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 Baseball and the Military Photo Gallery

Memorial Day Tribute to Baseball and the Military:

1917 White Sox In Military Formation

On this Memorial Day, as we honor those who answered the call to serve their country and made the ultimate sacrifice, we remember that major league baseball has a great connection to the military. Over the years, many major leaguers – including some of the game’s biggest stars – have served in the military, both in peacetime and during war, often sacrificing valuable years of their careers to military service. I’ve included some of the more notable ones in the photo gallery above.

Don’t be fooled by those World War I era doughboy uniforms in the featured photo. Those guys are actually members of the 1917 White Sox, the team that was soon to become the 1917 World Series champions (see below for identifications).

Performing military drills on the baseball field allowed teams to show their support for the coming war effort. Once the “Great War” was underway, it was a way for them to avoid being seen as “slackers” – the common term at the time applied to those trying to avoid military service.

By the following year, 1918, with the War now in full swing and many of the best players in military uniform, baseball suffered through a shortened season and endured arguably the worst year of its existence. With the concurrent outbreak of the Spanish Flu, it was not at all certain that baseball would survive these two simultaneous broadsides. But survive it did…and all that would change with the Armistice ending the conflict, and the blossoming of a player named George Herman “Babe” Ruth into the country’s first megastar.

Baseball would be back to full strength and would soon be thriving as never before. But the tradition of ballplayers answering the call to duty would continue with the subsequent outbreaks of WWII, the Korean War, and Vietnam.

And so we say “Thank you for your service” to all our readers who are military veterans, and we especially pay tribute to those who did not come home. If you have a comment about a favorite player with a connection to the military, just post it in the comments section below. 

1917 White Sox Player Identifications

L-R: Ray Schalk, Jim “Death Valley” Scott, “Shoeless” Joe Jackson, John “Shano” Collins, Unidentified, Swede Risberg, Joe Jenkins, Pants Roland (Mgr.), Unidentified, Ted Jourdan, Eddie Murphy, Happy Felsch, Eddie Collins. Nemo Leibold is behind Hap Felsch, possibly Reb Russel behind Pants Roland, Eddie Ciccotte behind Ted Jourdan, and possibly Dave Danforth behind Risberg.

Gary Livacari

Photo Credits: All from Google search

We’d love to hear what you think about this or any other related baseball history topic…please leave comments below.

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