Title/Author:
“The Cloudbuster Nine: The Untold Story of Ted
Williams and the Baseball Team that Helped Win WWII” by Anne Keene
Tags:
Baseball, history, war time
Publish date:
April 6, 2018
Length:
304 pages
Rating:
5 of 5 stars
(outstanding)
Review:
While the New York
Yankees and St. Louis Cardinals were the opponents in the 1943 World Series,
neither of them are considered to be the best baseball team that took the field
that year. That honor was bestowed to a team composed of Navy pilots who were in
training before being sent overseas for combat.
This team was based in Chapel Hill, North Carolina and was dubbed the
“Cloudbuster Nine.” This wonderful book
by Anne Keene tells the story about this little known team and some of the men
on the team.
The author’s father
was a nine year old batboy for this team and when she discovered pictures and
articles about the team in her father’s belonging, she set out to tell the
story of this team. The book starts with a story from the highlight of that
year for the Cloudbuster Nine – an exhibition game at Yankee Stadium in which
the opponents were a team composed of the best players from the Yankees and the
Cleveland Indians. This team was called the “Yanklands” and their star was
their manager, Babe Ruth.
However, the
Cloudbusters had some star power of their own.
There were several major league players on the team – players who were
going to be soon off to war, but still had the chance to play some baseball on
the team before being shipped overseas.
Their biggest star was Ted Williams, and two others on the team are very
familiar to many fans – Johnny Pesky and Johnny Sain. The book shares some
wonderful stories about all three of them as well as other players on the
Cloudbusters. These stories concentrate
on their time on this team and in the training program more than their major
league careers. That makes the book a
wonderful look into life as a military member at that time.
The book is not
limited to baseball. Indeed, the book dedicates many pages to the training
facility, the curriculum the students endure in order to be trained pilots and
some of the other graduates of the program.
These include future Presidents George H.W. Bush and Gerald Ford, John
Glenn and Paul “Bear” Bryant. The makeover of a portion of the University of
North Carolina campus into a Naval training facility makes for very interesting
reading as does the story of Tom Hamilton, the brains behind the
curriculum. He wanted to include
competitive sports, especially football and baseball, as part of the
training. The reasoning for this was
that to keep in shape for these sports, a trainee would be fit for his duties
as a pilot and some of the skills needed to succeed in these games would be
useful should the pilot be shot down and he needed to have good survival skills
in either the ocean or in enemy territory.
No matter how much
this review talks about the book, it can’t do justice to the quality of the
stories and material. This book should
be read by anyone who enjoys reading about baseball, military stories, World
War II history – or even just good stories. It is truly a wonderful piece of
work that began with someone wanting to tell the stories her father stored
inside himself for many years.
I wish to thank Ms. Keene for providing a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.
Book Format Read:
E-book (PDF)
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