Sports mostly played through Spanish flu, but World War I complicates lessons
The sports world is searching for context. Has there been anything like the coronavirus pandemic in our past, something that can provide a road map?
The unsatisfactory answer: sort of. But the Spanish flu of 1918 took place in a very different time, under extraordinary circumstances. Unlike this crisis, the road map back to normalcy veered through the battlefields and trenches of wartorn Europe.
In 1918, the year of the last pandemic to shut down much of the world, the global sports calendar was mostly erased. But the primary driver of cancellations was World War I, which the United States had entered the year before, in 1917. Sports competitions already had been shut down around the world as war raged in Europe.
The sports landscape was just a sliver of what it is today. There was no NBA. The NFL was two years from its start. At the time, the most popular sports in
America were baseball and college football. But the Spanish flu (which wasn’t really Spanish in origin at all) didn’t ravage college football because the season was, for the most part, canceled in the fall of 1918 because of the war.
But the 1918 baseball season was played, in part, and was impacted by the flu epidemic. That virus, which spanned the globe in three waves, killed 670,000 in the United States and at least 50 million worldwide. It claimed more lives than did World War I, which was one of the primary vehicles for the spread of the disease, through the deployment and return of troops.
The mysterious flu struck in the spring of 1918. It was named the Spanish flu because Spain was neutral in the war, so Spanish journalists weren’t censored from writing about the alarming death tolls while other European countries suppressed the information. Among those who fell ill in the States was Babe Ruth, who — along with several Boston Red Sox teammates — became very sick at spring training.
Ruth was strictly a pitcher as the season began, coming off a year in which he won 24 games and posted a 2.01 ERA in 3261⁄3 innings. But rosters were shortened because many ballplayers were conscripted into service and bats were needed. On May 6, 1918, in a game against the Yankees, Ruth played first base and batted sixth — the first time he had appeared in a game other than as a pitcher or pinchhitter. He hit a home run, and another against Washington the following day. He also suffered a second bout of the flu, in the middle of the month, and had to sit out two weeks of play.
The Spanish flu — which, unlike other viruses, relentlessly attacked healthy young people — continued to spread through the summer. Baseball owners and local government officials resisted the idea of a shutdown, fearing substantial losses in revenue, so the games kept going. It ended up being war, not disease, that shuttered the season.
“Secretary of War Newton Baker determined, at the height of American fighting, that baseball was not an essential occupation,” said Doran Cart, the senior curator of the National World War I Museum and Memorial, located in Kansas City, Mo. “It was determined that the season would end by Labor Day.”
Hundreds of major leaguers ended up fighting in the war. A rushed World Series between the Cubs and the Red Sox took place Sept. 511. The Series is remembered for Boston’s titlewinning Game 6, Ruth’s stellar pitching (two wins and a 1.06 ERA in 17 innings), and the startling fact that the Red Sox wouldn’t win another title for 86 years. An interesting sidenote: In Game 1, a military band played an impromptu version of “The StarSpangled Banner,” a tune that would not become the official national anthem until 1931. Stunned by the ravages of war and disease, the fans embraced the patriotic note and joined in singing. The random moment would help spawn an American sports tradition.
The final three games were held at Fenway Park, drawing total attendance of more than 62,000. The crowds at games, parades and war rallies became “biological bombs” that helped fuel the course of the epidemic. By the end of the year, 4,800 Bostonians had died.
That fall, the flu led to the cancellation of high school sports, soccer games and boxing matches. A highprofile boxing match between Jack Dempsey and Battling Levinsky was canceled. By spring, the American public was ready to move on.
“People associated the flu with the war, and they really wanted to be done with the war,” Cart said.
But, even though a November armistice ended World War I, the battle wasn’t over. A final wave of flu crashed over America in the winter of 1918 and early 1919, fueled largely by returning soldiers.
That wave claimed another sports event: the 1919 Stanley Cup Finals between Montreal and Seattle. The bestoffive series was tied 22 when the final game was postponed as players on both teams became ill. Montreal had only three healthy players and defenseman Joe Hall died shortly after the series was called. Instead of a celebration of the return of sports, the event was another tragedy.
By late spring of 1919, the Spanish flu had mostly died out. Sports returned, including the 1919 baseball season, which didn’t end in pandemic or World War, but with the Black Sox scandal.