Inside the Baseball Hall of Fame by National Baseball Hall of Fame & Museum

Author:National Baseball Hall of Fame & Museum
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

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Bad Nauheim Internment Bat

“It’s unconstitutional not to play baseball,” said Angus Thuermer, who donated this handmade bat to the Hall of Fame. The bat was carved by UPI correspondent Glen Stadler and used by a group of American internees inside Nazi Germany in 1942. Rounded up at the start of the war by the SS, the group of 150 men, women, and children was taken to the former Grand Hotel in Bad Nauheim, Germany, and held for five months before being sent back home. To pass the time, the group developed a four-team baseball league, playing, Thuermer wrote, as “Gestapo guards watched in wonderment.” The ball was a champagne cork wrapped in socks and sewn shut with surgical instruments, and the bases were old diplomatic pouches. One of the players was George Kennan, the future architect of U.S. Cold War policy. Thuermer’s wife, Alice, encouraged him to donate the bat.

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