World War II and Baseball - Playing With The Enemy by Gary W. Moore

Imagine, if you will, playing baseball as a teenager on a farm-town ballclub for fun. A Major League Baseball scout, after watching you play, offers you the dream of a lifetime - the opportunity to play baseball professionally. Dad is not too keen on the idea, but you dream about it anyway. Then war breaks out, and your dream must be put on hold, only to escape you.

After a tour across the world, during the latter portion of your service in the U.S. Navy, while you still dream of the Big Leagues, you are tasked with guarding war prisoners - secret war prisoners that nobody knows about - and you are sworn to secrecy regarding your duty as a guard. You watch them through the fence, realize they are not a whole lot different than you, and out of boredom decide to get a bunch of friends together to challenge the prisoners to a little game of baseball . . . but the prisoners don't know how to play, so you must teach them the game as well.

Imagine a friendship developing between you and a prisoner. Imagine a friendship game being played between the players of the two countries. Imagine that the enemy is a group of hardened submarine sailors from Nazi Germany, and their capture is a part of a secret so secret that you can't even tell your family years later what it was all about. . . but it is a secret that was an instrumental part of the allied win in World War II.

This is the tale of Gene Moore from Playing With The Enemy by Gary W. Moore, and Gary, his son (and the author), is our guest tonight on Political Pistachio Radio.