Phillies Spring Training, 1942

By Bob Warrington

When the United States entered World War II in December, 1941, it had a dramatic and far-reaching impact on the country and its citizens. Some of the effects were immediate, while others emerged more slowly over time but were no less consequential.

Such was the case with MLB spring training. Clubs were allowed to follow their original plans to conduct spring training in the south in 1942. That all changed when Baseball Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis, in coordination with the U.S. Government’s Office of Defense Transportation, restricted spring training travel starting with the 1943 season. Teams were instructed they had to find sites north of the Ohio and Potomac Rivers and east of the Mississippi River to prepare for the upcoming season. The St. Louis Cardinals and Browns were given exceptions and allowed to remain west of the Mississippi to train near home in Missouri. Clubs were required to abide by these rules through spring training in 1945, and they were only lifted after the war ended later that year. Preseason baseball training in the south resumed in 1946.

Although permitted to go to Florida to prepare for the 1942 season, Phillies’ spring training was impacted by the fact the country was at war. Players would stop practicing to watch fighters and bombers from a nearby Army Air Force base conduct training flights and combat patrols. Team manager Hans Lobert, who had run the US Military Academy at West Point baseball team from 1918–25, persuaded Army officers to lead the squad in military drills, including marching with bats on their shoulders in place of rifles.

The photo accompanying this narrative was taken at the Phillies’ 1942 preseason camp. The team trained that year at Flamingo Park in Miami Beach, FL, where it had held spring training since 1940. Phillies’ players and coaches are lined up for inspection by two Army officers while Lobert observes. Club owner Gerry Nugent is standing second from the right in the photo. Next to him at the end of the line is team trainer Leo “Red” Miller.

The military drills didn’t do much to help the woebegotten Phils emerge from the shroud of failure and defeat that had veiled the club since 1918. The 1942 squad occupied the all-too-familiar position of last place at the close of the season with a 42–109 record. Its winning percentage of .278 was the worst of any Phillies’ team in the 20th century.

(Bob Warrington, a Philadelphia native, is a member of SABR, an author and baseball historian).