Naval War College hosts WWI period-accurate Army-Navy baseball game

By Ryan Belmore
via the What'sUpNewp web site

The Naval War College has announced that they will host a period-accurate baseball game between Army-Navy on Friday, September 29th at Cardines Field in downtown Newport, RI.

The program is designed as “a fun event” with educational programming to mark the centennial of American involvement in World War I, and is being organized in close collaboration with Naval History and Heritage Command, the Congressional World War Centenary Commission, and the City of Newport.

The Army-Navy baseball game will be played in period-accurate uniforms, and is a precursor to the opening of a new World War I exhibit at the Naval War College Museum this December. The gates to Cardines Field will open at 4:30 pm and all are welcome to attend this free event.

Historical Context

As the United States mobilized for the First World War, baseball loomed large in the American effort on the domestic front and abroad. Admiral William S. Sims, Commander, U.S. Naval Forces in Europe, issued orders for Navy warships to establish baseball teams to play Army teams on the western front to rally Anglo-American collaboration in Europe.

“Admiral Sims was a very creative strategic thinker,” observed Dr. David Kohnen, Director of the John B. Hattendorf Center for Maritime Historical Research and the Naval War College Museum. “When American forces arrived in Ireland, the Irish disliked the Americans for supporting the British.”

Kohnen also noted that “many British also viewed the American forces with skepticism … because many of the ‘bluejackets’ [sailors] and ‘doughboys’ [soldiers] of the American army and navy were also of Irish and German ancestry.” In the British newspapers of the era, “American troops were sometimes portrayed as an invading force.”

For this reason, Sims used the Anglo-American Baseball League to demonstrate the uniquely American “national pass time” of baseball. “Not only did baseball provide a diversion from the horrors of war,” Kohnen observed, “but baseball also demonstrated a unique American identity … through baseball, Sims attempted to show that our troops and sailors were no longer German, or Irish, or anything other than American.”

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