Sailors at War, Players at Peace: Baseball in the Sea Services Through the Years
By the end of July, baseball season is usually in full “swing,” as it were, just about every year. However, among the plethora of aspects of daily life that have been disrupted by the coronavirus, sports seasons are perhaps among the most culturally painful losses for Americans, and Major League Baseball is certainly no exception. The Navy Memorial’s staffers, who are diehard fans and appreciative of the game’s role throughout American and Naval history, had been eagerly counting down the return of baseball season since the close of the World Series. With a delayed Opening Day at last on the books, fans can finally see an end to the exhausting baseball drought.
MLB was not alone in its coronavirus disruption. In South Korea, where coronavirus hit before it came to the United States, the KBO League also had its season disrupted. Now, as the nation’s cases continue to fall, KBO has resumed play under new COVID regulations, potentially offering a model of what MLB might also resemble.
In fact, the quarantine could not have had much worse timing for baseball fans. On February 10, pitchers and catchers were starting to report to Spring Training facilities, followed four days later by position players, bringing a much-welcomed end to the winter baseball drought. By the end of the month, several rounds of exhibition games were on the books. The 2020 season promised to be a particularly exciting season, and fans counted down to Opening Day, scheduled for March 26, in earnest.
Anyone who tuned in for the simulation games between the New York Yankees and Mets earlier this week likely got the truest sense of what this season will look like, as simulated crowds in an otherwise empty stadium watch the game take place. Yankees outfielder Clint Frazier even opted to play the entire game, both hitting and fielding, wearing a mask that flaunted his team affiliation. He even managed to hit a home run with it on, suggesting that the mask may have had little to no effect on a player’s ability to play the game.
Yet COVID-19 clearly has no patience for baseball. By early March, confirmed cases in the U.S. exceeded 100, and some states began to contemplate potential ways to confront this escalating situation. MLB initially intended to keep its original schedule despite the growing crisis, although actions were taken to limit clubhouse access to protect the players and essential personnel. Meanwhile, the Mariners, Giants, and A’s, whose home cities and states passed early regulations against large public gatherings, worked with MLB about how these limitations would affect the season. On March 12, their questions were answered when MLB cancelled all spring training games and postponed Opening Day, a decision that followed similar announcements from the NBA, NHL, and MLS. While initially only postponing the regular season two weeks, the duration of the following quarantine has stretched the two-week postponement into a two-month hiatus. Finally, over the last few weeks, MLB, players, and clubs reached a consensus of what the sport’s return will look like. Throughout July, a COVID-conscious “Spring Break 2.0” has taken place, as players resumed preparation for the abbreviated season in the clubs’ home facilities under strict supervision and testing. Opening Day of a now 60-game season has officially taken place as of July 23rd, with the reigning World Series champion Nationals hosting the New York Yankees at their empty Washington stadium, an intense game for what promises to be an emotional year for the sport, despite this opening game also being cut short due to poor weather. However, as some players elect to opt out of this season for safety reasons, the COVID testing and quarantine for players and staff that test positive for the virus, and the fact that most games for the foreseeable future will be played for empty stadiums will certainly make this year’s baseball season a memorable one, no matter who does end on top when and if the World Series does take place.
As the baseball fans around the Navy Memorial office again diligently tune in to track the American League standings through a mere sixty-game season, the Navy Log wanted to take the time to offer a little historical context for the current predicament. How unprecedented is this disruption to baseball really?
In fact, there were actually a dozen similar periods throughout baseball’s history that affected the sport’s regular and postseason schedule. Although surely no large solace for those impatiently waiting to see the returning World Champs return to action off a historic win in October, it might offer some perspective about the place our favorite sport occupies throughout history. Until we can debate changing division standings and count RBIs, perhaps a discussion of historical baseball stats can quench some thirst through the end of the month.
After the earthquake took place, quick response was taken to ensure that no players or staff were injured in the earthquake. Next, experts were assessing the integrity of the stadium itself. Before long, fans were sent home and the game canceled.
Of the twelve historical disruptions to the baseball season, many of them were not as long as the delay that coronavirus has caused to the game. In 1989, for example, a 7.1 earthquake hit the Bay Area where the Oakland Athletics were playing the San Francisco Giants in Game 3 of the World Series. The game was cancelled, and the World Series was delayed for 10 days (for those trying to remember, the A’s swept the Giants in the series once play could continue).
A few of these historical baseball disruptions through the years were actually self-inflicted, like in 1904, when animosity from National League owners over the newly-promoted role of the American League in New York canceled what should have been the second annual World Series. In 1972, the first players’ strike delayed the regular season a week, pushing Opening Day back to April 14. A few years later, the 1981 season was also disrupted by a strike when players advocated for free agent compensation. This pause lasted from June 12 to July 31, and a total of 712 games were lost. In 1985, a two-day strike in August forced some games during that span to be rescheduled. In 1990, the owners locked out players during spring training for 32 days in February and March. Opening Day had to be pushed back a week, but the same number of games were still played that year.
Following the season delay after 9/11, the first World Series game played at Yankee Stadium (Game 3 of the series) was a unifying moment for a nation in mourning. After a powerful Colors ceremony, President George W. Bush took the mound to throw the night’s ceremonial first pitch in an FDNY jacket. When he threw a strike, the New York fans erupted.
In 2001, the 9/11 terrorist attacks postponed all MLB games for one week. The delay pushed that year’s World Series, which famously featured the Yankees playing in the midst of the attacks on their hometown, to be the first to extend into November (although Yankees fans will never forgive the D-backs for taking the title in Game 7). In 2003, the season-opening series between the A’s and the Mariners, supposed to take place in Japan, was also canceled due to mounting threats of military action in Iraq.
All these disruptions pale in comparison to the duration of the 1994-95 baseball hiatus. From August 1994 to March 1995, the longest work stoppage in sports’ history lasted a total of 232 days and cancelled 932 games across two seasons, including the entire 1994 World Series. Once the strike at the heart of the hiatus was resolved, the 1995 season resumed in late April to give players time to prepare, and the regular season worked on a 144-game schedule. Fans that remember this hiatus surely felt a bad case of déjà vu this year through quarantine.
While baseball at home frequently suffered some disruption as big players served in uniform, that disruption was not always similarly experienced by the players themselves. During World War II especially, players frequently used baseball to pass their leisure time, whether informally onboard a carrier at sea or more formalized in a unit-wide league. This meant that casual players frequently shared improvised diamonds with major and minor league players, making for interesting skirmishes.
Wartime has left arguably the largest mark on American society through the years, and its impact on baseball can also hardly be understated. Foreign wars have affected the baseball season in many ways, including causing its own disruptions to the duration of the baseball season. In 1918, for example, high rates of conscriptions to fill ranks to fight in World War I compromised team rosters and forced the season to close on September 12, when non-essential labor was shut down by Labor Day. The World Series that year was allowed to take place over two weeks. World War I also affected the baseball season through the following year, when the regular season did not begin until late April and was shortened to just 140 games due to the war. That same year, had it not been for the war, it is likely that another pandemic, Spanish Flu, would have had its own effect on the season, since many former players and umpires died from the disease and proximity to others quickly spread the disease as well. Despite FDR’s 1942 Green Light Letter imploring baseball to continue through World War II’s duration for the sake of morale, the game was affected by this conflict as well. Two games scheduled to take place on D-Day, June 6, 1944, were rescheduled to mark the day.
Beyond the disruptions it causes to the season, war also affects the very rosters with which baseball teams play year to year. In World War II alone, some 500 MLB players were conscripted or enlisted, causing some to woe a hiatus of talent as names like Joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams left the game to serve overseas. This trend is merely a continuation of one that saw many early baseballers put their careers on hold to serve their nation during the First World War. Throughout baseball’s duration, the sport has seen many of its players who served before, in the middle of, or after their baseball careers in the United States Armed Forces, a large percentage of which were in the Sea Services. Fortunately for the Navy Memorial, the vast majority of these baseballer-veterans have been added to our Navy Log, which puts the Log in a unique position to be able to share some of their service memories. As MLB at last begins its 2020 season, the Navy Log would like to take some time to draw attention to some Sea Service veterans whose baseball careers were interrupted or punctuated by their service at sea. Through this strange 2020 season, hopefully baseball fans can take some time to search through the Navy Log for some of these renowned baseball players to learn about the impressive service careers they logged in addition to the Hall-of-Fame-worthy baseball achievements they achieved.
Three famous baseballers Pee Wee Reese, Phil Rizzuto, and Hugh Casey in their Navy uniforms at Norfolk Naval Training Station early in their wartime service. These three were a few of the many baseballers who traded uniforms through the war.
