From the magic of an Atwater-Kent console radio, there in the living room, came an account of a pro football game. The Brooklyn Dodgers were playing the New York Giants. The signal, muddied by static, was being received in Baltimore as a boy vicariously kept telling himself he wanted to run with the speed and agility of a halfback named Ace Parker.
Then came a sudden interruption in the broadcast: The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Where? Pearl Harbor. It could have been in Chesapeake Bay or Puget Sound because Pearl Harbor was so little-known that few adults or adolescents knew its location.
But from that moment on, until the present, 50 years later, it has been inscribed in text and etched in the minds of all those who were alive as no other moment in American history.
The bombing set off a conflagration that touched every neighborhood and family across the nation. Some boys and men would never come home. And, among others who made it back, some would never be the same physically or mentally.
World War II forced an immediate change in what was a placid way of life, including the concept of sports and how they would be presented and played. International golf and tennis matches were canceled. The Olympics of 1940 already had been written off.
Following Pearl Harbor, the Rose Bowl game was moved from Pasadena, Calif., to Durham, N.C., for Jan. 1, 1942. It was feared a large crowd, concentrated on the West Coast, would offer an irresistible target for the Japanese to fire shells from surface craft or else deploy sabotage agents to plant bombs in the stadium.
The world was at war. And the nation united as never before. Would sports be suspended for the duration? President Franklin D. Roosevelt requested professional baseball continue as best it could for purposes of enhancing home front morale and to lift the spirits of the military. He wanted some things in America to resemble the status quo.
Major league baseball, facing travel restrictions, said it would conduct spring training north of the Potomac River. This sent teams scurrying for indoor facilities, which is why the New York Yankees were in Atlantic City, the Washington Senators at College Park, Md., the Brooklyn Dodgers at West Point, N.Y., the Chicago Cubs in French Lick, Ind., and the Baltimore Orioles, then of the International League, at Gilman School in suburban Roland Park.
Meanwhile, some athletes, but certainly not all, who entered the service were patronized with special consideration. They frequently got the opportunity to play for base teams, which meant an easement in their normal duties.
It became a matchup of egos as heads of various military installations state-side competed for winning teams. At Great Lakes (Ill.) Naval Station, now Hall of Fame fullback Marion Motley, then an apprentice seaman, was preparing to ship out.
"But Paul Brown, our coach, told the commandant he couldn't have the kind of a team he wanted if they were sending me to Fleet City, which was in Shoemaker, Calif.," recalls Motley. "My -- orders were suddenly changed. They held the train on the siding and had a detail of men search the baggage cars to find my sea bag. There must have been 1,600 bags and they all looked alike, except for the stenciling of name, rate and serial number."
The military academies, West Point and Annapolis, welcomed the transfer of eligible college athletes for officer training. Some remained true to their obligation but others, the day the war ended in 1945, resigned and returned to the carefree ways of campus life.
Baseball's major leagues remained intact but the minors suffered severely by lack of manpower. In 1940, there were 43 minor leagues; 41 in 1941 and only 10 in 1943 and 1944. Come 1946, the first year after the war, the total was back up to 42 while on the way to an all-time high of 59 in 1949, which included 464 teams and more than 9,000 players.
One of the remarkable stories of World War II was heavyweight champion Joe Louis, who put his crown on the line in two bouts for armed forces relief. Louis, a private, was making $21 a month but on those occasions, in 1942, turned over his total purses, $111,082, to charity.
During World War II, the National Football League was thrown for severe losses. The Cleveland Rams (now the Los Angeles Rams) suspended operation. That same year, 1943, the Pittsburgh Steelers and Philadelphia Eagles merged as the Steagles. And the next season, the Steelers and Cardinals combined forces to play as the Carpitts.
Veterans came out of retirement, such as Bronko Nagurski, Arnie Herber and Ken Strong. Sammy Baugh received a deferment because he raised beef cattle on his Texas ranch. But he arranged to fly to weekend games to quarterback the Washington Redskins.
Other players worked in war plants and the teams, to accommodate them, held practices late in the day or early
evening. Occasionally, members of the armed forces were given weekend leave to participate in a professional game, even before going overseas for combat.
Such an exception was Lt. Al Blozis, an ex-Georgetown tackle, who played for the New York Giants against the Green Bay Packers in the NFL championship on Dec. 17, 1944. Six weeks later, Jan. 31, 1944, Blozis was killed while on patrol in the Vosges Mountains of France.
So not all athletes in service had a soft touch. Some, in fact, insisted against it. An example: Pete Sivess, a towering pitcher who enlisted in the Navy. Sivess, who had been with the Philadelphia Phils and Orioles, was told he could pitch for a naval station team. But he rejected the idea. "I didn't join the service to play games," he said.
Ultimately, Sivess worked in naval intelligence, was sent to Europe and, after the war, was recruited by the CIA -- where he had a brilliant career. He was responsible for the debriefing of all Soviet defectors to the United States for a period of 25 years.
Some former players, professional, college and high school, never came home. They made the supreme sacrifice. Every team suffered losses. Pitcher Earl Springer and catcher Harry Imhoff were killed in battle and never had the chance to become Orioles.
College football, too, received a war-time setback. More programs were shut down than continued. Schools with officer training units were able to sustain football but their lineups changed weekly as personnel transferred via official order changes. One player suited up for three different teams in the same season in the Southwest Conference.
The University of Maryland persevered as best it could. Squads comprised students who had been rejected for physical reasons, young players under 18 still not called for duty and an occasional war vet who had been wounded and discharged.
In 1943, Maryland had to face an all-pro line when it met the Bainbridge Naval Training Station. It lost 46-0 and the periods were cut to 10 minutes as an act of mercy. As with Bainbridge, other installations fielded strong teams, such as Great Lakes, Norfolk Navy, Fleet City, Randolph Field, Iowa Pre-Flight, North Carolina Pre-Flight and the El Toro Marines.
At the professional level, athletes were deferred for medical reasons or if they were performing jobs essential to the war effort. War-time baseball wasn't a total loss since players such as George Kell and Hal Newhouser proved they could play when most of the established major leaguers returned in 1946.
In the early 1940s, some major-league teams had talented young players and no place to send them because of limited farm fTC clubs. The Boston Braves, for instance, signed Tom Lind, a shortstop from Mount St. Joe. Minor-league rosters were filled, so Lind roomed with a scout, Jeff Jones, in Boston and worked out with the Braves daily before he entered the Navy and played baseball at Treasure Island and San Diego.
For civilian athletes in war time, equipment was scarce. Manufacturers were making gun stocks and boots rather than baseball gloves and bats. It wasn't unusual for a sporting goods store to not have a single glove, bat, basketball or football for sale.
Some strange sports stories evolved. A friend, Tom Miller, crashed a Navy plane in training and during recuperation from injuries visited Philadelphia. While walking along S. 17th Street, he was attracted to a window display -- pictures of Philadelphia Eagles players.
The door of the office opened and a man asked Miller if he had ever played football. That afternoon, Miller tried out with the Eagles, made superb catches and was signed to a contract after being recruited, literally, off the street by Bert Bell, later to be NFL commissioner. Miller spent five years with the Eagles and Green Bay Packers and then became an official of the latter club.
Pearl Harbor and what it precipitated meant things would never be the same. Sports seemed so frivolous, insignificant. The fury of the bombs made an indelible impression on America. Sports, in most instances, were kept in low-key perspective as they struggled to survive.