Play Ball! : Doughboys and Baseball during the Great War

Many major-league, Negro League, and minor-league ballplayers traded their team uniforms for Army khaki and Navy blue!

The in-depth story of the American Doughboys of the Great War and their tie to the National Pastime.

No other sporting contest so closely reflects the American psyche and culture than baseball. Its uniqueness comes from the fact that part of the game is clearly defined and unchanged since play first began, while another part of the game fluctuates and changes constantly.

And if baseball is the truest American game, the Doughboys of the Great War were its most loyal proponents. By 1918, there were over four million of them: two million in France fighting in the Meuse-Argonne Offensive and another two million in stateside training camps awaiting their turn to cross the Atlantic to the Western Front.

Playing wherever they could find enough room to throw a ball, they brought the game with them into the front lines and then into the occupation of Germany. Sharing their military service, in combat and on the baseball diamond, were a number of famous professional ballplayers, managers, lawyers, politicians, and even an umpire.

Baseball is the most American game. No other sporting contest so closely reflects the American psyche and culture. Its uniqueness comes from the fact that part of the game is clearly defined and unchanged since play first began, while another part of the game fluctuates and changes constantly. And if baseball is the truest American game, the Doughboys of the Great War were its most loyal proponents. By 1918, there were over four million of them: two million in France fighting in the Meuse-Argonne Offensive and another two million in stateside training camps awaiting their turn to cross the Atlantic to the Western Front. Playing wherever they could find enough room to throw a ball, they brought the game with them into the front lines and then into the occupation of Germany. Sharing their military service, in combat and on the baseball diamond, were a number of famous professional ballplayers, managers, lawyers, politicians, and even an umpire.