Jun 7, 2021
In our Episode 104 with David Hubler &
Josh Drazen, we examined the existential crisis faced by organized
baseball during the first half of the 1940s, when America's
heightened involvement in World War II threatened to shut down pro
leagues entirely as the country focused its attention
elsewhere.
While President Roosevelt's
now-famous "Green Light Letter" to MLB Commissioner Kenesaw
Mountain Landis on January 15, 1942 ensured the game would continue
unimpeded Stateside, hundreds of major-league and thousands of
minor-league players soon found themselves drafted into, or even
volunteering for active wartime duty abroad - including some of
baseball's biggest stars of the era, like Joe DiMaggio, Pee Wee
Reese, Ted Williams, and Stan Musial.
Baseball-in-wartime expert Gary
Bedingfield ("Baseball in Hawaii During World War
II") joins the 'cast to discuss the travails of these
professional players across the war's Pacific and European
theaters, who balanced combat-related "day jobs" with surprisingly
competitive military league play - especially in Hawaii, where many
of the game's best found themselves stationed at one point or
another.