These letters, memos, and endorsements pertain to Boston Red Sox baseball players serving in the Naval Reserve Force during World War I.

In the winter of 1917-1918, Red Sox owner Harry M. Frazee had petitioned both Commandant of the Boston Navy Yard, Captain William R. Rush, and Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Franklin D. Roosevelt, for the release of Yeoman John J. "Jack" Barry, the team's manager and second baseman, as well as Yeoman George E. "Duffy" Lewis, the team's left fielder, so that they might be available to play in the 1918 season. Barry and several other players were stationed at Boston Navy Yard, while Lewis was stationed at Mare Island Navy Yard in Vallejo, California.

In his letter to Assistant Secretary Roosevelt, Frazee stated that 12 of his players had enlisted in either the Army or Navy following the conclusion of the 1917 season, and expressed concerns about maintaining a competitive team and financially viable business investment in their absence. Frazee wrote, “Although I would like to have the services of several of the other players whom I have lost, I do not feel that in this hour of our country’s crisis I ought to ask it, and I am only too happy to know that the Boston club has been able to provide so many good men and stands in the front rank of all the base ball clubs in America as having contributed the largest number of men, twelve in all.”

The 1918 season was cut short due to the war. Despite most of the players declining to seek leave to play "league baseball," the Red Sox won the 1918 World Series, their third championship in four years.

Five weeks after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and the United States entered World War II, Commissioner of Baseball Kenesaw Mountain Landis wrote President Franklin D. Roosevelt asking whether major league baseball should be played. Here, President Roosevelt responds affirmatively with personal hope in what is known as the “green light” letter. President Roosevelt suggested “that it would be best for the country to keep baseball going.”

This document is featured in "Baseball: The National Pastime in the National Archives," a free eBook from the National Archives.

Transcript

[Handwritten, circled] 227

January 15, 1942

My dear Judge:-

Thank you for yours of January fourteenth. As you will, of course, realise the final decision about the baseball season must rest with you and the Baseball Club owners -- so what I am going to say is solely a personal and not an official point of view.

I honestly feel that it would be best for the country to keep baseball going. There will be fewer people unemployed and everybody will work longer hours and harder than ever before.

And that means that they ought to have a chance for recreation and for taking their minds off their work even more than before.

Baseball provides a recreation which does not last over two hours or two hours and a half, and which can be got for very little cost. And, incidentally, I hope that night games can be extended because it gives an opportunity to the day shift to see a game occasionally.

As to the players themselves, I know you agree with me that individual players who are of active military or naval age should go, without question, into the services. Even if the actual quality of the teams is lowered by the greater use of older players, this will not dampen the popularity of the sport. Of course, if any individual has some particular aptitude in a trade or profession, he ought to serve the Government. That, however, is a matter which I know you can handle with complete justice.

Here is another way of looking at it -- if 300 teams use 5,000 or 6,000 players, these players are a definite recreational asset to at least 20,000,000 of their fellow citizens -- and that in my judgment is thoroughly worthwhile.

With every best wish,

Very sincerely yours,

Hon. Kenesaw M. Landis,
233 North Michigan Avenue,
Chicago,
Illinois.