During World War II, after the death and destruction from the Dec. 7 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the highest-level baseball was played on Hawai‘i, and reached its apex during the 1944 Army-Navy Pineapple World Series.
To provide as much entertainment as possible and to boost morale for their fellow servicemen and the Hawai‘ian community, the teams agreed in advance to play all seven games even if the series’ outcome had been decided earlier. An additional four games were later added, making the series an 11-tilt affair.
In 1944, the Army and Navy squads had more than 60 players who were either on or would be on Major League Baseball rosters; by 1945, the total grew to 150.
Eventual Hall of Famers on the Army and Navy teams included Joe DiMaggio, Hank Greenberg, Johnny Mize, Stan Musial, Pee Wee Reese, Phil Rizzuto and Ted Williams.
The Pittsburgh Pirates’ seven-time home run leader Ralph Kiner’s baseball playing time was limited. His duties piloting a PBM patrol bomber flying boat for 1,200 hours out of Kaneohe Naval Air Station kept him off the diamond.
Patriotism motivated some players like Kiner and Greenberg.
DiMaggio, however, intensely resented the war. In his book, Joe DiMaggio, a Biography, author David Jones wrote that although the great Yankee Clipper never came within a thousand miles of a battlefield, the war robbed him of his prime baseball years.
When he first donned his Army uniform, DiMaggio was a 28-year-old superstar. Discharged three years later, he was 31, underweight, malnourished, divorced and bitter. His three lost World War II years robbed DiMaggio of peak earnings and a chance to add to his already HOF statistics.
As Gary Bedingfield chronicled in his wonderful book, Baseball in Hawai‘i during World War II, for both native Hawai‘ians and American servicemen, baseball was a way of life.
In the New York Mirror, sports reporter Bob Considine wrote: “There’s probably more sports played here per capita than anywhere on the mainland.” He commented on the “bewildering number of leagues ranging through sandlot, schools, industrials, semi-pro, racial, etc.”
The Hawai‘i League, which dated back to 1920, included teams like the All-Chinese, the Asahi Rising Suns, and the All-Haole or Caucasian Wanderers.
Plantation baseball was intensely competitive with pineapple, sugar cane and coconut growers fielding teams, and giving players days off to prepare. Winning could result in celebratory days off, but bosses viewed losing as an intolerable embarrassment.
The Pineapple World Series was the logical culmination of a Hawai‘i passionate about baseball, an abundance of available top-flight players, and the historic Army-Navy rivalry that dates back to the two academies’ football game first played in 1890.
On Sept. 22, 1944, at historic Furlong Field with its wooden bleachers and swaying palm trees, 20,000 fans and thousands more listening over Armed Forces Radio waited with anticipation as Detroit Tigers pitcher Virgil “Fire” Trucks took the mound for Navy.
Williams had named Trucks as one of the five pitchers he most hated to bat against. The others: Eddie Lopat, Bob Feller, Bob Lemon and Purple Heart recipient Hoyt Wilhelm.
Trucks pitched a four-hit, complete game shutout, 5-0, and gave Navy a 1-0, series lead. Navy reeled off five more consecutive wins, and took a commanding 6-0 Series lead. Once 11 games were in the history book, Navy had dominated, 9-2-1.
The Navy standouts were Rizzuto, .387; Reese, .350; and Mize, .450.
Trucks later recalled that the Army was initially thought to be the superior team. But Adm. Chester Nimitz recruited Navy superstars from the mainland, and those players provided the sailors with the winning edge.
When peace at last came to Hawai‘i, baseball continued to thrive; military leagues survived into the mid-1970s. The Lopat All-Stars arrived in 1946, and the New York Yankees, Brooklyn Dodgers and St. Louis Cardinals played exhibition games that thrilled locals.
The Pacific Coast League Sacramento Solons, transferred to Hawai‘i, became the Hawai‘i Islanders, and enjoyed huge popularity for their 18 seasons even though they played their home games at the dilapidated but lovingly named the “Termite Palace.” Found to be “severely termite-damaged” and unsafe, the stadium closed after the 1973 Hula Bowl game.
Although the circumstances under which World War II baseball was played were tragic — more than 1 million Americans killed, wounded or captured — the entertainment value it provided the soldiers, the players and fans provided ongoing comfort during a period of deep trial and tribulation.
— Joe Guzzardi is a member of the Society for American Baseball Research and the Internet Baseball Writers Association of America who now lives in Pittsburgh. He can be reached at guzzjoe@yahoo.com, or follow him on Twitter: @joeguzzardi19. Click here to read previous columns. The opinions expressed are his own.