A .300 hitter as a rookie for the Tigers in 1943, Dick Wakefield finishes Navy air training and then is released from the service pending assignment. He rejoins the Tigers and will hit .355 the rest of the season, pushing Detroit near the flag despite the loss of 12 of its first 13 home games. In the first week after the All-Star Game, Wakefield homers twice, and goes 9 for 24.
Baseball cancels today’s scheduled eight-game slate due to the Allied invasion of Normandy known as D-Day. The military operation has 60,000 Allied troops, including six minor leaguers who will be killed in action, landing along a heavily protected 50-mile stretch of the coastline in France to fight Germany to begin an offensive assault against Hitler and the Nazi party.
On April 20, 1944, Elmer John Gedeon becomes the first major league player to lose his life serving in World War II. The 26-year-old Gedeon, who played briefly as an outfielder for the Washington Senators in 1939, dies when his plane is shot down over St. Pol, France. Gedeon served in the Army Air Corps…
1944 – Branch Rickey suggests the pooling of surplus players if major league 4F players are drafted for military service. Nothing comes of the suggestion.
Brooklyn Dodgers first baseman Howie Schultz is rejected by the United States military
1944 – Chicago White Sox shortstop Luke Appling reports for duty at Camp Lee, VA. Appling was the American League batting leader last season, finishing second in the Most Valuable Player Award voting.
The season starts, two weeks later than customary. Stalwarts such as Joe DiMaggio, Ted Williams, Enos Slaughter and Johnny Mize are gone to military service, among some 60 players who could have been classified as regulars in the 1942 season.
1943 – The Texas League announces it will suspend operations for the duration of the war. The St. Louis Cardinals, with 260 farm players in the service, will reduce farm clubs from 22 to 6. Only nine minor leagues will start the 1943 season. Advertisements for players appear in The Sporting News.
Joe DiMaggio of the New York Yankees enlists in the U.S. Army
1943 – Teams agree to start the season later than usual and prepare to train in northern areas because of World War II. Resorts, armories, and university facilities are chosen for training sites. The Boston Red Sox go to Tufts University; the Brooklyn Dodgers will train at Bear Mountain, NY, and the New York Yankees try Atlantic City, NJ. In Chicago, the Cubs and White Sox agree to start the season later than usual and prepare to train in areas north of the so-called Eastman-Landis Line, named after Joseph Bartlett Eastman, head of the United States Department of Transportation, and Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis – an area East of the Mississippi river and North of the Ohio and Potomac rivers. Meanwhile, the St. Louis teams, the Browns and Cardinals are excluded, though they will train in Cape Girardeau, MO.
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