Washington DC Adult Entertainment: `Empire Strikes Out’ shows baseball’s deep ties to US foreign policy, military …
Written on February 8, 2010 – 3:01 pm | by larrylibido
Baseball fans will love the martial anecdotes throughout the book. During the War of 1812, a game among American prisoners ended in tragedy when a long hit prompted players to enlarge a hole in a wall to retrieve the ball, and English authorities, thinking they were trying to escape, killed seven of them.
Union and Confederate soldiers tossed a ball back and forth across Civil War front lines. Lights the Chicago Cubs planned to erect at Wrigley Field for the 1942 season were donated to the war effort, helping ensure the team would not play night games there until 1988. And soldiers from the 116th Infantry Regiment Yankees won the “World Series” of U.S. European Theater Operations forces during World War II.
As the sport gained popularity, American firms organized teams overseas to discourage labor unrest and distract employees from vices like booze and prostitutes. Some places weren’t so opposed to “baseball colonization,” however, since the game evolved and flourished — even becoming part of the national identity in Cuba, Japan and the Dominican Republic.