A history of those who served

One hundred years ago fans occasionally witnessed an unusual sight at major league ballparks. They would see the home team players “salute the troops.” They did it by lining up in the formation of a military platoon and marching about the field with bats slung over their right shoulders.

I’m not making that up. The owners even publicly congratulated themselves on their patriotism.

Not everyone saw it that way. The country was at war. Young men were fighting and dying in France while young baseball players were marching around major league diamonds with bats on their shoulders. Somehow that didn’t seem quite right.

Baseball owners insisted that their business was special — that they kept the national spirit high. Provost Marshall General Enoch Crowder didn’t agree. His opinion was important since he was the head of the military draft. In mid-May he set a deadline of July 1 for all men of military age to either “work or fight.” He defined “work” as employment in an “essential” industry that supported the war effort and he said baseball did not qualify as one of those industries.

The owners took their ar-

gument to Secretary of War Newton D. Baker, but Baker said he agreed with Crowder. He did, however, grant the major leagues a grace period and allowed the season to continue until Labor Day — Sept. 2. He agreed that the two pennant winners would be permitted to stage the World Series immediately after that.

Instability reigned. Some players chose to enlist. Others were drafted despite Baker’s grace period. Rosters seemed to change daily.

The New York Giants got off to an 18-1 start, but slumped badly after losing three of their best pitchers to the military. The Cubs also lost a pitcher — future Hall of Famer Grover “Pete” Alexander, but their staff was deep enough to withstand the loss. They bolted past the Giants and held a 10.5-game lead by Labor Day which put them in the World Series against the Boston Red Sox, who had nosed out the Cleveland Indians.

The Series was both epic and ugly. It even featured a brief (one-hour) player strike before Game Five. The players refused to take the field when they discovered that their portion of the gate receipts would be lower than

expected. They finally agreed to play the game after American League president Ban Johnson reminded them that there was a war going on and their walkout would not be received sympathetically by the public.

The Red Sox eventually took the Series in six games, which turned out to be their last title until 2004.

When the season ended a few notable players, including Babe Ruth, scrambled to find “essential” jobs, but most enlisted in the armed forces.

The owners might have behaved selfishly but most of the players were more heroic. Eight major leaguers and three Negro League players died in combat and many others were wounded. Alexander, for one, was exposed to poison gas and later wounded from the shrapnel of an exploding shell. Those setbacks may have contributed to the alcoholism that dogged him throughout much of his career.

Alexander was one of 27 future Hall of Famers who served in the war.

Perhaps the most significant of all was Christy Mathewson who, in 1918, had become the manager of the Cincinnati Reds. Mathewson was 38 years old and not subject to the draft. Nevertheless, he not only quit his job in order to enlist but volunteered for the dangerous Gas & Flame Division. Boston Braves president Percy Haughton was so impressed

that he, too, volunteered for the Gas & Flame Division and soon St. Louis Cardinals president Branch Rickey joined as well. Rickey, in turn, recruited St. Louis Browns first baseman George Sisler and Detroit Tigers outfielder Ty Cobb for the unit. Besides his baseball job, Haughton was the Harvard football coach. The others all were on their way to becoming baseball Hall of Famers.

The unit was deployed to France where the mission was to train recruits on the use of deadly gases. One day the training went tragically awry and deadly gas was released before the troops had strapped on their gas masks. Eight Americans died on the spot and several others, including Cobb and Mathewson, were exposed to the lethal gas. Cobb suffered for months after the incident but eventually recovered.

Mathewson was not so fortunate. His lungs were permanently damaged. He lived only seven more years, mostly as an invalid, before dying of pneumonia in 1925.

Baseball owners agreed there would be no 1919 season if the war were still in progress.

It wasn’t. In 1919 the major leagues were able to resume their normal operations. It was baseball only. They didn’t need to stage any silly mock drills before the games.

But they could never eliminate the scars of 1918.