[Topnotchsy]

Originally Posted by Scott Garner

I'm sorry Jeff, I suppose I am guilty as charged...

I was happy to finally be able to add a nice scorebook from game 4 of the 1944 Central Pacific Area Baseball Championship in Hawaii.
Originally the brainchild of Admiral Chester Nimitz, this WWII baseball championship pitted the Navy All-Stars vs. the Army All-Stars. Due to many MLB stars entering WWII to support the war effort, Nimitz realized that creating this Championship Series would be an excellent idea to entertain the troops and boost morale.

Game 4 was essentially the Series clincher for the Navy which ran the table mostly on the back of great pitching from two MLB pitchers that would hurl two no-hitters in a single season: Johnny "Double No-Hit" Vander Meer in 1938 and Virgil "Fire" Trucks in 1952. This game was attended by 10,000 enthusiastic servicemen that were fortunate enough to witness the game played on September 26th, 1944.
Here is a recap of the clinching 4th game of the series:

HONOLULU – Winning the first four games, the navy captured the mythical championship of the armed forces from the Army in the Pacific World’s Series, chiefly through superior pitching. Although the Bluejackets won the title by the sweep, the three other contests in the series were played for the benefit of men in other sections of this area.
A home run by Ken Sears in the first half of the twelfth inning at Fort Schofield, Oahu, clinched the third contest, 4 to 3, for the Navy, and the Bluejackets made it four straight at Naval Air Station, Kaneohe Bay on September 26th, 10 to 5.

Definitely can't begrudge you that one for your Vander Meer collection. The one's I won were the smaller ones (only 4 pages) and one was from a different series, but still definitely pleased to have won them. I find these programs and barnstorming programs to be extremely cool. On some level in my mind programs are really only for "official" games and it still surprises me sometimes when I come across these items that they even exist.

Congrats on a great pickup!