War Fever: Boston, Baseball, and America in the Shadow of the Great War by Randy Roberts and Johnny Smith.
The authors of this book are history professors at Purdue University and Georgia Tech, respectively. They write as a team and previously have published books on Mickey Mantle and Muhammad Ali. This venture chronicles the experiences of three men during World War I: Boston Red Sox star Babe Ruth, Boston Symphony Orchestra Conductor Karl Muck, and Boston attorney Charles Whittlesey, who became a war hero. Another player is the Pandemic of 1918 which was raging along with the fighting in Europe.
The book has a great opening sentence, “In 1918, a fever gripped Boston.” Actually, there were three fevers: excitement around the Red Sox who would win their last World Series until 2004; a feverish backlash against anything or anyone German; and a literal fever from the “Spanish Flu” that ravaged much of the country. Although we were late to declare war on Germany in April of 1918, the global conflict was all-consuming for Americans.
At the beginning of 1918, Charles Whittlesey was by far the least-recognized of the three. By the end of the year, his fame would surpass the other two. Raised in Pittsfield, he had gone to Williams College and Harvard Law School. As a student, he was a quiet bookworm who did well but was barely noticed. He attended college starting in 1901 when the United States was undergoing massive change as it was becoming a world power under President Theodore Roosevelt, who handed Whittlesey his diploma at the Williams College commencement. The new graduate had written many stories that reflected the values of the president - selfless leadership, working hard, and peace through strength.
After earning his law degree, Whittlesey went to work on Wall Street which he found boring. He soon went off and opened his own practice. As was the case with many alumni, he spent a lot of time at the Harvard Club but he didn't quite fit in. He was very liberal in his politics, admiring the Brook Farm Utopian commune of the 1840s in West Roxbury, MA, and supporting Eugene Debs, the Socialist candidate for president. He soon lost his taste for Debs radicalism, but he was big on helping the poor and for gender equality, views not shared by his peers.
Like most Americans, he hoped we could avoid fighting Germany. In May of 1915, the sinking of the <em>Lusitania, </em>with the loss of 1200 passengers, caused him to rethink his view that we should remain neutral against a brutal country. A group of Harvard men organized “Business Men’s Camps” that would teach young men military skills. These were very popular, and by the time we did declare war, thousands of young men had been prepared to fight. In 1916, Whittlesey paid his fee and was one of 16,000 men who attended the camps. When we did declare war in April of 1917, he and thousands of others went back to the camps for three months of further training.
Karl Muck had been the conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra since 1906. Born in Germany, he was considered brilliant although a bit aloof. In October of 1917, the BSO was scheduled to perform in Providence, Rhode Island. The editor of the local paper, John Rotham, realized that if it went crazy against all things German, the Providence Journal could sell more papers. It accused Muck of being disloyal because he was German and he played music from German composers - Beethoven, Wagner, Bach - and didn't play the national anthem at concerts. Of course, most major composers happened to be German and no orchestra led with the Star Spangled Banner, but that didn’t stop the Journal from mucking up Muck mercilessly.
Muck was a notorious womanizer. That was something his enemies would use against him as they uncovered letters to one of his lovers that were critical of how the United States was mistreating Germans in the country. He also was friends with the Kaiser and was sort of in on the war from his country's perspective. There were a lot of spies in Boston and other major cities, but he wasn’t one of them as many federal and local law enforcement agencies had acknowledged.
In June of 1917, President Woodrow Wilson implemented the Espionage Act which essentially forbade all people in the country from being disloyal, defined very broadly. Speaking out against the war was disloyal and could be punished by a fine of $10,000 and twenty years in prison. There was a growing “100% American” movement which led to hyper-nationalism and xenophobia and to the desire to wipe out anything relating to German culture. Sauerkraut and pretzels were taken off menus, and anything printed in the German language was burned.
Henry Higginson, the founder of the BSO, was starting to see attendance fall off because the orchestra was led by a German. He met with Muck and asked him if he'd play the Star Spangled Banner. Muck agreed, although he did say that symphony orchestras didn’t play national anthems. By the end of 1917, anti-German sentiment was so strong that Muck couldn’t perform out-of-state concerts.
It got worse. The director of the US Bureau of Investigation, A. Bruce Bielaski, had recruited 250,000 “zealous volunteers,” otherwise known as vigilantes, to track down disloyal Germans. He had decided that Karl Muck was an enemy alien and barred him from traveling to Washington, DC. The field agent who checked out Muck assured the director that the conductor posed no threat, but that didn’t matter. Muck, who was actually a Swiss citizen, not a German one, wanted to go to Europe. Because he was considered disloyal, he couldn't get a passport, although the people in charge of giving them out approved it.
Rosamond Young was a young singer who sometimes worked with the BSO. She was Muck’s main mistress. Once the authorities figured that out, they got a court order for her to turn over any letters from her lover. They got the letters, which were mushy proclamations of undying love with some ant-US rants thrown in. There really wasn't much to see there, but that didn’t matter to Boston District Attorney Thomas Boynton who used the new Proclamation of Alien Enemies Act to arrest Muck. All you needed for that was a suspicion that the German might give aid to the enemy. On March 25, 1918, Muck was arrested outside of Symphony Hall. He was held in a Boston jail and interrogated for days with no bombshells exploding about his disloyalty. The tried to get him on violating the Mann Act by taking Rosamond across state lines to have sex which made her a prostitute and made him a criminal. He was given an alternative of internment as an undesirable alien in a Tennessee camp instead of an indictment under the Mann Act. He took the camp. On April 6, 1918, Muck was transported to Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia, to join hundreds of other undesirables.
Babe Ruth “Even drunk in the early morning, driving an unfamiliar automobile with another man’s wife on the seat beside him, Babe thought he could make it.” So begins the discussion of George Herman Ruth in the book. He sort of made it, avoiding injury but hitting two street cars in Kenmore Square. The two women he had with him were injured. Babe was not impaired enough to stick around for the cops. He took off and left the ladies to get themselves to the hospital. This happened at the end of 1917, after a baseball season where Babe was the best pitcher in the American League, with 24 wins and a 2.01 earned run average. He also hit very well.
Most of us know that Ruth’s parents basically abandoned him to an orphanage when he was seven. He was a handful as a kid, always getting into trouble, including smoking and drinking liquor. His parents were lousy at raising kids, with his father running a sketchy saloon and his mother being an alcoholic floozy. Babe’s 13 years at St. Mary’s Industrial School for Orphans, Delinquent, Incorrigible, and Wayward Boys changed his life. St. Mary’s was a baseball factory, playing hundreds of games each year with 28 teams of various age levels competing up to ten months a year. He got great coaching and played dozens of games each season, perfecting his craft. The Catholic brothers who ran the school were no-nonsense and they rounded off some of Babe’s rough edges. He was ridiculed for his large physique and his puffy lips, but he learned how to take care of himself. Brother Matthias was a baseball prodigy who took Ruth under his wing and taught him how to hit for power. Babe was a good pitcher on his own. He was strong and had great control.
When Babe was 18, the Baltimore Orioles signed him to a contract but soon sold him to the Red Sox. He was ridiculed by his new teammates who called him a “big baboon” or an “ape” because of his size and facial features. He liked to drink and chase women and was very crude in his behavior, but he sure could pitch and hit. Red Sox future Hall of Fame outfielder Harry Hooper mentored Babe. Hooper, who had an engineering degree, smoothed Babe up a bit and helped him improve his hitting. As Babe got better, more fans noticed him and he became a symbol of the United States as an emerging world power.
In March of 1917, war was imminent and it looked like there would be no baseball season. The war was starting to affect daily life. A lot of ball players were drafted and Harry Frazee, the owner of the Red Sox, wondered if he’d be able to field a competitive team during the season. The season did go on, as many prominent people argued that baseball was essential to our nation’s character and helped people become better people as well as entertaining the masses. Fans who attended games were encouraged to join the Army. The teams would come out before the game and march around the field with rifles. It was all pretty patriotic.
Frazee’s main interest was the theater, especially in New York City. He had a string of successful shows and invented the after-matinee performance, which made him a lot of money. He liked to imbibe and usually had a drink in his hand as he was conducting business. A songwriter who worked for Harry said, “Frazee never drew a sober breath in his life. He made more sense drunk than most people do sober.”
Babe Ruth bought a home in Sudbury, MA, and settled in with his wife. The Babe continued his outlandish behavior, often involving excessive drink, and the Boston press loved it. He was becoming a mythic figure. His manager, Ed Barrow, was an old-school baseball man who brooked no nonsense. He laid down the law, which forbade serious gambling, going to casinos, chasing women, and bed checks. Needless to say, Babe was not amused, so Barrow backed off for certain key players.
The 1917 season is when Babe got serious about hitting. Unlike most players, he didn’t choke up on the bat; he was strong enough to get around on just about any pitch. During spring training that year, which was held at various military bases, he consistently hit balls over the fence. He was about to become a figure of folklore.
By the end of spring training, a lot of the players had come down with “the grippe” and were out of action for a few days. That was actually Phase One on the Spanish Flu, which presented mild symptoms.
During the season, Barrow played Ruth in the field when he wasn’t pitching. At first, The Babe seemed confused but he soon got the hang of it and started to pound the ball<strong>. </strong>By late May, 2017, Ruth was the best hitter in baseball. During a series with the Yankees that the Sox lost, Babe tore the cover off the ball. Jeremy Rupert, the Yankees owner who was about to lose his beer business due to Prohibition, saw that Babe Ruth could be what New York needed to be a great team.
On a day off in the spring, Ruth got sick while picnicking at Revere Beach. He had the Spanish Flu. Despite being given the wrong medication that almost killed him, he did get better. That early strain of the flu was infectious but fairly mild with relatively few deaths.
While Ruth recovered, major league baseball announced that ball players would have to either join the army of work in a war-related business to avoid the draft. By late May, Ruth was back in the lineup and about to change baseball. By June 30, the Babe had hit eleven home runs, more than five other teams would hit for the season. People all across the land noticed his hitting and watched the Boston box score every day to see how Babe had done. He made the home run the next big thing in baseball.
In June, American troops flooded the European battle zone and The Babe was their entertainment as they checked the box scores from back home. Babe’s home run prowess became a metaphor for our country’s power in the world.
Charles Whittlesey Charles’s younger brother, Elisha, left Harvard to fight in the war. He had some physical issues which made him unfit for combat so he became an ambulance driver. He got to Europe before his older brother who went over in early 1918 after completing officer training school. Charles was assigned to the 77th Division which was mustered in New Your City and reflected the city’s diversity. Mayflower descendants, recent immigrants, merchants, laborers, and professionals filled out the unit which had soldiers who had 43 different native languages. One recruit knew only three words of English - “Merry Christmas” and the F-word. “The 77th was ‘New York’s Own,’ the division that encompassed the Harvard and Yale Club aristocrats as well as the Bowery Bums. They had graduated from Ivy League Institutions or the School of Hard Knocks.” One hundred thousand people cheered them on as they marched out of NYC on a snowy February day to finish training at Fort Upton before heading to Europe in April.
The American Army had been moribund for years and there were very few competent officers to lead the troops. At first, there weren't enough weapons and basic supplies, and the newly-minted officers were under-trained to fight the well-disciplined Germans.
Just as the 77th Division was heading off to fight, the Bolshevik Revolution pulled Russia out of the war it was fighting against Germany. That didn’t help. Germany was starting to have supply chain problems and the generals knew that the Allies would have to be defeated relatively soon while Germany could still fight effectively and before the Americans could get their act together. The Somme offensive in March, 1918, was designed to break the hold of the Allies in France and end the war. At first it worked and German captured a lot of land. Gradually, France and Britain fought back and regained the territory.
Charles Whittlesey’s unit received some more training in Calais, France, before heading out. The food was British and horrible, and lice were everywhere. By June of 2018, Whittlesey and his troops were in the war. They were primarily engaged in small skirmishes where not much happened, but they had to be aware of the danger of deadly mustard gas and phosgene, which the Germans routinely used.
In late September of 1918, Whittlesey’s unit was ordered to basically attack German positions on the high ground, a tough job. He and another Harvard man, Captain George McMurtry, who had been with Teddy Roosevelt and the Roughriders in Cuba, succeeded in getting through the German lines. They took heavy casualties, but on October 2 they were the only unit of the advancing Allied troops to carry out their orders.
The Lost Battalion They weren’t lost and they weren’t a battalion, but the media coined the name and it stuck and became one of the enduring stories of World War I. Once the unit pushed through the German line, they hunkered down and set up a defensive position in what became known as the Pocket. It turned out that the Germans were upset that their lines had been breached and quickly moved in and surrounded the Americans. Whittlesey was running low on food, medical supplies, and ammunition. His runners - soldiers used to sneak out and communicate with Army forces - were all dead or wounded. He did have carrier pigeons.
The Germans attacked and did some damage, although the Americans held the high ground which was good. In addition, the Americans were positioned so that German artillery was useless against them, also good. By now, about 25% of the 600 American soldiers were out of action. Compounding the problems in the Pocket was the fact that friendly artillery, which initially was hitting the Germans, kept moving closer to Whittlesey men and causing damage. He sent a carrier pigeon off with his exact coordinates and told them to stop shelling their men. The bird, known as Cher Ami, became a hero having lost an eye and a leg but getting through with the message. The shelling stopped. On October 6, Allied planes dropped the requested supplies but they ended up in German hands.
Charles Whittlesey was a great leader. He personally set up the perimeter defense and constantly rallied his men. He exposed himself to enemy fire as he went from man to man, giving words of encouragement. He could hear the advancing American troops, but it would take some time before they could break through the German lines to get to the rescue. Major Whittlesey, the perfect Yankee gentleman, would quote American poetry as he moved around the Pocket. He cared about each man.
On October 7, the Americans were in desperate shape. More had died from their wounds, and food and ammunition were scarce. Impressed with the Americans' will to fight, the German commander, Lieutenant Heinrich Prinz, sent a runner to Whittlesey to offer him the chance to surrender. While later accounts would say that the answer was “Go to hell,” the real answer was a resounding “No reply” as the Americans deployed for the expected German attack. The Americans repelled the final assault and the Germans retreated, not wanting to have to confront fresh troops which were on the way.
Relief forces did get there soon after the last battle. They saw a scene from the Seventh Circle Dante’s Inferno, with rotting corpses strewn about and the stench of death everywhere. The survivors were given food and medical attention. General Robert Alexander, commander of the 77th Division, made it to the Pocket wearing his clean and pressed uniform, a harsh contrast to the carnage around him. Whittlesey was given a battlefield promotion to Lieutenant Colonel. The unit’s casualty rate was 66%.
The press and military jumped on the story, comparing the Pocket battle to the Charge of the Light Brigade and the Alamo. It was the most positive American experience of the war, which had not been going well. That a band of motley soldiers from New York City led by a Harvard graduate fought for almost a week to defeat a larger force was big news and a great branding opportunity for the war effort. Whittlesey was called “a true son of Roosevelt'' (Teddy) by legendary journalist Damon Runyon.
The Babe Opening Day at Fenway Park can be dicey because of the weather. On April 15, 1918, the game was almost called off because a major snow had hit Boston a few days before, but the game went on. The Royal Rooters, a fanatical group of fans led by former Boston Mayor John “Honey Fitz” Fitzgerald, led the cheering. Thirteen Sox players had joined the army so the team had to scramble to replace them. There were patriotic-themed opening ceremonies and everyone sang the Star Spangled Banner. The Sox won, 7 -1 with Babe Ruth pitching and hitting, and the team had an 11-2 record to start the season that would end in a World Series championship. By the end of the month, Harry Hooper had convinced manager Ed Barrow that Ruth should be hitting in games he didn’t pitch. That was the beginning of Babe Ruth’s ascent to mythic status in the sports world.
Gambling was a huge part of baseball and Boston was the hub of gambling in the US. Players routinely received bribes to affect the outcome of the game. For years, fans would yell out their wagers to bookies in the seats who would dutifully record them. This did not look good, so the Sox ownership cracked down by putting up “No Gambling” signs. That didn’t get rid of wagering but at least the gamblers became less obvious about it.
As the 1918 season unfolded, Babe got better at pitching and hitting. He threw complete games for 8 of his last 9 outings and hit really well. At the end of the season, the Sox were in first place and the virus was beginning to rear its ugly head again. The second, much deadlier wave was hitting people and thousands were getting infected. By the fall, tens of thousands of people were dying, with no end in sight.
The day before the first World Series game between Chicago and Boston in 1918, radicals blew up the federal building in Chicago. The game went on but ticket prices dropped considerably. Babe went out drinking with the sports writers the night before the game, but he was in fine fettle as he pitched the Sox to a 1-0 win. Attendance was way off in the games and the players were thinking of striking to get more money but cooler heads prevailed. Fans would not put up with athletes striking for more money as hundreds of thousands of young men were fighting in Europe. The Sox won the Series as the pandemic spread throughout Boston and the nation. Camp Devens, 30 miles west of the city, was overrun by the virus with 14,000 soldiers infected by the end of September.
After the Series, the government ordered ball players to get a defense job or go fight. Sensing that the war was winding down, the order was ignored. Babe Ruth signed up to play exhibition ball and “work” in a steel mill in Pennsylvania but didn’t really show up. He went back to his hometown of Baltimore. He got the Spanish Flu again, a mild case. Red Sox owner Harry Frazee also caught it but recovered. The pandemic was raging throughout the east coast, with two-thirds of the deaths occurring between September and December, 2018.
After the War
Muck. Even after the armistice, the Germans were kept interned. Muck did perform concerts in the camp before he was released, but that was a big step down from the BSO. Anita saw that her husband had deteriorated physically and mentally and was very worried about him. Finally, in the summer of 1919, Muck agreed to be deported and was released on the condition that he leave the country.
At his release, Muck was very depressed and probably was a victim of what we would call PTSD today. He was a man without a country. He had no serious ties with Germany and he wasn’t a German citizen. He never finished applying for American citizenship. His Swiss citizenship had been revoked when he was declared an enemy alien. In August of 1919, he and his wife, Anita, went to Copenhagen, Denmark, to settle. Despite the fact that Karl had been a serial cheater on his wife, Anita was unflinchingly loyal to him and helped him survive his ordeal.
Babe Ruth In January of 1919, Ruth demanded more money. Sox owner Frazee, who was having financial problems, negotiated with him but Ruth would not compromise. Jacob Ruppert, the owner of the Yankees and of Knickerbocker Beer, was facing a future with Prohibition, which outlawed beer and other alcohol. He knew that Ruth was very popular in New York and believed that he could turn his team into a perennial winner.
Some Boston fans were upset that Ruth wanted so much money and Frazee saw that he might have a chance to improve his finances by selling his star player. He made the deal, which included selling Ruth for $100,000 and getting a $300,000 loan. As it turned out, Ruppert received as much money on the loan’s interest as it had cost him to buy the superstar, so Babe was essentially obtained for free. Frazee spun Babe’s not being a team player the reason for the deal. Ruppert renegotiated the contract and gave Ruth the money he wanted. The Yankees went on to become a consistent winner. The Red Sox finished last in the American league seven times and wouldn’t win a World Series until 2004.
As you no doubt recall from my recounting of Jane Leavy’s The Big Fella: Babe Ruth and the World He Created (Bob Held Hostage, August 20, 2020), after the sale to Ruppert, Ruth went on to energize and revolutionize baseball and make himself into a national icon. He also reflected the excesses of the Roaring Twenties.
Charles Whittlesey was sent home, arriving in New Jersey on November 14, three days after the war ended. For the next few months, Whittlesey had a busy schedule. He gave countless speeches to civic groups, alumni clubs, and to the general public. He went to dozens of funerals of men he had known, including many Harvard classmates. He always downplayed his role in the war, focusing more on the valor of his men. He usually didn’t even mention the Lost Battalion unless specifically asked about it. On December 6, 1918, President Wilson announced that Charles Whittlesey had won the Medal of Honor.
For the next few years, Whittlesey continued to be in demand for various events and celebrations, and he raised money for charities. When he did speak, he supported President Wilson’s vision of a world at peace, working out problems through negotiation in the League of Nations. Unlike most Americans, he didn’t hate the Germans and warned that a draconian peace would lead to more strife down the road. The peace treaty was harsh on Germany, leading to the rise of Adolph Hitler. The League of Nations was created, but many major powers, including the United States, did not join the organization.
Whittlesey had ingested a lot of poison gas during the war and his health deteriorated. He had trouble sleeping, as did many men who had fought. Whittlesey was close to his family but he didn’t have a lot of friends. He had few female acquaintances and no romantic involvements. He bought a ticket to go to Cuba for a post-Thanksgiving 1921 vacation. While on the ship, he wrote a note and jumped into the sea. It was a few days after the third anniversary of the end of the War to End All Wars. He was 37 years old.
Bob’s Take
War Fever was entertaining in that it wove three different stories of three very different men into a description of what World War I meant for the United States. Most of us don’t know much about the conflict. We were combatants for only a year-and-a-half. Our death count was relatively low (120,000) compared to Germany (2.7 million), Great Britain (1.4 million), and France (1.9 million).
1918 was a very important year. With the pandemic and the war, 1918 was a consequential year in the history of our country.
Karl Muck was the classic immigrant success story until he wasn't. He was a very popular public figure in Boston, but the war made him a pariah, despite there being no evidence of his being disloyal to the United States. Xenophobia was as contagious as the virus, and Americans had no use for anyone who was German. Many Americans today don’t like immigrants, so we still have that as a defining characteristic of who we are. Muck was an elite who was abandoned by his adopted country
Babe Ruth changed baseball and sports coverage. Before he arrived on the baseball scene, home runs and larger-than-life personalities were not major parts of the game. His prodigious power and the sheer thrill of a towering home run changed that. He was the first athlete to have a real agent and he dominated sports coverage during and after the season. Newspapers hired reporters to cover him and added a new section exclusively devoted to cover The Babe, which became the Sports section.
Charles Whittlesey is the most interesting and most tragic person in the book. He was the classic citizen soldier like Audie Murphy, the most decorated soldier of World War II who was born on a sharecropper’s farm in Texas. Charles willingly joined the Army and put himself through the Business Men’s Camps before being formally trained by the military. He learned well, displaying both personal and tactical skills in the Battle of the Pocket. Even as someone who seemed to have it all - a Mayflower descendant, a Williams College graduate and a Harvard lawyer - he couldn’t do well in a post-war world.
PTSD didn’t formally exist in 1918 but a lot of people were affected by it. Charles Whitlesey is the most obvious victim here, with the 7-days-of-hell battle and the months in the field before that, not knowing if you’d be shot by a sniper or blasted by a shell. He clearly had trouble coping with life after the war. His lack of friends was in sharp contrast to his life before the war. As an elite, he kept a “stiff upper lip” which would help him in pitched battle but made it difficult for him to seek any type of counseling.
Karl Muck also suffered from traumatic stress. He was ripped away from his comfortable life as a Boston icon and sent off to a dehumanizing camp. Even after his release, he had no place to go and settled for Sweden because that was one of the few country’s that would accept him. His wife, Anita, died young in 1921. He did go on to conduct again in Europe.
Babe Ruth didn’t seem to be a victim of PTSD but he was not normal in his behavior. He had been abandoned and institutionalized since age 7, not a good way to develop a balanced, nurturing personality. He consistently made poor decisions around his personal life, a sign of not being able to use your upstairs brain - let’s carefully think about this - and always going with the downstairs brain - just do it. One consequence of trauma is an inability to take time and really weigh the consequences of what you are about to do.
The Pandemics of 1918 and 2020 It was bad luck that the end of the war and the peak season for the pandemic occurred at the same time in the fall of 1918. War celebrations no doubt contributed to the infection rate and the number of deaths. About 25% of our population got infected, with 675,000 deaths. Still, it could have been worse. Most Americans did not take precautions against getting infected, but 75% of our population did not get the virus. This suggests that a lot of people had a natural immunity to the disease.
That may have implications for our current situation. I haven’t heard any talk about natural immunity and what that means for reaching herd immunity. I believe that a lot of us are immune to this disease, as is the case with any disease – not everyone who is exposed catches it. If that’s the case, we start off the effort to reach herd immunity with many tens of millions of people already naturally resistant to Covid. That means that a lot more Americans are immune to the disease than have been inoculated or diagnosed. Since it appears that many people will not get a shot, natural immunity should help us get back to the good new days.
