“Patriotic Industry”: Baseball’s Reluctant Sacrifice in World War I

Abstract

Nearly a century ago--as Red Sox and White Sox held sway over American League, and National League was dominated by teams in Northeast corridor--the United States found itself in a super-heated atmosphere of patriotic fervor. In spring of 1917, continuing and expanding German pugnacity on high seas coupled with revelation of nefarious Zimmerman telegram, forced an agonized President Woodrow Wilson to abrogate his reelection pledge to stay out of fight. In early April, he asked Congress for and received a declaration of war against Germany. With America's participation as an active combatant now a reality, nation's mobilization lurched into high gear, and to remove any trace of doubt as to worthiness of United States's commitment to conflict, Wilson administration sought to encourage--others would say coerce--a skeptical into supporting war effort. Legislation, in form of Alien Act, Trading with Enemy Act, Sedition Act, and Espionage Act, was adopted to squelch dissent of any kind among populace, while propaganda machinery embodied in Committee on Public Information, created by administration and fronted by George Creel, was chief among instruments of promoting, indeed enforcing, patriotism. Associations such as American Protective League, described by historian David Kennedy as practicing the excesses of a quasi-vigilante organization with blessing of Justice Department, intimidated United States citizenry into toeing patriotic line so that ultimate defeat of Central Powers could be hastened. (1) In 1917, baseball became immersed in this cauldron. The exigencies of time dictated that young men be conscripted into armed services or otherwise employed in war industry, such as working in a shipyard, munitions plant, or steel mill, to prepare American military for action in Europe. On May 19, 1917, government officially instituted Selective Service Act, subjecting men between ages of twenty-one and thirty--later expanded to a range of eighteen to forty-five years--to conscription. Eventually 24 million men (44 percent of all American males) would be registered; 6.5 million were deemed fit for service, with 2.7 million finally serving in army during hostilities. (2) Given these numbers, it was only natural that a swelling of military ranks would include athletes from worlds of baseball, football, boxing, and tennis. As national pastime lost increasing numbers to war effort, baseball became increasingly resistant to drain of players from its teams' lineups. A nationwide Army Registration Day, held on June 5, 1917, was an unqualified success because Secretary of War Newton Baker and Provost Marshal General Enoch Crowder employed small tendrils of local draft boards overseen by men who in most cases were friends, neighbors, or at least acquaintances of many of their regional enlistees, thus avoiding poor response rates that Baker and Crowder knew had hampered Union conscription attempts during Civil War, in which high-ranking--and imposing--military officers comprised committees that decided what men were to be inducted into army. For baseball's part, however, two weeks before Registration Day, National League president John Tener wrote to NL club owners opining that he felt no obligation, either fixed or moral, that we should depart from our daily routine of business of playing scheduled games. (3) Days later National Commission--comprised of Tener, American League president Ban Johnson, and commission head August Herrmann--asked that each team co-operate heartily with registration event not by postponing games but by ensuring that bands be engaged to play patriotic music ... where games are scheduled on that day. (4) Those obligated to register could do so from seven o'clock in morning until nine o'clock that evening, and rather than overplay their patriotism by postponing contests, commission felt that music would sufficiently convey public expression of willingness on part of major league baseball clubs to serve country at this vital crisis of its history. …