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THE FORGOTTEN STORY OF THE US SOLDIERS WHO INTEGRATED BASEBALL BEFORE
JACKIE ROBINSON
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Rich Tenorio
October 22, 2025
The Guardian
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_ This is history that should be remembered: Alongside a Jewish,
anti-racist pitcher from Brooklyn, Leon Day and Willard Brown played
in a remarkable team during a historic wartime tournament _
Willard Brown was often called "Home Run Brown" for making history as
the first Black ballplayer to hit a home run in the American League,
Far from the diamonds of America, a little-known chapter of the
journey toward integrating baseball was taking place in war-ravaged
Europe just over 80 years ago.
It took place at a tournament held to entertain soldiers in the months
after the end of the second world war. The team who won the GI World
Series in September 1945 were unlike any of the other competitors:
they had an integrated roster, including two stars from the Negro
Leagues: Willard Brown and Leon Day.
“They are two legendary players who have not gotten their just
due,” says Bob Kendrick, president of the Negro Leagues Baseball
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don’t know about the team that won a GI championship.”
Jackie Robinson – who also served in uniform during the second world
war – is justly hailed for breaking the color barrier
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Major League Baseball, with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947. But less
than two years earlier, in a dramatic setting, Brown and Day had
established their own piece of history.
Sports historian John Rosengren notes that several games of the GI
World Series took place in a Nuremberg stadium where Adolf Hitler had
once held antisemitic rallies.
“The symbolism is so powerful,” Rosengren says. “Here you have
the national pastime of the world’s most prominent democracy, being
played out in the stadium where Hitler espoused his vitriolic
propaganda.”
This story has resurfaced on its 80th anniversary. In the summer,
labor reporter and baseball writer Mike Elk and Peter Dreier, an
emeritus politics professor at Occidental College, discussed the GI
World Series at baseball’s Hall of Fame.
“This is a story we need to focus on,” Elk, who is planning a
book on the series
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says. “Professional baseball players who played in the military were
allowed to have an integrated game that they could not have in the
States. It says something powerful.”
In Allied-controlled Europe, the GI teams that suited up for the
tournament were drawn from various branches of the military –
including the feared Red Circlers, representing the 71st Infantry
Division of George S Patton’s Third Army. The Red Circlers were
stocked with talent, headlined by two major leaguers, Harry Walker of
the St Louis Cardinals and pitcher Ewell Blackwell of the Cincinnati
Reds.
Sports historian Robert Weintraub – author of The Victory Season:
The End of World War II and the Birth of Baseball’s Golden Age –
says Walker was a US Army scout in Europe. Driving a Jeep and armed
with a machine gun, he navigated his way through enemy lines. In the
war’s aftermath, the military asked him to create a tournament for
the troops.
“He’s the one they turn to: ‘You’re a professional baseball
player, can you organize the games, make it some type of pickup
baseball,’” Weintraub says. “He went the extra mile.”
However, virtually all of the teams were white-only. Elk doesn’t see
this as an accident, calling Walker one “of the worst ‘good old
boys’ of the era … He tried to lead a walkout against Jackie
Robinson” when the latter broke the color barrier.
The sole integrated team in the GI World Series represented military
personnel stationed in the Oise River region of France. The man in
charge of this team was Sam Nahem, a Jewish servicemember from
Brooklyn with Syrian ancestry. Nahem brought major-league pitching
experience – and far-left political leanings.
“He was a communist – I’m 90% sure, I can’t say
definitively,” Dreier says. “He was probably the only communist
who ever played Major League Baseball.” And, he adds, “he was
anti-racist at a time when it was not that fashionable to be an
anti-racist.”
Dreier and Elk say the push to integrate the majors came from Black
civil rights activists and sportswriters, aided by white allies in the
communist press. Elk notes that the war prompted a “Double V”
campaign among Black activists – victory over totalitarianism
abroad, and over racism at home.
Because of Nahem’s experience in the majors, he was entrusted with
building the Oise team. In doing so, he defied major-league precedent
– and also military precedent; the armed forces would integrate even
later than pro baseball, in 1948.
Brown and Day, who both went on to be inducted into the National
Baseball Hall of Fame, had built impressive careers in the Negro
Leagues. Brown’s power hitting earned him the nickname “Home Run
Brown”, while Day was a standout on the mound who could also play
every position except catcher. Although Day never played in the
majors, Brown did so for the St Louis Browns. Befitting his reputation
as a power hitter, he became the first Black player to hit a home run
in the American League.
“Leon Day was one of the great two-way stars of the Negro
Leagues,” Kendrick says. “He was a tremendous outfielder with a
tremendous arm, a full repertoire of pitches, and also could hit for
average.” Kendrick adds that Brown got his nickname from fellow
Negro Leagues star Josh Gibson: “If Josh Gibson nicknames you
‘Home Run’, you’ve probably got some power. Willard Brown was a
five-tool phenom.”
During the war, Day manned an amphibious supply vehicle on the beaches
of Normandy in the still-dangerous week after D-day, while Brown
served as an engineer.
In the finals of the GI World Series, it was Oise versus the Red
Circlers. Day pitched Oise to a win in Game 2, while in the decisive
fifth game, Nahem made a bold call that proved decisive. He started on
the mound, but struggled early, and took himself out in favor of a
teammate who shut down the Red Circlers for the victory. An integrated
ballclub proved that it could not only play together, but win
together.
“It’s likely they don’t win that championship without Leon Day
and Willard Brown,” Kendrick says.
Rosengren notes that Hitler “wanted to eliminate the Jews and crush
anyone else who was opposed to him … On that day [Game 5 of the GI
World Series], it seemed democracy replaced that dictator, with a
great display of democratic talent featuring white and Black, Jewish
and non-Jewish players.”
According to Dreier, the Oise team were invited to compete in an
additional tournament in Italy for GI squads, and they did so, albeit
with a reconstituted roster that left out Brown and Day. Elk says that
one of Oise’s opponents had an all-Black roster, including Negro
Leagues players, and that similar integrated ballgames for
servicemembers took place in other wartime theaters, including north
Africa and the South Pacific.
In October 1945, a month after the GI World Series, Robinson signed
with the Dodgers. Team president Branch Rickey is acknowledged as the
man who finally decided to integrate a major league roster. A question
remains: Was Rickey’s interest in Robinson influenced at all by the
Oise team?
“It’s an incredibly important moment,” Weintraub says of the GI
World Series. “I don’t know if it had a direct effect on
integrating Major League Baseball.”
We may never know the answer. Regardless, what we do know is that 80
years ago, after Brown and Day helped win the battle for democracy
abroad by serving in the second world war, they subsequently helped
win another battle for democracy by playing on an integrated baseball
team.
_More stories [[link removed]] by
Rich Tenorio_
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