Hank Greenberg
Hall of Famers at War
| Date and Place of Birth: | January 1, 1911 New York, NY |
| Date and Place of Death: | September 4, 1986 Beverly Hills, CA |
| Baseball Experience: | Hall of Fame |
| Position: | First Base |
| Rank: | Captain |
| Military Unit: | 20th Bomber Command USAAF |
| Area Served: | China-Burma-India |
Henry B. "Hank" Greenberg was born in New York City, on January 1,
1911. He attended James Monroe High School in the Bronx, where he was an
outstanding athlete in baseball, basketball and soccer.
Greenberg later attended New York University for a year before signing
with the Detroit Tigers for $9,000. He was assigned to Hartford in 1930,
playing 17 games before joining Raleigh, where he hit .314 with 19 home
runs which earned him an end-of-season promotion to Detroit. In 1931, he
played at Evansville in the Three I League and batted.318. He spent 1932
with Beaumont in the Texas League, hitting 39 home runs with 131 RBIs
and earning the MVP award.
Greenberg hit .301 in his rookie season with the Tigers. By 1935, he was
the American League’s MVP, helping steer the Tigers to the World
Championship title. In 1938, Greenberg’s 58 home runs was just two shy
of Babe Ruth’s record.
On October 16, 1940, Greenberg registered along with fellow Americans
between the ages of 21 and 35 for the first peacetime draft in the
nation’s history. At his first draft physical in Lakeland, Florida,
during spring training in 1941, it was found that he had flat feet.
Doctors recommended he be considered for limited duty. But a second
examination on April 18 in Detroit determined him fit for full military
service. On May 7, 1941, the day after hitting two home runs in his
farewell appearance, Greenberg was inducted in the Army and reported to
Fort Custer at Battle Creek, Michigan, where many troops of the Fifth
Division turned out at the train station to welcome the slugging star.
“If there’s any last message to be given to the public,” he told The
Sporting News. “Let it be that I’m going to be a good soldier.”
Greenberg was assigned as an anti-tank gunner and went on maneuvers in
Tennessee. In November 1941, having risen to the rank of sergeant, he
rode a gun carrier at a Detroit Armistice Day parade in front of
thousands of cheering onlookers.
But on December 5, 1941, he was honorably discharged after Congress
released men aged 28 years and older from service. On February 1, 1942,
Sergeant Greenberg re-enlisted, was inducted at Fort Dix, New Jersey,
and volunteered for service in the United States Army Air Corps. “We are
in trouble,” he told The Sporting News, “and there is only one thing for
me to do – return to the service. This doubtless means I am finished
with baseball and it would be silly for me to say I do not leave it
without a pang. But all of us are confronted with a terrible task – the
defense of our country and the fight for our lives.”
On August 26, 1943, he was involved in a war bonds game that raised $800
million dollars in war bond pledges. Held at the Polo Grounds in front
of 38,000 fans, the three New York teams combined as the War Bond
All-Stars against an Army all-star line-up that featured Slaughter, Hank
Greenberg and Sid Hudson. The War Bond All-Stars won 5 to 2.
He graduated from Officer Candidate School at Miami Beach, Florida, and
was commissioned as a first lieutenant and was assigned to the Army Air
Force physical education program. Asked in February 1943, what he
thought was in store for baseball in the coming season, Greenberg
replied: “Physical training for air corps men is my business now and I
don’t have time to follow baseball close enough to make any predictions.
I haven’t even seen a sports page for a week.”
By February 1944, Captain Hank Greenberg was a student at the Army's
school for special services at Washington and Lee University. He
requested an overseas transfer later in the year and was assigned to the
first group of Boing B-29 Superfortresses to go overseas. He spent six
months in India before being ferried over Burma to China where he served
in an administrative capacity.
"I'll never forget the first mission our B-29s made from our base to
Japan," Greenberg told Arthur Daley, writing in the February 14, 1945
New York Times. "I drove out to the field in a jeep with General Blondie
Saunders who led the strike, and took my place in the control tower.
Those monsters went off, one after the other, with clock-work precision.
"Then we spotted one fellow in trouble. The pilot saw he wasn't going to
clear the runway, tried to throttle down, but the plane went over on its
nose at the end of the field. Father Stack, our padre, and myself raced
over to the burning plane to see if we could help rescue anyone. As we
were running, there was a blast when the gas tanks blew and we were only
about 30 yards away when a bomb went off. It knocked us right into a
drainage ditch alongside the rice paddies while pieces of metal floated
down out of the air."
Greenberg was stunned and couldn't talk or hear for a couple of days,
but otherwise he wasn't hurt. "The miraculous part of it all was that
the entire crew escaped," Greenberg continued. "Some of them were pretty
well banged up but no one was killed. That was an occasion, I can assure
you, when I didn't wonder whether or not I'd be able to return to
baseball. I was quite satisfied just to be alive."
In the middle of 1944, Greenberg was recalled from China to New York,
where his job was to take small groups of returning combat officers to
war plants in New England and give morale-boosting talks to the workers.
In late 1944, he was based at Richmond, Virginia, and in June 1945, he
was placed on the military’s inactive list and returned to the Tigers.
Without the benefit of spring training, Greenberg returned to Detroit’s
starting line-up on July 1, 1945, before a crowd of 47,729 and homered
against the Athletics in the eighth inning. Greenberg’s return helped
the Tigers to a come-from-behind American League pennant, clinching it
with a grand-slam home run in the final game of the season.
In 1946 he led the league with 44 home runs and 127 RBIs. He was 2nd in
slugging percentage (.604) and total bases (316), behind Ted Williams.
In 1947, Greenberg and the Tigers had a lengthy salary dispute. When
Greenberg decided to retire rather than play for less, Detroit traded
him to the Pittsburgh Pirates. To persuade him not to retire, Pittsburgh
made Greenberg the first baseball player to earn over $100,000 in a
season Greenberg played first base for the Pirates for 1947, and was one
of the few opposing players to publicly welcome Jackie Robinson to the
majors.
That year he tied for the league lead in walks, with 104. He had a .408
on base percentage, and was also eighth in the league in home runs and
tenth in slugging percentage. Nevertheless, the Pirates released him
after the season.
He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1956. Greenberg died of
cancer in Beverly Hills, California, on September 4, 1986.
Date Added July 26, 2016
Hank Greenberg at Baseball-Almanac
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