Rather than pull something out of the Bookshelf archives, I thought for something a bit different this week.
The good news is that I got to watch the Yankees beat the Giants, 7-0, in the season opener. Normally, I would not be able to watch a game with an 8 p.m. start because I have to be at work at 4 a.m. The bad news is the reason: laid up with COVID for a few days. C’est la vie.
In between innings I was browsing through a copy of the Official Baseball 1945 book, which I recently purchased on eBay and is in amazingly good shape. A closer look surprised me in that it was not published by The Sporting News, but rather by A.S. Barnes & Company.
Anyone familiar with the Sporting News guides knows that they’re not just stats and not just about the Major Leagues. Same for this one.
One of the charming, if sad, aspects of the Guide are the references to the WW II. The first several pages list each big league team’s members who were in the service as well as those who made “the ultimate sacrifice” throughout the minors. There is also a fascinating page on “Major League 1944 War Activities” which notes, in part
Besides their players in the armed forces, their cooperation in the Fifth and Sixth War Loan Drives, in blood-plasma campaigns and war activities in their several communities, the two Major Leagues and their 16 clubs in 1944 turned over actual cash to war activities to the amount of $713,563.99.
There’s a breakdown with the amount each team contributed. The American League’s share was over $250,000, substantially more than the $122,270.24 (love the detail to the penny) from the NL. The New York Yankees, perhaps not surprisingly, led the way with $34,587.13 while the Boston Braves’ share was just over $4,000. I’m sure attendance played a part: the Braves had the lowest turnout in 1944 with 208,691 while the Yankees were the second best with 789,995 (Detroit topped the Majors with 923,196; they had the second highest donation total with $33,287.78).
By contrast, The Sporting News guide for 1945 did not offer much information about baseball’s involvement in the war effort. Other than an image of the famed Iwo Jima flag planting and a few pages, there’s not much about WWII (while there’s a substantial section about Commissioner Landis).
Just FYI, here’s a brief list of some books about baseball during World War Two.