This Never Happened

History tells us that baseball legends Christy Mathewson and Ty Cobb volunteered as Captains in the World War I Chemical Warfare Service. After the 1918 baseball season ended, both shipped out for France where they were exposed to poison gas during a training exercise. Mathewson got by far the worst of it, and died just a few years later, in 1925, of tuberculosis that was brought on by his exposure.

History has it wrong.

According to recently discovered and apparently genuine military records, Cobb, Mathewson, and other future Hall of Famers were together at Camp Hancock, Georgia, in June 1918, training on chemical weapons as part of a "show" unit - a propaganda unit designed to attract young men into the newly created Chemical Warfare Service. But the unit disbanded early, and news accounts, even in the local press, make no mention of it whatsoever. Some of these players even appear on official MLB scorecards on the very days they were training in Georgia.

A propaganda unit, but no propaganda? A recruiting tool, but no recruiting? And that is just the beginning.

Something happened at Camp Hancock that first week of June 1918 that was not in the script, something that has been the subject of an elaborate coverup for more than a century.

This Never Happened is a fictional tale that might well solve this real-world mystery. Is it the true explanation? Perhaps we'll never know. But if this never happened, what did?