Top of page

Exhibition Baseball Americana

Overseas Picture Division. American Soldiers in India . . . , ca. 1942. Reproduction. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress (065.00.00)
Enlarge

Softball in Wartime

From training camps to Axis prison camps, Americans played their national game wherever they could during World War II. Major leaguers in the service starred in exhibition games to entertain U.S. troops worldwide, and servicemen coached locals in the sport. American soldiers in India, shown here, taught Burmese nurses how to play softball and reported that the women “make good competition despite the long wrap-around skirts, which interfere somewhat with their base running.”