The Yankees, the Dodgers and the Nazis

As the New York Yankees and Los Angeles Dodgers square off in this year’s World Series, old-timers recall the first time the two teams met in the Fall Classic, in 1941, a contest that involved one of baseball’s most famous plays. But that World Series was also connected to a long-forgotten episode in the controversy over whether or not the United States should confront Nazi Germany.

The Dodgers were still the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1941, and their manager was the irascible Leo Durocher. The Yankees won two of the first three games in that year’s World Series, but in the fourth game, the Dodgers were on the verge of tying up the series, carrying a 4-3 lead into the ninth inning.

With two out, no runners on base, and the Ebbets Field crowd about to explode in joy, Dodgers pitcher Hugh Casey threw what would have been the game-winning third strike. But catcher Mickey Owen mishandled the pitch, and batter Tommy Henrich reached first base safely. The Yankees proceeded to mount a rally to win the game, and then went on to win the series.

One might imagine that after such an agonizing loss in the third game, manager Durocher would have spent the evening immersed in strategizing for the next day’s game. Instead, he and Dodgers owner Larry MacPhail left the stadium and headed for Manhattan, to attend a huge event at Madison Square Garden.  Along with an array of Hollywood stars and other celebrities,Durocher and MacPhail spent the evening at “Fun to Be Free,” a political pageant and rally in support of U.S. military action against Adolf Hitler.

That was not a popular position to take in the early autumn of 1941, two months before Pearl Harbor.  Polls showed only about one-tenth of Americans were willing to go to war for any reason other than to fend off an invasion of the United States itself.

Most of the public believed domestic concerns required America’s full attention and that none of the nation’s resources should be diverted overseas.   The America First movement and other isolationist groups flourished.

But a minority of Americans vigorously disagreed with isolationism.  They established the Fight for Freedom movement, which advocated pre-emptive war against Hitler as the only way to preserve world peace.

The group’s “Fun to Be Free” event was held before a packed house of 17,000 at Madison Square Garden on October 5, 1941. It featured patriotic songs, skits mocking Hitler and Mussolini, and dramatic readings emphasizing the need for pre-emptive American military actionagainst the Nazis.

The pageant was authored by two of Hollywood’s most prominent screenwriters, Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, and produced by Oscar Hammerstein, Moss Hart, and George Kaufman, with music and lyrics by (among others) Irving Berlin and Kurt Weill.

The opening act featured Bill “Bojangles” Robinson tap-dancing on a coffin labeled “Hitler.” Then Carmen Miranda “sang in her well-known South American style,” as the New York Times put it, after which “Eddie Cantor, in a hoopskirt, and Jack Benny put on an Easter Parade act.”  Others who took part included such stars of stage and screen as Tallulah Bankhead, Melvyn Douglas, George Jessel, Ethel Merman, Helen Hayes, and Burgess Meredith.

Leo Durocher and Larry MacPhail not only attended “Fun to Be Free,” but participated in it, as well.  After Ella Logan sang “Tipperary,” McPhail walked onstage to give her a kiss, and Durocher rose and—according to the Times—“made a little speech to this effect: ‘We don’t want Hitlerism, we want Americanism.  And the Yankees are a great ball club.  Even if we lose, we’ll be losing in a free country’.”

In the midst of a World Series that should have completely consumed his attention, the manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers reminded the public, in his own inimitable way, that there are things which are more important than even a championship sports event.  That was true then, and it’s true today.

Out beyond the bleachers is a real world in which genocidal Iranian mullahs aspire to follow in Hitler’s footsteps. If the U.S. and its allies had taken pre-emptive action against Hitler—as the Fight for Freedom movement urged—tens of millions of lives would have been spared. Instead, appeasing Hitler led to catastrophe. Will the international community’s attempts to appease Iran lead to similar consequences in our own time?