This week marks the 75th anniversary of D-Day. To commemorate the event in a baseball related way I wanted to pass on a bit of the sports history from the era.
The pending Allied Invasion had been rumored for some time prior to D-Day and major league baseball made plans to postpone any games on the date if possible. This possibility was discussed in the June 1 1944 issue of the Sporting News - issued just days prior to D-Day.
1944 JUN 01 The Sporting News pg 1
There were two MLB games scheduled for June 6 1944 and indeed neither were played. I am assuming the time difference between Europe and the States allowed for proper scheduling changes. Those rescheduling of those games was mentioned in the June 7 1944 issue of the Philadelphia Inquirer. Horse Racing was the sport of kings in the era so you need to go a few paragraphs down to see a mention of the two games.
1944 JUN 07 Philadelphia Inquirer Pg 24
If you want to see a modern representation of the postponed games you can look to the terrific archive of baseball statistic history, Baseball-Reference.
Baseball-Ref Scores from Tuesday June 6 1944
Notice that when you do a search for games played on D-Day Baseball-Reference notes
The pending Allied Invasion had been rumored for some time prior to D-Day and major league baseball made plans to postpone any games on the date if possible. This possibility was discussed in the June 1 1944 issue of the Sporting News - issued just days prior to D-Day.
1944 JUN 01 The Sporting News pg 1
There were two MLB games scheduled for June 6 1944 and indeed neither were played. I am assuming the time difference between Europe and the States allowed for proper scheduling changes. Those rescheduling of those games was mentioned in the June 7 1944 issue of the Philadelphia Inquirer. Horse Racing was the sport of kings in the era so you need to go a few paragraphs down to see a mention of the two games.
If you want to see a modern representation of the postponed games you can look to the terrific archive of baseball statistic history, Baseball-Reference.
Baseball-Ref Scores from Tuesday June 6 1944
Notice that when you do a search for games played on D-Day Baseball-Reference notes
Fascinating stuff. Obviously we all know that D-Day was a great moment in history, but it never occurred to me that it would have had that kind of impact at the time.
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