Anne R. Keene - The Cloudbuster Nine

Copyright 2018 by Anne R. Keene

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

Cover design by Brian Peterson

Cover photo of Cloudbusters team and all photos in insert courtesy of The United States Navy Pre-Flight School (University of North Carolina) Photographic Collection #P0027, North Carolina Collection Photographic Archives, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, unless otherwise noted.

ISBN: 978-1-68358-207-6

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-68358-208-3

Printed in the United States of America

To every man and woman who has served our nation in uniform and to the members of the Cloudbusters baseball team.

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

Babes Yanklands Versus the Navy Pilots July 28, 1943

In mid-July 1943, the United Press wire service carried a report about a doubleheader like no other at Yankee Stadium. The story was about a team of budding fighter pilots from a North Carolina Navy base, scheduled to face a hodge-podge team of players culled from the New York Yankees and Cleveland Indians to raise funds for the Red Cross. This hand-picked major-league team was called the Yanklands, and they were going to be managed by the greatest baseball star in the galaxy, Babe Ruth.

The July 28 game was the second major War Relief game of the season organized by professional baseball to swell contributions to the war effort. After dismal attendance at a recent exhibition, Yankees president Ed Barrow turned to the one and only man who could pack the stadium to the rafters. The Bambino had hungered to manage a team for well over a decade and he viewed his Yanklands as a job audition, longing to return as the boss of everything, if only, for one day.

The Navy pilots wore generic wool jerseys, with NAVY stitched across the chests in blue letters and North Carolina patches on the sleeves. They played for a team with a quirky weather-inspired name known as the Cloudbusters, earning a reputation as one of the best service-league teams to step between the lines.

During the war, nearly twenty-five major-league players, including a few future Hall of Famers, found themselves in classrooms and on training fields at this naval base for pilots at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

In the season of 1943, the Cloudbusters played a grand total of 45 games, picked up in sports columns making their way to the South Pacific. By the end of the war, the teams name vanished from the headlines.

Cloudbusters players scheduled to face Babes Yanklands included Red Sox stars Ted Williams and Johnny Pesky, pitcher Johnny Sain and his Boston Braves teammate Lewis Buddy Gremp, an infielder, and Joe Coleman, a hurler from the Philadelphia Athletics. The captain of the team was Yankees first baseman and hometown favorite Buddy Hassett. Harry Craft, who won a 1940 World Series title with the Cincinnati Reds, played center field. Other Cloudbusters included former Red Sox, Yankees, and Reds outfielder Dusty Cooke, Ray Stoviak, who had played for the Phillies, Ed Moriarty, who had played for the Boston Braves, and former Senator Alex Sabo, who was scheduled to catch. Eddie Rommel, a contemporary of Ruths who was father of the modern knuckleball, was called in to umpire.

Without earning an extra dime, the flyboys defied gas and tire rationing, logging thousands of miles on cramped tin-can buses to play colleges and military teams. The Busters also played rag-tag collections of no-name ship builders and even factory workers who built the planes fighting in the war and they played some of the best professional outfits in North Carolina, including the darling of the Piedmont League, the Durham Bulls.

Near the end of the season, the Cloudbusters were thrilled to play at the House that Ruth Built, yet as the team barreled up the highway toward New York, its players could not help but wonder if they survived the war, would the Yanklands game be their swan song in a major-league park?

As soon as the Yankees organization announced the game, the media focused on two left-handed hittersBabe Ruth and Ted Williams.

Two of the worlds greatest hitters met in person for the very first time at Fenway Park on July 12, when Ted was cleared by the Bureau of Naval Personnel to appear at a special All-Star benefit with Ruth to raise funds for underprivileged kids.

When Babes trick knee acted up, he chopped at the ball like a bloated old codger, stomping off the field in a fit of frustration. In typical bulldog fashion Babe snorted around the locker room with a black cigar. With a hoarse voice, he swore to Boston Globe reporters Fred Barry and Mel Webb that his appearance at the All-Star Game would be his last.

Babes temper thawed after he threw back a few drinks that night at the Hotel Kenmore when he serenaded the crowd with Let Me Call You Sweetheart, bragging that his team was going to whip the Navy pilots at the end of the month.

To gin up ticket sales, the Yankees press office trumpeted Babes role as the pilot for his Yanklands. The St. Louis Post-Dispatchs Short Waves sports columnist hailed the retired home run kings patriotic return as a manager.New York Sun sportswriter Frank Graham, who had covered New York baseball since 1915, pumped out teasers about Cloudbusters who had worn the Yankees jersey, like Buddy Hassett, a hometown boy returning as a Navy Lieutenant and Dusty Cooke, coming back as a pharmacists mate third class.

But in times of war, military games could be cancelled for no specific reason and players could be detained on base at the last minute for training. Celebrity players faced the greatest scrutiny, and fans hearts sank when Williamss commanding officer announced that he would not make the trip to New York for reasons beyond his control.

As Yanklands gossip lit up the sports pages, the Cloudbusters stayed busy in North Carolina, training all day in a heat wave, taking classes, then loading up on the bus with aching bones to play double duty baseball at night. On July 24, the pilots rallied for five runs in the last two innings of a game against the Burlington Mills Weavers factory team, 94, before a crowd of 3,000 fans for their twenty-second victory in twenty-six games.

On July 27, UPI posted another news flash, confirming the names of twenty-two Yankees and Indians players chosen by Babe to man his Yanklands. When the Sultan of Swat announced that he might step in as player number twenty-three, papers blasted the news from the shores of Honolulu to the steel mills of Sandusky, Ohio.

During the war Babe Ruth was the ultimate patriotic symbol, ranging with the bald eagle and the American flag. He knocked on doors to raise Red Cross funds, sold war bonds over the radio, donated baseball films to the Navy and knew how to make an audience root for team U.S.A. Centered on the cover was an image of a Yankees slugger, bannered by an American eagle and a band of stars. A stable of companies promoting ballpark delights such as Guldens mustard, Schraffts chocolates and Beech-Nut gum purchased advertisements. The Yankees preferred hotels, such as The Hotel Astor and The Commodore advertised rooms at special rates for the game, and Benny Goodman, The King of Swing, promoted his rooftop orchestra beside Uncle Sams call-outs to buy war bonds.