The Cloudbuster Nine: The Untold Story of Ted Williams and the Baseball Team That Helped Win World War II by
Anne R. Keene
My rating:
3 of 5 stars
After reading many books on baseball, and many on history, I’ve separated the two kinds of books. There’s a baseball book. In a baseball book, the author tends to focus on a perspective or two, from a player, coach, umpire, or someone else intimately involved in the playing of the game. Level or age doesn’t matter here, it could be kids or major leaguers, there is still a baseball-informed point of view. Or you see the fan’s perspective, or the front office guy perspective. These are similar in that they show thought about the game itself, but not necessarily from the on field perspective. “The Cloudbuster Nine” didn’t strike me as a baseball book, but as a history book about baseball, one step removed from those baseball books I described above.
The author tells a lot of different but related stories here. The story of how the US military used baseball and other sports to train pilots. The story of how baseball continued outside of the major leagues during the war. The story of how the university at Chapel Hill sold the military on creating a pilot training academy on campus. The storyline that was the source of the title is about one of those military teams, with a few major leaguers, some well known, but others not so. There is a story about the Cloudbusters taking on an all star major league team that was managed by Babe Ruth, and where Babe had his final at bat. Outside of that story, which gave some game details, most of the stories were more about travel, schooling, and the like. More of what I’d consider a history book. The author points out that not a lot is known about these teams by current fans, but she then describes how well covered their games were by a press that was looking for stories like this – major leaguers playing with high school kids, against all stars as well as college teams and industrial teams. The impetus of the book was her discovery after her father passes away of photos and mementos of his time with the Cloudbusters.
The author bookends the history with a personal story of her father, who was a Cloudbuster bat boy. She tells a very human story, interweaving anecdotes about her father. He played ball well but never made the majors, and it impacted him for the rest of his life. This was quite a poignant telling.
Interesting, and a good slice of history of military pilot training in WWII, and baseball and other organized sports as part of that training.
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