Museum exhibit features Navy connection to baseball – Kitsap Sun

By Ed Friedrich of the Kitsap Sun

BREMERTON — Bob Feller’s Hall of Fame pitching stats have a hole in them. The Hall of Famer’s career was interrupted by four years in the Navy during World War II. Rapid Robert saw action in the Pacific as a gunner on the battleship USS Alabama.

Feller wasn’t alone.

About 500 big league players traded their baseball uniforms for military uniforms during World War II, plus another 4,000 minor leaguers, according to a new exhibit at Puget Sound Navy Museum. “When Baseball Went to War” explores the history of Navy baseball from its earliest years in the 1800s through World War II.

A couple of wartime baseball books that arrived as part of a donation sparked curator Megan Churchwell.

“A sailor had taken them with him to World War II in the Pacific,” she said. “To me it really showed the human side of the sailors. Here are these guys out in the middle of the Pacific, but they were still thinking about baseball back home.”

Baseball and the Navy have been intertwined nearly since Abner Doubleday invented the game in 1839 in a Cooperstown, New York, cow pasture.

The exhibit shows the Naval Academy playing America’s game in the 1860s. The first ship-based teams formed in the 1880s. During the world wars, American soldiers and sailors spread the game around the world.

The exhibit traces Navy baseball chronologically around the room. Displays are mounted on walls painted to look like an outfield fence and the pattern of mowed grass. Cases contain old uniforms, gloves, baseballs and game programs. One features the Pasco Flyers versus the Army All-Stars on July 4, 1943, in Sicks Seattle Stadium. An old recruiting poster likens throwing a baseball to tossing a grenade.

A World Series broadcast plays in the background. The Navy sent balls and bats to sailors during World War II, disseminated statistics and provided radio broadcasts of major league games.

A touch screen features the Navy’s top wartime players, including Feller, Ted Williams and Seattle’s Fred Hutchinson.

“It was really a fascinating topic to explore,” Churchwell said. “It is not something you think of with the Navy, but there are a lot of connections to be drawn.”

The museum at 251 First St. is open 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. every day except Tuesday. Admission is free.