Spring training for Hitler…
The other day I was watching the classic movie, The Great Escape, and it suddenly came to me, that the reason we won WWII was because of baseball. Try as they might, there’s no way the German guards could ever have broken Steve McQueen’s indomitable spirit in that prison camp, not even in the lonely confines of the “cooler,” so long as he had his glove and ball with him. And how many times have we seen one brave American soldier hurl a strike with a hand-grenade through a slit into an otherwise unassailable bunker, killing everyone inside and saving his buddies. I often think that if Adolf Hitler himself had come to know and understand baseball, had he learned to pitch instead of putsch, WWII and the Holocaust might have been avoided altogether. How might the world have been different today, if Hitler had played baseball instead of politics.
Like so many of our great American ball-players, Hitler was a country boy too, born in a rural part of Austria on the Inn river just before the turn of the century. He struggled as a youth, in fact, he later wrote a book titled “Mein Kampf,” which means my struggle or battle. Struggling is what ballplayers do best - when they go 0 for 30 at the start of a season, they don’t panic because they know it is just a slump, and they will soon break out of it. In Vienna Hitler studied to become an architect, but the Hapsburg world wasn’t ready for his neo-classical Roman knock-off ideas, so he headed north to Germany where folks were less imaginative. There he sat, dejected and no less unappreciated, while across the ocean American baseball fans screamed for unimaginative, Romanesque structures like Yankee Stadium, the House that Ruth built.
Hitler was a little guy, and we know from historical documents that he had good speed. He served in WWI in the German Army as a runner and was twice decorated for valor. And with a name like “Hit”-ler, he had lead-off written all over him. Had he packed his things after the war and followed the trail of emigrants north to Bremen, instead of stopping off in Munich for a beer, he would surely have found himself sitting in good company in steerage on a boat headed for the United States reading a copy of the New York Times - Sports page. And if Hitler got a kick out of seeing Paris for the first time, just think how excited the budding megalomaniac would have been to see the majestic skyscrapers of New York City appear over the horizon.
Sailing across the wide Atlantic Ocean would surely have been a humbling experience for him, and seeing that mighty Colossus, the Statue of Liberty standing in the harbor, with her lamp extended would have put a lump in his throat. It might even have cured the morbid anti-semitism festering inside him, when he read those great words written by a Jewish-American poet, Emma Lazarus that stand at the foot of the statue, words of welcome even for him.
The New Colossus
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
And she might have added, I’ll reserve a seat for them at Ebbet’s Field.
It might be said that all roads in America lead to Chicago, where the Cubs and the Sox play, but Hitler would have wanted better beer than the Pabst Blue Ribbon at the Chicago World’s Fair. If you go practically any direction out of Chicago you’re gonna end up in Wisconsin, and from there any German worth his hops could find his way to Milwaukee, the beer capital of America. As a young German immigrant ball-player Hitler would have found himself struggling once again but in good company, and eventually he would have made it out of Milwaukee to Pawtucket or Altoona, or Pittsburgh where the real beer drinkers grow their bellies.
Pittsburgh was where Wagner played. Hitler loved to listen to Wagner, but that was another Wagner. This son of Bavarian immigrants Wagner was the greatest shortstop to ever play the game and had a lifetime batting average of .327. Honus Wagner was inarguably the toughest guy to ever play ball, and Hitler would have had to look no further for evidence of a master race. Ty Cobb was tough, and probably had a lot of Aryan in him too, but when they met in combat for the first and only time, Cobb left town with a bloody mouth. It is little wonder that Honus Wagner’s tobacco trading card is the card most highly coveted by collectors today and recently sold for 2.35 million dollars at auction. And I’m keeping mine, so don’t ask me!
Sadly Hitler couldn’t have seen the great Honus Wagner play, even if he wanted to. He retired in 1917, though a lot of his records were still around. But who’s to say that, in this land of opportunity Hitler might not have cornered the market on Wagner’s trading card, picking them up practically for peanuts (or Cracker Jack). Eventually Hitler would have become a manager though. He was destined for that, being such a natural-born Fuehrer and leader of men. His tirades out on the field would have become legendary, and his long-winded post-game speeches would have filled pages and pages of script. Instead of despising him, we would celebrate him today in the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, along with Miller Huggins, Casey Stengel, Leo Durocher, Billy Martin and Earl Weaver, and all the other great, more vituperative Managers.
Hitler would have been a favorite with the fans in Pittsburgh, because he was all about offense. Attack, attack, attack. That would have been his motto. And the fans in Pennsylvania love that. But he would not have been so popular with the sports writers there - some of them like to see pitching and solid defense too. Hitler was not good at defense and wouldn’t have listened to his coaches. So years later there would have been no great defensive players in the Pirate system like Roberto Clemente, no Bill Mazeroski.
And nobody but nobody could have outslugged the Yankees in the 1920’s anyway. When the Bronx Bombers, Ruth and Gehrig came to town, it would have been Goetterdaemmerung all over again. Which goes to prove, there’s just no getting around history.
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