Corrections/Omissions... I completely missed Wally Judnich and his 5.3 WAR on the 1942 St. Louis Browns who went in the military in 1943. Don't know how I missed him because he was on my spreadsheet where I catalogued every MLB player. Valid criticism that I didn't cover the Negro Leagues or mention the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. Especially with the title "Baseball in World War II." I nearly included a few stories, but it really didn't fall into the scope of what I was talking about (specifically Major League Baseball and it's affiliates) and is a topic I'm not nearly as well versed on so I didn't feel I'd do it justice. Lots of comments about me saying "Washington Nationals" and not "Washington Senators." That is not a correction because they were officially the Washington Nationals from 1905-1956, but they were commonly referred to as the Senators. It's a bit like X versus Twitter where a lot of people still say Twitter even though the name is officially X now. Shirley Povich even referred to them as the Senators in a direct quote I used and I even said Senators once in the video that wasn't a direct quote. Basically either Nationals or Senators are fine to use. Pronunciation goofs - I usually try really really hard to get these right, but some things just trip me up sometimes. Al Brazle is pronounce "Brazz-il" and I did say it right the first time in the video, but the second time I used his name I said "Bray-zil." I also struggled a bit with Kwajalein as it was just one of those words I just couldn't get out right with my accent (think German trying to say squirrel). I think I got close, but even right now I don't know if I said it right or not.
I'm 18 seconds in and paused to read this and I'm pumped to watch it! I also learned something as I'd have bet money it was officially Senators! And not covering the Negro Leagues is valid criticism I suppose, but this isn't the MLB Network! You're a content creator putting in hours and hours of work for the love of baseball and to entertain. I appreciate your work and maybe one day in the future you can make a part two that gives the Negro Leagues and Women's League the time they deserve. Until then, thank you and keep it up!
@@dancolonna6590too bad his documentary isn’t free on yt. Lame- that kind of precious material that should be available for all. It touches on so many aspects of our life that you’re bound to learn something.
YES!!! Thank you for dropping this. I’ve looked into it so much and there isn’t a single video (at least I’ve found) that goes in depth in this short era of baseball history
Every baseball documentary about the 40s does the same thing. Covers 1941 in detail with the 3 big storylines (DiMaggio hit steak, Williams hitting .400, Brooklyn's Dem Bums), mentions Pearl Harbor and some big players leaving for the military (DiMaggio, Greenberg, Feller, Williams), mentions Pete Grey, maybe mentions Gedeon and O'Neill, then cuts straight to 1946 as if the league didn't exist and turns the focus to Jackie Robinson. This was by far my most difficult video to make not only because how expansive of a topic it is, but just how little information is out there. There's also VERY little video footage of 1942-1945 major leagues, minor leagues, and military teams playing baseball. I forced myself to learn Google Earth just to be able to put something on screen.
Why does baseball get all the best videos? I don't even like baseball but their video essays are like 10x better than all the dorks sitting in a computer chair yelling strait into the camera about basketball trade rumors.
since the sport is so storied it happens to coincide with a lot of world history. NHL started in 1917, NFL started in 1920, NBA started in 1949, but then you look at the MLB. It started in 1876, making it the oldest by 41 years. so by the time these sports were finally well known, baseball had already been America’s game.
@@joshuawoods4039 a lot of america grew up around baseball in the way that basketball and football didn't (we'll ignore hockey as its mostly a canadian phenomenon in the zeitgeist despite it being my preferred sport). Reality is football didn't hit high level mainstream until the 1960s though there's a lot you can say about it. Reality is baseball players were household names whereas nobody knew football players in the same way.
Baseball has always attracted the best nerds and dorks, like I'm huge in football RU-vidrs, but the baseball guys are more like idk the guy obsessed with stats, and stuff and just so thorough.
Just more and more proof that baseball has some of the most dedicated sports fans ever. The amount of research this required must've been mind nunbing, and this video on top of that is definitely the best in show for the information it's presenting. Amazing video as always.
As a massive baseball fan and veteran, I was moved by this video in a powerful way. I've been watching your stuff for a while and this was one of, if not the best, Baseball YT video I've seen. Thank you for making it.
I would like to say, despite the general underperformance of this video, I'm really really glad that it did get made. These kinds of deep dives into unique circumstances in sports history are always fascinating, and this is no exception. Thank you for putting in the effort required to make it.
That ending monologue was the best piece in the history of this channel. Nowadays half the country refuses to even associate with the other half and is more content in their hatred. It shouldn’t take a war to make everything that simple
Here's a fun fact, after the 1941 season the St. Louis Browns had proposed a relocation to Los Angeles for the 1942 season. The voted needed a majority approval by the 8 American League owners. Expected to pass, the vote was scheduled for December 8, 1941. After the events of the previous day, with aircrafts and aircraft supplies needed for the new war effort, the vote was rejected 8-0 with the thought that air travel was more necessary for the war than to fly teams to Los Angeles.
1960 Ballot Measure in Portland, OR to build the Delta Dome at our Delta Park if passed. In 1959, Green Bay Packers who sucked at the time, said if measure passed, they'd move to Portland. Measure narrowly defeated, and Green Bay, WI got all those championships.
Hank Greenberg what a beast! You brought back fond memories of reading the books from the school library about baseball, instead of paying attention in junior high lol
These last two videos have given myself, a baseball neophyte living in the UK who started following the Mariners in 2020, a fantastic overview of the last 85 years in MLB history. I truly appreciate the time, effort and craft that has gone into producing these wonderful documentaries. Thank you Baseball's Not Dead for the countless hours of education and entertainment.
Hey BND, a while back I got into historical OOTP sims because of your livestreams. It was honestly surreal to see one of my franchises goats, Warren Spahn, talk about his time with the engineers trying to keep the bridge from being destroyed. And in such high quality too. Very sobering to see the human side of the war like that. Thank you for all your hard work into making this video
This is an incredible piece-informative, interesting, and even moving at the end when you extend the scope a bit. I knew only the most superficial details about this era before, and as you say, the stories here could more than fill a ten-hour documentary, but you balanced everything beautifully here. Thank you for your work to compile, organize, and synthesize this for us to watch.
I hope you’re blessed with more time to make videos. You do such a good job. Baseball fans and RU-vid as a whole would benefit greatly for more content from you.
Awesome stuff my friend...this subject has always interested me. My grandfather met Ted Williams on an airbase in Korea and it was one of the highlights of his life
Absolute banger of a documentary, really can see all the effort and detail put into this video. Don't think I've ever not liked any of your videos but this one was particularly insanely well done.
What a wonderful documentary. I knew certain players had been in the war but never heard their testimonies so felt a great deal of emotion hearing their first hand accounts. God bless everyone who fought for our freedom and sincere thanks for making such a high quality film on a subject many will not know about.
Thanks! Clearly not an amateur production the main streams and networks should pick this up. Should be the first thing Every player watches at the start of spring training right after acknowledging Curt flood. Keep up the good work, sir.
EXCELLENT video man! I hope this blows up, I love how in depth you cover this. I've never really seen this covered. From a Dodger fan, GL to your Mets, may the best team win :D
What they don't tell you about Hugh Mulcahy is that he threw all 325 of those innings in a single game. It was known as the "extra innings fiasco of 36". The game remained tied for over 5 days strait with many players collapsing on the field due to sleep deprivation. 13 brave players lost their lives during that game.
Baseball fan this is truly something I look forward to watching 5 times then all your best again at least once... Man you make me love baseball again an I'm a soxs fan redsoxs it's not black bad right now but still rough times
Was a little disappointed you didn't really touch on WWII's impact on the Negro Leagues. There are a couple stories there that could've been fun to fix in, like Leon Day winning the 1945 "G.I. World Series" with an integrated team, Jackie Robinson's wrongful court-martial at Fort Hood, or Satchel Paige trying to organize a strike at the 1944 east-west all star game. Though I suppose the video's already over an hour long long and super comprehensive enough as it is, lol. Really fantastic work.
I almost included Leon Day, but you have to make choices on what to include in a video like this. I'm not only not very well researched on the Negro Leagues during this time so it would've bloated the project pretty heavily with scope creep so decided to keep the video to Major League Baseball and its affiliates. Totally get any disagreement on that and it's good criticism.
@@BaseballsNotDead oh yeah, 100% understandable. cuts are inevitably gonna have to come from somewhere in order to keep a project like this manageable.
not sure if this was intentional, but regardless the repeat of the 2nd strain of colonel bogey at 38:22 coming in right as you talk about how stan musial was dominating the league is such a fun moment! great video as always
Thoughtful and well researched. At 90m I can only guess at the effort that went into this, and bravo. Well done. I only _vaguely_ heard my brain play "I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night" during the film stock.
I was getting worried bc u hadn't posted in a while. Happy to see ur back. (Side note u should make some more shorter content.. I'd love to watch ur vids more often)
Great video as always, and I'm assuming you're a Mets fan considering the Mets hat on your logo? Good luck in the series, a subway series would be really fun to watch.
Minor correction on the Browns, they did lose at least one player to the war effort prior to 1945, and it was arguably their best player-in 1942 Wally Judnich put up over 5 WAR with an OPS+ above 150, and then missed the next 3 years in WW2. Regardless, still an excellent video, and we should not and cannot forget all that the soldiers of WW2, and even civillians, had to sacrifice.
Really annoying that I did that because I even had him highlighted on my spreadsheet which means "put him on the WAR going to War chart." i.postimg.cc/C5mV4V2L/Judnich.png
Wonderful video! One caveat is that you can’t say this is the history of baseball in WWII without mentioning the Negro Leagues. Many Negro League players fought and died during WWII. The war had a tremendous impact on the societal view of black Americans which later contributed to the integration of baseball in the later 1940’s. Even Jackie Robinson was drafted and then served during WWII, and I’m disappointed that such a rich history didn’t even get a mention. As said by MLB themselves, “Negro League is Major League”. An absolutely beautifully researched video and regardless, I truly enjoyed it!
Interesting fact: Japanese star pitcher Eiji Sawamura, who played the visiting American all-star team of 1934 and struck out Babe Ruth and other MLB power hitters, was drafted into the Imperial Japanese Army during WW2. He was killed in the Philippines when the transport ship he was on was torpedoed and sunk by American submarine. The present day NPB Sawamura Award (equivalent to MLB’s Cy Young Award) is named in his honor.
as a current active duty service member and huge baseball fan , this is a great video and really gives some insight to how things were back then , great work 👌
I would argue that war time is when baseball matters most. That it’s absolutely essential. A lot of good reasons were put forward in this vid, and they are all true. But keeping baseball going would, quite simply, give Americans a sense of normalcy, and make the population feel like Victory over the Axis was not only possible, but inevitable. It kept anxiety down among the masses.
I had a math class in college called "statistics through baseball," it was for Liberal Arts majors who just needed a math credit to graduate, was wonderful. For my final project I determined what Joe Dimaggios stats would have been(within a range) should he have played at an average rate of the years before and after going to war. That was the first half. The second half was figuring out, without doing the historical analysis of if there were any supply chain or other disruptions to change prices, how much a dozen red roses per week using the price from the first year adjusted by inflation over 20 years would have cost Joe for Marilyn's grave. pointless story but related.
Good lord, I would love a follow-up looking into Japanese side. The fact the Japanese equivalent of Cy Young died in wartime service should intrigue some around here at least.
These guy were a different breed. Could you imagine any of the stars of today leaving their multi-million dollar contracts to fight for their country? Maybe 1 or 2 outliers, but nothing like 1942. True heroes.
