Today in 1892, the birthday of Fred Thomas, who had the unusual distinction of being an active duty member of the military while playing in baseball’s World Series.
And his two jobs led to a pretty big custom in modern American sports.
Thomas was born in Wisconsin; he took up baseball in high school, where scouts spotted him and got him into the minor leagues.
He was a pretty good hitter, a fast baserunner and a dependable hand on defense, so in 1918 the Boston Red Sox brought Thomas up from the minors and added him to the lineup.
Sometimes he played on the bench, sometimes he was a starter.
A lot of promising big league careers have started this way, but Thomas’s regular season was essentially over by July.
It wasn’t that he wasn’t playing well, and he hadn’t gotten hurt.
The previous year, the US had joined what was then known as the Great War (today we call it World War I), and as the war continued into 1918, the military needed as many men as it could get. Even ballplayers.
The government ordered pro baseball to wrap up its season early so that players could join the service.
Thomas ended up in the US Navy. He did undergo seaman training, but mostly he left his job playing baseball for the Red Sox to… play baseball in the Navy’s league, where his Chicago-based team won the Navy Championship.
And that wasn’t his only big win that year.
One of the teams in the 1918 World Series that fall was the Red Sox, and to give themselves every chance they could against the Chicago Cubs, the team sent Thomas a telegram asking him to request a Navy furlough so he could play.
He got one, and he would do his part to help the Red Sox win the series in six games.
But it was during the first game that he changed baseball culture to this day.
It was a low-scoring game during what one historian said was likely “the most joyless World Series ever.”
So, to liven up the crowd during the seventh inning stretch, a band started playing “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
Thomas – who, remember, was still in the Navy – immediately turned to the flag and saluted.
The other players put their hands over their hearts, and the crowd followed suit and sang along, letting out their biggest cheer of the day at the song’s conclusion.
Bands decided to play the song again at each game of the World Series, and over the next decade those performances became a baseball custom.
In fact, the sport adopted “The Star-Spangled Banner” before the US made it the official national anthem in 1931.
This Sunday in Anchorage, Alaska, it’s the Winter Solstice Festival.
The solstice is the shortest day of the year all over the Northern Hemisphere, but the day is really short in Anchorage.
So the community provides its own brightness, with horse-drawn wagon rides, ice skating, and hot chocolate by the fire.
Just make sure to bundle up out there.
Fred Thomas (Society for American Baseball Research)
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