With the 1943 World Series some 80 years in the rearview this week, one famed offshoot of that 5-game near-blowout by the Yankees over the Cards comes to mind.
The aviators of the newly-formed Marine Fighter Squadron 214, better known to history as one-time Flying Tiger, Maj. Gregory “Pappy” Boyington’s “Black Sheep” Squadron (AKA “Boyington’s Bastards), based in sunny Vella Lavella in the recently liberated Solomon Islands, urgently wanted ball caps– which were in short supply in the remote outpost– to help keep the rays out of their eyes.
Boyington duly wrote to the League, the story goes as told by the Baseball Hall of Fame, “that the airmen agreed to shoot down one enemy plane in exchange for every ball cap they received from players in that year’s World Series. Sure enough, upon conclusion of the World Series, the St. Louis Cardinals sent 20 baseball caps along with a few bats and balls to the Black Sheep Squadron.”
This earned a few snapshots of the Black Sheep with their new swag, complete with Corsairs, and 20 corresponding Rising Sun stickers.
As VMF-214 accounted for 100 enemy aircraft while flying combat missions for just 83 days from September 1943 to January 1944, the return to Major League Baseball was actually closer to 5:1.
Major Greg “Pappy” Boyington’s Cardinals cap, complete with EGA, is in the NMMC collection, next to his wings