Play Ball!: Doughboys and Baseball During the Great War

Baseball is the most American game. No other sporting contest so closely reflects the American psyche and culture. Its uniqueness comes from the fact that part of the game is clearly defined and unchanged since play first began, while another part of the game fluctuates and changes constantly. And if baseball is the truest American game, the Doughboys of the Great War were its most loyal proponents. By 1918, there were over four million of them: two million in France fighting in the Meuse-Argonne Offensive and another two million in stateside training camps awaiting their turn to cross the Atlantic to the Western Front. Playing wherever they could find enough room to throw a ball, they brought the game with them into the front lines and then into the occupation of Germany. Sharing their military service, in combat and on the baseball diamond, were a number of famous professional ballplayers, managers, lawyers, politicians, and even an umpire. AUTHORS: Alexander F. Barnes served in the Marine Corps and Army National Guard, retiring as a warrant officer. He is currently the Virginia National Guard Command historian. Peter L. Belmonte is a retired US Air Force officer and freelance historian. Samuel O. Barnes is an archivist at Army Logistics University at Fort Lee, Virginia.