Flashed ‘green light’ –
Baseball loses staunch friend in Roosevelt
NEW YORK (UP) – When President Roosevelt, early in his first term, answered critics of his policies with the words, “I don’t expect to make a home run every time I come to bat,” the sports world knew it had a friend in the White House.
Without the provisional “green light” for baseball which he issued in one of his last press conferences there would have been little hope for continuation of the sport into its fourth wartime season.
There had been hope to the last that he might follow up the “green light” declaration by throwing out the first ball at the presidential opener between the Senators and Yanks at Washington next Monday.
WASHINGTON (UP) – President Clark Griffith of the Washington Senators said today that the death of President Roosevelt would make no change in plans for the season’s opening game here Monday with the New York Yankees.
Mr. Roosevelt in urging the continuation of baseball for 1945 said he did not think the sport should use perfectly healthy men who could do something more useful in the war effort. The teams probably would be a little older and maybe not as proficient, he said.
Then he told the newsmen that he liked to see baseball games, even if played by sandlot outfits.
That removed the final vestige of doubt about whether there would be professional baseball this season.
Spurred night games
Similar “green light” declarations preceded the other wartime seasons the president emphasizing the need of the nation for the wholesome diversion of an afternoon or an evening out-of-doors when its way chores were finished.
He was considered responsible for extension of the major league mit on night games after a press conference in 1943 when he suggested that more after-dark games would be beneficial to the many government workers in Washington whose hours were in the day time. The major leagues promptly gave Washington special dispensation to play an unlimited schedule of night games and last year extended the number of games for all clubs whose parks had lighting facilities.
It was the president’s fondness of swimming which led to his lifelong affliction from infantile paralysis. He was swimming at the family summer home at Campo Bello, Maine, in 1921 when he acquired the virus and shortly thereafter was paralyzed in both legs.
Swimming helped him
After that he swam to strengthen the weakened legs and it was only in his third term he had to discontinue his favorite sport because the press of duty was too great for him to spare the time. During his retreats to his second home at Warm Springs, Georgia, he spent many hours swimming in his private pool there and attributed to the exercise his ability to walk at all.
On presidential vacations, which became more infrequent, he used U.S. Navy vessels for deep sea fishing cruises and he regarded it as a deep personal loss in 1942 when his favorite cruiser, USS Houston, was sunk in the battle of Savo Island in the Pacific.