It’s August 28, 2025. The Phillies’ Kyle Schwarber steps to the plate. The announcer says, “Schwarber has hit three homers in this game. Amazing.” The pitch, the swing, and there’s a crack of the bat. The announcer shouts, “Wow!” as the baseball disappears into the right field stands. “That’s four homers in one game! Kyle is the hero tonight.”

This is a story about baseball heroes from another time and place.

Lefty (Forrest) Brewer had spent three years as a minor league pitcher starring in the Florida State League in the Washington Senators organization. He won forty-eight games. He’d been brought to the Senators spring training. Bill Maloney was a star semi-pro. John Judefield and Elmer Mertz were slick minor league infielders, Holyoke star and semi-pro Rene Croteau, catcher Walt Lupton, Joe Leki, minor leaguer John Barry—all loved baseball.

Joining them were Okey Mills, of Crab Orchard, West Virginia, a star no-hit pitcher in the Coalfield League who hoped to sign a pro contract. Frank Shank was a Cardinals prospect in the Ohio State League, John McNicholas, outfielder in the Bosox farm system; Lee Reisenleiter, Missouri semi-pro; Leo Matuszewski played prep and college ball in Erie; Frank Shank of the Ogden Reds; Thomas MacBlane of the Morris Run, Pennsylvania, Miners, starred in a semi-pro league in the Keystone State. Matuszewski and MacBlane found that they both were born to coal miners in Morris Run and that they each had lived in Elmira, New York.

What happened to their baseball dreams?

They had played ball in the 1930s and up until ’41 when they were either drafted or enlisted in Uncle Sam’s army (Lefty was drafted his first day of major league spring practice). They volunteered for the relatively new paratrooper divisions—every paratrooper was a volunteer. These men filled out the 82nd Airborne Division, a storied unit from WWI. It was called the All-American Division and boasted men from all forty-eight states. Recreated for WWII, it became the 82nd Airborne. They were in the 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 82nd and they named themselves the Red Devils.

The Devils in the Details of War

The 508th was one of four PIRs in the 82nd Airborne. In late 1942, the 508th was moved from Georgia to Fort Bragg near Fayetteville for jump training. The camp had superior facilities and an airfield supporting three-runways.

Baseball historian Gary Bedingfield noted, “With more than 100 military installations operating fiercely competitive sports programs for troops during World War II, North Carolina was a veritable gold mine of baseball talent.”

The para volunteers sent to Ft. Bragg’s adjunct, Camp Mackall, brought their bare essentials: toiletries, army uniforms, baseballs, and gloves. After a day of rigorous training, the troopers tossed a ball around. It wasn’t long before one outfit challenged another to a real game. The camp athletic officer organized a league and set a schedule. The Red Devils lost their first three games. They reorganized and went on a win streak, finishing the season with a 26-4 won-lost record to capture the Ft. Bragg-Camp Mackall championship. Okey Mills threw a no-hitter in the final game.

The 508th ball team was ready for a road trip, which included a game pitting them against the Norfolk Naval Training Station with major leaguers Phil Rizzuto and Dom DiMaggio in their line-up. But a regimental order ended the season for the Red Devils team. Officers explained that it was imperative that military training be the primary focus. The players were miffed at missing an away game.

They would get their away game. But, the summer of 1943 champs-of-the-camp Red Devils had no idea that their next game would be played 3,600 miles away amid the devastation of bomb-torn England.

Let’s look at the leaders who shipped the 508th to England. Set your Way-Back Machine to 1917, West Point. Cadet Mathew Ridgeway is graduating. Ridgeway was given command of the 82nd Airborne. All officers and men who served with and under Ridgeway used the words “awe” and “admiration” to describe him. He was worshipped by all in the 82nd. His training regime was brutal, but it weeded out those who couldn’t measure up. The survivors felt tough enough to whip the enemy bare-handed, and demonstrated that ability in a number of Fayetteville bars. Soldiers invented nicknames for those in command and, for his habit of hanging two grenades on his chest so they dangled strategically over his chest, Ridgeway was affectionately called “Old Iron Tits” behind his back. Expressing strong-held beliefs regarding what might influence unit success, he stated, “That’s the key to the whole thing—leadership.”

Ridgeway was handed raw recruits and charged with turning an infantry division into an airborne division, a military tactic that was entirely new to the US Army and to him. He would lead the 82nd Airborne until given command of XVII Corps that included all US airborne divisions and the British Glider Command.

Reset the Way-Back Machine again, this time to 1907, Brooklyn. A baby was placed in an orphanage. He was adopted by coal miner Martin Gavin and his wife, and named James. Throughout his life, James Gavin enjoyed the gift of being in the right place at the right time. Raised in Mount Carmel, Pennsylvania, he quit school after eighth grade and took a job outside the mines. At seventeen he ran away from home to join the Army. Gavin spent off-duty time reading military history. He entered West Point and became a student of tactics. Offered a chance for paratroop training, he jumped. Gavin was in the army for fourteen years to reach captain, then five years from captain to major. Major to two-star general commanding the 82nd Airborne took just three years. His credo to officers of the division was, “Officers are first to jump; last to eat.” Gavin jumped first man out in four WWII combat jumps. His rating from troopers who served under him was simply, “We loved him. We would have followed him into Hell.” “Jumpin’ Jim” Gavin was a carbon-copy of Ridgeway.

Ridgeway, a “by the book” type officer, was tasked with literally inventing the American Airborne corps. A frustrated leader complained at a staff meeting, “Do any of you know anything about parachutes?” Gavin offered, “Yessir, I have been training paratroopers and I am parachute certified.” Ridgeway asked, “Well, do they have a book on airborne tactics?” Gavin responded, “Yessir. I wrote it.”

The Game

The Red Devils completed training and were moved across the Pond. Based near Nottingham, all men of the division knew the invasion of France was nearing, but only officers knew the time and place. When offered a chance to play a baseball game for a British crowd, Ridgeway’s Red Devils couldn’t wait. They would be pitted against Gavin’s 505th Panthers.

While the 508th ball team had been winning games in the summer of 1943, the 505th was in combat. Their jumps into Sicily and then Salerno during the Italian campaign had proven the efficacy and value of airborne troop drops into battle zones. The 505th, bloodied in battle, knew that first-hand. Forty miles north of Nottingham, 505th replacements were in training—some to complete parachute certification. They were at an airfield where runways were packed with C-47 transport planes. All airborne troops were sequestered on base, honing themselves to a sharp edge—except the troops in the game at Nottingham.

Baseball historian Bedingfield outlined some details of that baseball game in Nottingham. The big day was Sunday, May 28, 1944, in the afternoon, just a few days before the invasion of France. The Red Devils and the Panthers squared off in front of seven thousand fans at Meadow Lane soccer stadium.

Most historians believe that the ball game was an intentional diversion. The “official” purpose was dubious at best. It was said that the Nottingham Anglo-American Committee had asked the American forces to put on a sporting event because live entertainment had been absent from Nottingham for years. There was lots of pre-game publicity encouraging Notts to attend. The crowd featured the Lord High Mayor and the Sheriff of Nottingham. The remainder of attendees were all locals save for a number of Yank officers. All other paratroopers were training to the north. The D-Day invasion was imminent, and it was thought that the Germans would surmise it was not about to happen if paratroopers were playing a very public ball game. Someone suggested ball uniforms, but someone else decided that it must be clear it was paratroopers who were playing. The players were made to wear their jump boots, bloused combat fatigues, and a T-shirt. Numbers scribbled on a four-inch by four-inch paper square were pinned to their shirts.

The Red Devils determined that everybody would play so that they could tell the folks back home they had played in the first baseball game in England. “First” was what they were told, and first was what the players bragged about for years. The game was publicized to the point that players’ hometown papers were sent photographs.

The Panthers batted first. Okey Mills was the Red Devils starting pitcher; Walt Lupton catching. Lefty Brewer relieved Mills in the middle of the fourth inning. Lefty had once, in a pro game, picked off the first three batters to reach first base. Some say it was intentional, but he walked the first batter. Then he promptly picked off the runner. No other batters reached first. The response by the audience confused the players. The Brits did not know baseball, so they were silent until the crack of a bat. Then they applauded like they were watching a match at Wimbledon. And clap, they did! The game was a slugfest for the Red Devils who bested the Panthers 18-0. Lee Reisenleiter, remembering the fans, mused, “It must have been hard for them to make sense of it all.”

A Brief 7th Inning Stretch, Then War

On the afternoon of June 4, the troopers gathered at their take-off fields. Then General Dwight D. “Ike” Eisenhower postponed the invasion to June 6. That wait was torture. The men had blackened their faces and double-checked their equipment, and then waited. Some paced like caged tigers; some sought chaplains; most just napped or chatted quietly. At one runway, through the nervous calm, a truck loaded with a band playing dance tunes appeared. Morris Run’s Thomas MacBlane, who had won a dance contest in London, grabbed a buddy and they jitter-bugged. Others in the stick with blackened faces, ammo belts, dangling knives, joined in. A reporter remembered, “It was the damnedest thing I ever saw!”

The phrase “if anything can go wrong, it will” matched the fortunes of airborne troops on D-Day. Pathfinders—two-man paratrooper teams dropped before a major assault—had been dropped on-target to employ beacons-transponder to guide pilots. Pilots had some problems. Seventeen thousand airborne troops took part in the D-Day Operation Overlord; 13,000 were American paratroopers. But, among the C-47 pilots, 75 percent had never been under fire and only 20 percent of the pilots had any nighttime experience at all. The first serial, or group, had experienced pilots who rose above the clouds, found the transponder at twenty miles, and saw the beacons at five miles. They were the only serial to hit the drop zone. Though they were too high and too fast (triple their training speed), eighty of the 118 planes dropped within two miles of the drop zone. Ridgeway, first to jump, was where he needed to be to command.

The second wave, led by Gavin and Col. Roy Lindquist, had difficulties. Alerted, the Germans launched treacherous anti-aircraft flak. Planes were enveloped in clouds. Pilots dropped out of formation to avoid collision with other C-47s. Many scattered and became totally lost. A small number were able to follow ground transponders. Pilots had been ordered to not use their transponders. Panicked, many ignored orders and turned transponders on, making ground devices useless. Worse, since the last observation planes’ photos, the Germans had flooded the fields, making the Meredet and Douve rivers look like the Mississippi. Totally lost, many pilots just hit the green light (the signal for paratroopers to jump). Only sixty-three of the 508th’s 132 planes dropped anywhere near the DZ. Many dropped over the flooded marsh areas, where thirty-six men drowned. Two hundred twenty-three troopers were wounded on landing and taken prisoner. One plane was shot down; one plane with twenty souls aboard was never found; seven planes were downed on the return trip to England, and 111 came home with severe flak damage.

But the troopers prevailed. Expecting to be relieved in two weeks, they faced thirty-five days of tough combat before relief. They would be pulled off the line to re-fit and prepare. The 82nd jumped in daylight and perfect formation into Holland, took the Seigfried Line into Germany. Sent to Sissons in France, they were raced to the lines with little equipment for the Battle of the Bulge. The 82nd’s esprit de corps was best demonstrated when a tank pulled up behind a lone soldier. Asked if he was the front, he replied, “I’m the 82nd Airborne and this is as far as the bastards are going.”

After the Bulge, they were raced toward the Baltic to stop the Russians from claiming Denmark. In the process General Gavin captured 150,000. The division had fought 442 days combat in six countries.

Game Over

How did the baseball players do?

Ace pitcher Lefty Brewer was killed in action on D-Day; Bill Maloney KIA the next day; infielder John Judefind killed June 9; Elmer Mertz killed June 13; infielder Rene Croteau KIA July 4; catcher Walt Lupton killed September 18 in Holland; Joe Leki KIA October 1 in Holland; John Barry KIA March 26 in Germany. The Red Devils team earned twenty-seven Purple Hearts. Several went AWOL from the hospital to rejoin the fight. Two ball players, Ken Hook and Paul Pavlick, were wounded on D-Day, captured, and not released until April of 1946.

General Ridgeway took command of 8th Army, then became United Nations Supreme Commander in Korea when President Harry Truman fired General Douglas MacArthur. He was Supreme Allied Commander, Europe, NATO. General Gavin stayed in the Army and retired as a three-star at age fifty-one. He later served as US Ambassador to France under President John F. Kennedy.

After VE-Day, the 82nd was chosen as honor guard for Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Forces. Newly-minted Lt. MacBlane headed Ike’s personal Honor Guard. They invented intricate white lacing on boots, had white belts, gloves, and ascots made from parachute silk. Their bayonets were chromed. Patton was so impressed he said, “Ike, that’s not just your Honor Guard. That’s America’s Guard of Honor.” Thus, the motto of the 82nd became “America’s Guard of Honor.” All members of the 82nd earned the Bronze Star. Some got a second Bronze with “V” for Valor.

Post war, Okey Mills, with two Purple Hearts, finished college and was elected sheriff Raleigh County, West Virginia; Frank Shank played three seasons again for a Cardinals minor league team. Frank Labuda, with a Purple Heart and Bronze Star V, returned home to Chicago Heights where he led the Forest Lake League in RBIs and batting average. George Shenkle, with a Bronze Star V and Purple Heart, was ordained and went into schools to teach students about WWII; Lieutenant Colonel Bud Warneke, regular Army, with a Bronze Star V, Purple Heart, and a battlefield commission, fought in Korea, retiring as Commandant Parachute Training at Ft. Bragg. Leo Matuszewski, with a Purple Heart, spent his life as a Catholic priest; Lieutenant Colonel Thomas MacBlane, with a Bronze Star V and twenty-five years in the Army Reserve, was noted for leadership in Elmira’s community charities.

Years later, though the troopers dodged discussion of deadly battles, members of the 508th baseball team smiled as they remembered that game in Nottingham when their Red Devils trounced the 505th. Because “Peace is what they crave … The one constant through all the years was baseball. Baseball is a part of our past. It reminds us of all that once was good, and could be good again.” So said in Field of Dreams.