IN FOCUS - MEMORIAL DAY SPECIAL

 

Jim Koenigsberger                             @Jimfrombaseball 

 

"And a guy with a Cubs hat and his fatigues gets off and works his way down to the pontoon. Low and behold it’s Ernie Banks. So, the Captain  decides we’re gonna scrounge some steaks and beer from the Navy and we’re gonna have a steak fry.

The first thing Ernie did when he hit the  pontoon, was take his shirt off ‘cause it was hot as blazes. He left his Cubs hat on and he hollered out he says,

"Is this anybody here from  Chicago?"

And he looks around and he hollered out well he says, "Anybody  here from Wisconsin?"

Well I waved my hands you know and I says ya I’m from Wisconsin. A Navy guy that came running up and he had a  Polaroid camera. Ernie put his arms around me and Doc Soul. And the Navy guy took that photo. I’m a Cubbies fan"

Jerry “Doc” Schuebel

9th Infantry, Mekong Delta, 1968

"Doc" Soul, left, was killed in combat.

"46 years later, somebody asked me, "Doc", when were you in Vietnam??

I said last night."

 

"When I left for the Army, the Giants had been a first-place club. While I was away, they were little more than mediocre. I planned to turn this  around right away.”

Willie Mays trades spikes for Army Boots While playing for a service team at Fort Eustis, where he developed what soon became his trademark “basket catch.

"If I live to be a hundred, I will never forget the return of Willie Mays. We were out on the field playing an intrasquad game early in spring training. Mays had gotten out of the Army a couple of weeks before we expected, taken a plane right to Phoenix, gone right to the clubhouse and put on his uniform. First batter hits a tremendous drive. No chance whatsoever to get it. You know very well what happened. Willie got it. First time up, hits a single. Before the games over, he wallops a home run."

Leo Durocher

Before Willie Mays went into the Army, he averaged 41 home runs per 270 games. In 1954, his first season after coming back, he averaged 73 home runs per 270 games.

If we split the difference, Willie Mays would hit 56 HR`s in  those 270 games. Add 56 to 660 and... 716 home runs, two more than Ruth.

 

"After what I went through overseas, I never thought of anything I was told to do in baseball as hard work. You get over feeling like that when you spend days on end sleeping in frozen tank tracks in enemy threatened territory.

The Army taught me something about challenges, about what’s important and what isn’t. Everything I tackle in baseball and in life I take as a challenge rather than work."

Lieutenant Warren Spahn

276th Engineer Combat Battalion

The 276th received a Presidential Unit Citation for its actions at Remagen

 

Moe Berg travelled to Switzerland to attend a lecture by the eminent German physicist Werner Heisenberg. Berg`s mission was to determine how close the Nazis were to an operational atomic bomb, and if they were close, Berg was to shoot Heisenberg and then kill himself.

But after listening to the lecture, Berg decided they were not all that close, and his mission was aborted. Instead of killing him, Berg walked Heisenberg back to his hotel, picking his brain about physics along the way.

For his work with the OSS during World War 2, Berg was awarded the "Medal of Freedom".

Moe Berg turned it down!!

"Maybe I’m not in the Cooperstown Baseball Hall of Fame like so many of my baseball buddies, but I’m happy I had the chance to play pro ball and am especially proud of my contributions to my country. Perhaps I could not hit like Babe Ruth, but I spoke more languages than he did" Moe Berg

"I know Moe, that you are in counterintelligence, which, I assume, means you are against intelligence"

Red Smith interviews Moe Berg

"Moe Berg could speak 8 languages, but he couldn't hit in any of them"

Ted Lyons

“If he wasn’t real, you’d have to invent him"

 

"I was in the game for love. After all, where else can an old-timer with one leg, who can't hear or see, live like a king while doing the only thing I wanted to do?"

Bill Veeck

In 1943, Bill Veeck considered military service. Given his economic and celebrity status, he was offered a safe promotion and an officer’s commission in the Army or Navy. Because of his sense of fair play and being a man who turned away from privilege, he turned it down and enlisted into the United States Marine Corps as a private.

Veeck remained dedicated to the war effort by demanding to be sent to a war zone. The next spring, he was stationed in the South Pacific Island of Bougainville. While there, one of his greatest sacrifices was when his right leg was crushed by a recoiling artillery piece.

His WWII wound would never fully heal, and in 1946, after a series of  infections, Bill Veeck's right leg was amputated nine inches below the  knee.

This would be the first of thirty separate amputations, as the leg  would slowly deteriorate over the rest of his life

Veeck received a Purple Heart for his injuries.

 

"I saw a lot of men wounded with severe injuries. Lose legs, guts hanging out, stuff like that. It’s a tough thing, but you get hardened to it, and you accept it as part of your being there."

Lou Groza

Groza was sent with the 96th Infantry Division to serve as a surgical technician in Leyte, Okinawa, and other places in the Pacific theater in 1945, The day he landed in the Philippines, Groza saw a soldier shot in the face. He was stationed in a bank of tents about five miles from the front lines and helped doctors tend to the wounded.

Following his discharge from military service, Groza reported to the Browns' training camp in Bowling Green, Ohio. He showed up in army fatigues carrying all his clothes in a duffel bag.

 

“I’m going back in. We are in trouble & there is only one thing left to do, return to service. I have not been called back, I am going back of  my own accord.”

Hank Greenberg

Was the first major league baseball drafted and called-up for WWII  service. Deployed to China in `43, returned back stateside in`44,  discharged in`45.

In total, Hank Greenberg's military career lasted  about 50 months, at the height of his baseball career.

"The first day that Hank Greenberg was in the army, he and the other recruits were lined up and the Sergeant immediately began spouting some anti-Semitic  remarks like "I don't want no Goldbergs & no Cohns in my unit."

Whereupon Hank raised his hand and says,

"My name is Greenberg".

The Sergeant looks at Hank, 6-3, 6-4, 230 and says "I didn't say anything about Greenbergs." Dick Schaap

 

“Stan Musial was one of my favourite ballplayers because he treated everybody the same, black or white, superstar or scrub, and he genuinely loved the game. When he and I were part of a group of players who toured Vietnam, Stan Musial became the first white man I ever roomed with. For my money, Stan was the greatest gentleman in the game."

"I Had a Hammer"

Hank Aaron Joe Torre, Hank Aaron, Harmon Killebrew, Brooks Robinson, Stan Musial.

My Tho, 1966

 

"There were times, when you were flying up there and realized, that all you were doing was practicing death."

Yankee`s Jerry Coleman smoking a cigarette in the Yankees locker room after learning he had been called to active duty for the Korean War, 1952.

During WWII, Coleman flew 57 aerial combat missions in the SBD  Dauntless, receiving two Distinguished Flying Crosses and seven Air Medals.

When the Korean War began, Coleman returned to active Marine Corps duty, flying 63 additional aerial combat missions in the F4U & AU1 Corsair,  including close air support & interdiction/strike missions.

Legend and Hero!!

 

Yogi Berra joined the Yankees in 1946, fresh out of the Navy, where he had served for three  years during WWII.

Berra went to Yankee Stadium still wearing his Navy uniform and the first person he met was Yankee clubhouse man Pete Sheehy.

"I bet I don’t look much like a ballplayer", Berra told Sheehy.

Sheehy replied, "You didn’t look much like a sailor, either."

"Big Pete" Sheehy was the equipment manager for the Yankees from age 17 until his death at age 75. When Lou Gehrig realized his career was over, he flipped his glove to Sheehy and said "I’m done, Pete"

Sheehy was the man who issued Mickey Mantle # 7, after Mantle was recalled from Kansas City so he could get a new start rather than given his original # 6.

Berra & Sheehy, 1983

Written by USAF SGT. JOHN MACKIN ADE 

AF12706134   Top Secret Clearance

1964-1968

1964 - basic training,  Lackland AFB, TX

             Fire Control/Nuclear schooling  - 

                  Lowry AFB, CO.

1965 - 1967 - Training,  Eglin AFB, FL

1968 - Tan Son Nhut AFB, Saigon, The Republic of Viet Nam

             Clark AFB, The Philippines  

              Upon AFB, Thailand 

1968-1970 - Air Force Reserve