Jun 9, 2018 3 min read

When the United States entered World War II after the Dec. 7 attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, patriotic fever spread nationwide, and among the millions of young men who enlisted in the armed forces were some of the greatest major league baseball players of the era, including the Boston Red Sox’s Ted Williams, Joe DiMaggio of the New York Yankees, Hank Greenberg of the Detroit Tigers and Pee Wee Reese of the (then) Brooklyn Dodgers.

Many hundreds of lesser-known players also volunteered, seriously depleting the ranks of the major leagues and causing baseball commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis to consider temporarily suspending baseball, but then-President Franklin Roosevelt wrote to ask that he allow the game to continue. Roosevelt argued that, given the massive unemployment caused by the Great Depression, suspending baseball would result in a further loss of jobs, not only among the players, but also the vendors, ticket takers and stadium personnel, plus those who worked at businesses supplying goods and services (such as beer and hot dogs) to baseball fans. Additionally, Roosevelt argued, baseball was the national pastime and a morale booster that temporarily took people’s minds off the war.

Landis agreed, and major league baseball played on, although the challenge was finding replacement players, and ball clubs weren’t picky. Players who had previously retired returned to their clubs, while younger players, many of them teenagers who normally would have been playing in the minor-league farm system, suddenly found themselves in the big leagues.

Among those younger players was Joe Nuxhall who, this week (June 10) in 1944, became the youngest player ever to play major league baseball. At just 15 years old, Nuxhall went from being a ninth grader to pitching the ninth inning of a game between his Cincinnati Reds and the St. Louis Cardinals. The Reds were trailing 13-0 when Reds manager Bill McKechnie sent Nuxhall to the mound, and although he retired the first batter, he then issued five walks, gave up two hits, and threw a wild pitch before being pulled with the Reds trailing 18-0. He spent the rest of that year in the minor leagues.

However, he returned to the Reds in 1952, pitching in 484 games – still a team record for lefthanded pitchers – and compiling a record of 135-117 during a 16-year career that included all-star appearances in 1955 and 1956. He then spent 37 years broadcasting Reds games on the radio.

When asked later about his major league debut, Nuxhall’s answer was priceless. “I was pitching against seventh-, eighth- and ninth-graders. … All of a sudden I look up and there’s Stan Musial at the plate. It was a very scary situation.”

Bruce G. Kauffmann’s email address is bruce@historylessons.net.