War and Baseball

[bjcunningham]

Usually when I think of baseball in wartime, I think of the Civil War, or the end of WWII, like in the final scenes in HBOs Band of Brothers. Civil War has its Abner Doubledays and WWII had Ted Williams and Bob Feller, leaving teams to fight overseas. Cobb and Mathewson and Alexander and Branch Rickey get the marque billing in WWI, but there were quite a few other MLB players fighting, like HOFers Herb Pennock and George Sisler. Eddie Grant was a war hero. From the T206 cards, Gabby Street served as well. In any case, I had never really thought of WWI as a war where there was an easy downtime (ie, trench warfare) or easy access to equipment to actually play a game. (Though, I have seen some photos of a Navy vs Army pick up game in Rome.)

Picked this up this week as a reminder of those veterans. Nobody of note, I suspect, but looks like they had some equipment and the leisure time to spend outside. I think it was created in France, as the back reads, "Carte Postale". Please share if you have similar memorabilia.