MLB stars who earned their stripes

Baseball is America’s Pastime, and on Memorial Day, we cannot forget the patriotism and ultimate sacrifices of the soldiers who’ve doubled as ballplayers when they weren’t fighting for America on the battlefields.

Hall of Famers Bob Feller, Ted Williams, Joe DiMaggio, Stan Musial, Willie Mays, Pee Wee Reese and Warren Spahn famously interrupted their careers to serve. Yogi Berra took part in the D-Day invasion before his Major League debut, while Christy Mathewson and Ty Cobb served in the Army’s Chemical Service after their baseball careers were over. Major League Baseball’s time-honored connection to the military continues this summer, as the Braves and Marlins honor the nation’s servicemen and women by playing a regular-season game at Fort Bragg in North Carolina on July 3. It is the first professional sports contest to be played on an active military base.

According to Gary Bedingfield, a member of the Society for American Baseball Research and the operator of baseballinwartime.com, 535 baseball players have lost their lives in military service — whether they were killed in action or died from wounds, illness or accidents — since the Civil War. Twelve of those men were Major Leaguers, and these are their stories.

Robert O. “Bob” Neighbors, Nov. 9, 1917 – Aug. 8, 1952 Neighbors made his big league debut at shortstop for the St. Louis Browns on Sept. 16, 1939. He would appear in seven games, with two hits in 11 at-bats. Neighbors joined the Army Air Force on May 8, 1942, and he served with the 22nd Air Transport Training Detachment at Sheppard Field in Wichita Falls, Kan. He also played baseball for the Sheppard Field Mechanics. After WWII, Neighbors chose to stay in the military, and he saw combat duty during the Korean War as a B-26B Invader pilot with the 13th Bomb Squadron of the 3rd Bomb Group. During a night mission on Aug. 8, 1952, Neighbors’ plane was shot down. He was reported missing in action and later confirmed dead. He was 34 years old and the only Major Leaguer killed in Korea.

Harry M. O’Neill, May 8, 1917 – March 6, 1945 O’Neill was a three-sport athlete at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania. Upon graduation in June 1939, the 6-foot-3, 205-pound catcher signed with Connie Mack’s Philadelphia Athletics and spent the rest of the season as the club’s third-string catcher. He would see action in just one game, on July 23, as a late-inning defensive replacement in a 16-3 loss to the Tigers. O’Neill played two seasons of semi-pro baseball before enlisting in the Marine Corps after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in December 1941. He attended Officer Candidate School in Quantico, Va. As a first lieutenant in the 4th Marine Division, O’Neill took part in the amphibious assaults of Kwajalein, Saipan and Tinian. On March 6, 1945, during the assault of Iwo Jima, O’Neill was killed by sniper fire. He was 27 years old, and he was one of only two Major Leaguers to die in World War II.

Elmer Gedeon, April 15, 1917 – April 20, 1944 Gedeon, a three-sport star from Cleveland, Ohio, excelled in baseball, football and track at the University of Michigan. As a junior, he ran an American-record tying 8.6 seconds in the 70-meter hurdles. In 1938, he was the first to match Jesse Owens’ 7.2 seconds in the low hurdles. But baseball was his true love, and he signed with the Washington Senators on June 3, 1939, where he played just five games. He was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1941 and was later …

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