute, because something else pretty strange was going on. Ted Williams became a Marine pilot, and many of the athletes went to combat jobs with everyone else. But there was something else going on. Morale wasn’t just important on the home front: the Boys Up Front needed some entertainment, too.
The rivalry between the Army and Navy is legendary. I personally believe it was so intractable that incredibly two parallel war efforts were conducted in the Pacific- one to the south under General MacArthur with a goal of liberating the Philippines as the General had promised, and a second across the island chains of the Pacific to secure the bases needed to bomb Japan directly led by Admiral Nimtiz.
It is only to be expected that the larger struggle was replicated in smaller ones. In September of 1944, the Central Pacific Area Baseball Championship Series was held on Oahu. It was an Army versus Navy grudge match, and the Services were not above using ringers. Navy brought former Yankee stars Phil Rizzuto and Dom DiMaggio from Australia to play.
Army had not been aware of the lengths that her sister was willing to go to win, and despite a world-wide dragoon force sent to find all the major leaguers in the Army Air Forces, Navy went on to win the first six games of the extended series, and went nine-of-eleven before the Army players could arrive on the island.
Navy sent their stars on tour to the forward area by the time almost fifty Big Leaguers arrived in Army uniforms. The roster included Enos “Country” Slaughter, Birdie Tebbetts catching, Billy Hitchcock, Joe Marty, Howard Pollett, Buster Mills, Ferris Fain, Sid Hudson, Taft Wright, Stan Rojek, Lew Riggs, Max West and Tex Hughson.
Without a Navy team to oppose them, the stars were assigned to Hickam, Wheeler, Dillingham and Bellows Fields to play an exhibition schedule.
Before going much further on this, I feel compelled to point out that the ballplayers were at least nominally required to perform regular military duties, even if they had an aggressive playing schedule.
Later in 1945, they were divided into three teams for their own tour of the forward area to represent bombardment wings of the 20th Air Force - the 58th Bombardment Wing Wingmen, led by Tigers’ catcher Birdie Tebbetts and featuring Enos Slaughter, Joe Gordon, Joe Marty, Billy Hitchcock, Howie Pollett and Chubby Dean for the 73rd Bombardment Wing Bombers, managed by Buster Mills of the Cleveland Indians and featuring Stan Rojek, Taft Wright, Mike McCormick, Tex Hughson and Sid Hudson; and the 313th Bombardment Wing Flyers, managed by Lew Riggs of the Dodgers and featuring Johnny Sturm, Max West, Walt Judnich and Stan Goletz.
That is where 19-year-old Sergeant Bill McCullough met Enos “Country” Slaughter on the equator, half a world away in the middle of the biggest slaughter of another kind. The burly right fielder had been his idol from long summer nights on the clear-channel radio, all the way from Cincinatti to the middle of nowhere, Texas.
More on that tomorrow. I have to be someplace way too early today.
Copyright 2010 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Subscribe to the RSS feed!