Bader Field of Dreams

NEWS & VIEWS > WALTZ THROUGH TIME

It was the spring of 1945 and the Yankees played the Red Sox — in Atlantic City.

By Jim Waltzer

Add Comment | Comments: 0 | Posted Mar. 16, 2011

Ted Williams of the Boston Red Sox and Joe DiMaggio of the New York Yankees were in the service when their respective teams played spring training games in Atlantic City and nearby Pleasantville.

EXTRA!

By Parkland Nyce

Dateline — Atlantic City, March 1945

Perhaps the fiercest rivalry in Major League Baseball is on display this Spring Training, as the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox duel in a busy series split between the teams’ respective Grapefruit League ball fields. The Bombers, installed for the second straight year at Bader Field (which doubles as Atlantic City’s civic airport), hope to rebound from last season’s third-place finish and regain their accustomed spot at the top of the AL heap. The New Englanders, newly arrived to the pleasant precincts of Pleasantville, aim to capture a flag for the first time since they dealt one George Herman Ruth to the pinstriped outfit that has dominated ever since.

Gentlemen, limber up those throwing arms! Shake the dust-worms off the lumber! Get out in that seashore sunshine and begin your march to the pennant.

OK, so there was no Parkland Nyce, and the windy copy above is appearing for the very first time right now in your Atlantic City Weekly. But the Yanks and Sox really did conduct Spring Training here in 1945, and faced each other in eight exhibition games before departing for even colder climes to the north. No vintage brochure could transform Atlantic City into a land of grapefruits during the month of March.

The teams were here not because they preferred the bracing chill, but due to Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis’s mandate that Spring Training be held north of the Potomac River. There was a war on and, beginning with the 1943 season, the formidable Landis, who almost singlehandedly had restored baseball’s integrity in the wake of the Black Sox Scandal a quarter century earlier, had restricted the ball clubs’ travel to conserve gasoline and let the railroads concentrate on transporting troops. The former federal judge had died the previous November, but his ruling remained.

So as World War II raged overseas, Boston and New York played ball in the salt air. After a spring fling in Asbury Park in 1943, the Yankees had moved south to Atlantic City and were now in their second campaign at Bader Field. After two springs in forbidding Medford, Mass., the Red Sox picked Pleasantville, where they tuned up at Ansley Field, which sat behind the old, red-brick Pleasantville High School and overlooked the bay (Ansley Boulevard ran nearby.) The unfenced field, eventually renamed for Major Leaguer and native Ty Helfrich, included a grandstand that accommodated about 500 fans.

Perhaps the Red Sox figured they’d keep tabs on the Yankees by becoming a springtime neighbor. It certainly made sense for the two teams to test each other in multiple exhibition contests. Travel, after all, would be at a minimum the late Judge Landis would have given a thumbs-up.

The two clubs planned a nine-game series and came up one short. Player-manager Joe Cronin, a future Hall of Famer and American League president, sent right-hander Rex Cecil to the mound to face the Yankees on March 29, and the winning Red Sox backed their second-year pitcher with a dozen runs in the opening exhibition game before a crowd of more than 5,000 at Bader Field. The next day, the Yankees returned the favor with 14 hits for a 13-2 victory. Yankee second-baseman George “Snuffy” Stirnweiss, who would win the AL batting title that season, smacked a home run.

In the third game at Bader on consecutive days, the hitting barrage continued — this time on both sides — as the Yankees emerged a wind-blown 15-14 winner with two runs in the ninth inning. After splitting a pair with the National League’s New York Giants (whose player-manager Mel Ott was third on the career home run list at the time), the Yankees resumed play with Boston on April 3 at Ansley and fell once more to Cecil. The willowy Oklahoman had now hurled nine scoreless innings in two games, and though he confounded the Yankees in this spring of 1945 and would be the Red Sox pitcher on Opening Day, his career ended after that season with a mark of 6-10.

Such are the vagaries of baseball.

Winnowed by the war, Major League rosters were slim that spring. Joe DiMaggio wore khakis. Ted Williams trained as a Naval pilot.

At Bader Field, the Yankees took a one-game lead in the series behind six shutout innings by Steve Roser (like Cecil, a short-timer) and a three-run home run from one Oscar Grimes. The next day, skipper Joe McCarthy pronounced them “better than in ’44.” McCarthy had managed the Babe at the end of his career and had led the Gehrig-DiMaggio Yankees to a string of World Series titles. His wartime pickings, however, were rather slim.

Boston captured the spring series going away, scoring a total of 38 runs to win the final three games (only the middle one at Ansley). More draft calls thinned the ranks even further.

Yankee All-Star outfielder Johnny Lindell, who would be the team’s biggest bat in the 1947 World Series, received notice, among others.

After the final game on April 8, the Yankees made tracks for Trenton and Plainfield to fatten up on some Minor League competition. Despite their manager’s forecast, they were not better than they had been the previous season (or the league improved), slipping from third place to fourth. They would, of course, return to the pinnacle in years to come under the tutelage of the Charlie Manuel of his day: Casey Stengel.

The Red Sox fell to seventh place (next to last) in 1945, but with their star players back in the lineup the following season, they finally snared that long-sought-after pennant. That March, they had gone to Sarasota, Fla., where they stayed for a dozen springs. The Yankees had trained in St. Petersburg, just up the Gulf Coast. The war was over. The Potomac divide was no more. Judge Landis could rest easy.

For Major League Baseball, great days lay ahead.