The Story of the Scrap Metal Children - Part 1 of 2
The Greatest Generation held the greatest ballpark promotions.
A few weeks ago, we heard from a relative who wanted to let us know she’d been enjoying the first few months of Project 3.18.
“I’m enjoying your stories so much. They are addictive! Can’t wait for the story of the scrap metal children.”
We had a good laugh at that phrasing, coming from a career children’s librarian who had managed to make a WWII-era sporting debacle sound like something from Jan Brett’s little-known steampunk period.
All of a sudden, we couldn’t wait for “The Story of the Scrap Metal Children” either, and here it is, Volume 2 in our “Now That’s What I Call a Forfeit” series. And while we will get to the kids today, you’re actually going to have to wait until next week for the forfeit because it turns out the Scrap Metal Children struck twice.
Winston Churchill would never forget hearing the news that the Empire of Japan had attacked Pearl Harbor. He remembered the striking clarity of his immediate thought: “We’ve just won the war.” Such conviction was hard to find in the United States, which had just been punched in the mouth and found itself in urgent need of a new plan. Less than a day after the attack, parts of the Pacific Fleet still burning in Hawaii, Franklin D. Roosevelt addressed a joint session of Congress to provide one.
His short message, famously declaring December 7, 1941 “a date which will live in infamy,” aimed to take the nation’s shock, fear, and grief, a collective trauma, and turn it into transformational resolve: “…we will not only defend ourselves to the uttermost but will make it very certain that this form of treachery shall never again endanger us.”
Attaining such an “absolute victory” would require the full commitment of what had previously been an ambivalent and equivocating society. Invoking “the unbounding determination of [the American] people,” Roosevelt wrote the first, subtlest strokes of what would soon be an unavoidable and omnipresent commandment to the nation: To achieve an existential victory, everyone would be required to dig deeper than they ever had before.
In the first days of 1942, as the federal government shifted all aspects of American life towards mobilization and a total-war economy, the President received a handwritten note on rather striking letterhead paper. To be sure, Roosevelt’s own stationary began with a brag (“The White House, Washington”), but the letter he received on January 14 had come from simply: “BASEBALL.” In 1942, BASEBALL boiled down to one man: Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis.
Landis’ letter might have read: Hey, haven’t heard from you and wanted to check in…we good?
He said it like this, though:
The time is approaching when, in ordinary conditions, our teams would be heading for spring training camps. However, inasmuch as these are not ordinary times, I venture to ask what you have in mind as to whether professional baseball should continue to operate.
President Roosevelt was well-known as a keen fan of the game, which meant he understood what baseball meant to tens of millions of Americans, so Landis need not have worried (and in fact he probably didn’t). So why send the letter at all? The wily commissioner probably appreciated that, for the immediate future, wartime Roosevelt was going to be closer to a monarch than a president, and he wanted a writ of the king’s protection.
Landis concluded with a note both characteristically brusque and sincere. If he had ever fantasized about trading places with the Democrat running the country, on this day, he did not. “Health and strength to you,” Landis wrote, “and whatever else it takes to do this job.”
He received a response the very next day, giving him everything he could have hoped for:
My dear Judge,
There was no love lost between the two men, but war made for graceful exchanges.
Thank you for yours of January fourteenth. As you will, of course, realize, the final decision about the baseball season must rest with you and the Baseball Club owners–so what I am going to say is solely a personal and not an official point of view.
Right, got it, just the most powerful two people to ever hold their respective offices, having a little informal chat.
I honestly feel that it would be best for the country to keep baseball going. There will be fewer people unemployed and everybody will work longer hours and harder than ever before.
And that means that they ought to have a chance for recreation and for taking their minds off their work even more than before.
There was a rather large caveat, though one Landis had himself anticipated (and one he agreed with):
As to the players themselves, I know you agree with me that individual players who are of active military or naval age should go, without question, into the services. Even if the actual quality of the teams is lowered by the greater use of older players, this will not dampen the popularity of the sport.
In other words, Joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams were going to war, and baseball would have to make do without them, but it was welcome to try.
Reading this missive, Landis must have been walking on air. Not only had Roosevelt spared baseball, he had practically nationalized the game as a recreational tool of the war effort. Somehow he restrained himself from issuing an immediate press release, but word soon got out.
Over the course of the war, baseball would pitch in wherever and however it could. In September of 1942, that spirit of patriotic service would inspire some teams to turn their ballparks into America’s most exciting junkyards.
To get a better sense of how the war had impacted American life in 1942, we consult, as we so often do, the Iola Register, principal newspaper of Iola, Kansas (population 7,200).
On September 28, 1942, the Register was, as always, full of war news, featuring a large splash photo of American soldiers piling out of a troopship to guard New Caledonia—far out in the Pacific—from Japanese attack. A year earlier, the number of Iolians who knew New Caledonia existed might well have been zero, but a year later their hometown paper informed them that not only did it exist, it was in fact worth dying for.
Nearby, the key for the day’s themed crossword puzzle was “Under-Secretary of the United States Navy. In 1942, this would have been an easy name to call forth.1”
Nearby, a drawing that looked like a political cartoon (to draw the reader in) revealed itself to as another rationing instruction. And we’re just going to show you this visual pun as it looked in 1942, because it doesn’t translate as well in 2024:
And two or three other references to scrap metal peppered various blurb articles. Why was so much of the day’s content junk-flavored? A busy, shouty public service announcement with far too many border frames made at last made it clear what was going on:
If you’re a heartsick wife, mother, or sweetheart…you’d do a lot to give that boy a better chance to get back safe. Well then…do it!
SOMEONE’S LIFE IS IN YOUR HANDS.
Round up your scrap metal—it’s needed to make steel.
You don’t want production figures. It’s enough to know that 50% of all new steel is made from scrap—and that our steel mills now have only enough scrap in sight to last another 30 days at the most!
What happens after that depends on all of us. If production falls and you’ve not done your part, will you rest easy?
This blaring screed, and practically everything else on the page, was brought to you by the American Newspaper Publishers Association (the ANPA). In September, 1942, the nation’s newspapers were engaged in their own national service, conducting a coast-to-coast scrap metal donation drive.
That month, the ANPA turned their publications into a primitive form of the “newsvertisement” content we are all too familiar with today. (“This One Weird Trick will beat back global fascism!”)
Participating newspapers shoved their readers where the ANPA and Uncle Sam wanted them to go: into their junk drawers, closets, attics, and back yards, and reported gains big and small with the same tone of breathless excitement they’d later use to cover the invasion of Normandy:
200 toy factories ramping up for Christmas had re-ordered their production lines to maximize scrap metal salvage!
The Works Progress Administration had 24-hour shifts in Jacksonville, Florida, ripping up an abandoned street railway system!
A Dayton, Ohio Veterans’ Hospital would donate 22 tons of antique cannons!
The campaign stretched from coast to coast. The Sacramento Bee printed an imperious FAQ from the Associated Press aimed at any scrap-skeptics who might be left, with questions like: “Why all the rush?” “Who gets money for my scrap?”
And this particularly-stupid question, which prompted a scold of a response:
Question: I see big heaps of rusting metal in fields, which no one seems to be doing anything about. Why?
Answer: If you are 100% patriotic, you will tell your local scrap headquarters about every such accumulation of scrap you know about and if you are really out to win this war, you will find out who owns it, see if they will contribute it, then see if you yourself cannot find someone with a truck to get out there and get it.
Nearby in the Bee was an ominous note supposedly penned by President Roosevelt, who in 1942 could get away with offhandedly saying the government might just start confiscating people’s property:
Lack of adequate cooperation in gathering scrap metal might mean that the government would just have to take the metal away from its owners.
To anyone having doubts about what he should scrap, leaders of the drive say this:
‘Don’t figure that some day you will need it. If we lose the war, that day you were figuring on may never come. The great need for scrap is this minute.’
By 1942, the nation’s blast furnaces could make new steel with 50% less smelted iron ore (“pig iron”) than used to be required. The rest of the material could come from certain types of garbage. It wasn’t quite as magical as that, though; you couldn’t just throw bicycle chasses and bed frames into the smelter, and a long chain of industry existed to take people’s junk, separate it, cut it down into usable pieces, and ship it to the industrial centers where it could be reincarnated in new forms of metal both practical and spectacular.
A clothes iron could become two steel helmets. A set of golf clubs was half of a new machine gun. Some old fencing might end up in the keel of a battleship. To keep the production of steel at maximum capacity over the course of the winter of 1941/42, the federal War Production Board set a goal to have 17 million tons of scrap sitting in scrapyards and ready to go, by January 1. Managing the communication arm of this national project was assigned to the obvious candidate, the newspaper industry, who would work pro bono.
Quotas were assigned to regions and districts nationwide. New York City, by far the largest metropolitan area in the country, would have to come up with a lot of scrap.
In the days leading up to the drive’s September 25 kickoff, representatives from the local newspaper publishers association worked with Mayor Fiorello La Guardia and his office on a plan to wring every last drop of junk metal from all five boroughs.
“The drive is well organized and ready for action,” the mayor said on September 22. He urged residents to search closets, attics, cellars, and backyards for any metal not serving a useful purpose.
The city and the NYCNPA looked to other local institutions to help get out the junk. The Loew’s Theater chain agreed to put on special scrap matinees for patrons who could pay their way in with scrap or old rubber. That idea may have given baseball one of its own, leading the president of the Brooklyn Dodgers, Larry MacPhail, to announce that for the season’s final week, baseball fans could get tickets in exchange for a ten-pound scrap donation.
The Dodgers began accepting scrap around September 21, that first day yielding 56 tons of alternative admissions fees for the war effort. The first week netted 600 tons, reflecting high interest in the unresolved National League pennant race. The Brooks were still in contention, but they had been stuck just behind the St. Louis Cardinals for nearly a month, and time was running out.
For their part, the do-or-die Dodgers finished the season with an eight-game run of victories, each day’s victory “bringing a spark of life to the corpse,” and by September 25 they had pulled to within an excruciating 2.5 games of St. Louis, though for Brooklyn to have any chance, the Cardinals would need to falter.
The scrap metal drive coinciding with a thrilling pennant finale presented an enormous opportunity for the borough’s children, as they no longer needed even a quarter from their parents to get into the games. The Dodgers’ final home game of the season against the Boston Braves became one of the most exciting tickets in town, and all you needed to get in was an old lamp or something. The kids must have thought the grown-ups had lost their minds.
In eleven public schools within striking distance of Ebbets Field, thousands of children all arrived at the same great idea. The Dodgers-Braves game would start at 2:30pm, and school let out at three. If you brought your scrap donation with you to school that morning, you could head straight to the ballpark from there and only miss the first inning or so.
Missing the first inning was unacceptable to some 4,000 die-hard kids who opted to just skip school altogether, heading straight for the ballpark by bus, trolley, and train, trailing loose bolts, frayed cords, and pieces of cheap cutlery. Their appearance alarmed some officers of the Juvenile Aid Bureau working near the ballpark, who appealed to the children to return to school, “receiving,” the New York Times reported, only “barbed replies: ‘Aw gee, have a heart! This is the last game!’ ‘Brooklyn still has a chance!’ ‘G’wan, beat it!’ ‘Scram!’”
After dropping their junk on Montgomery Street to the north of the park, these poison-tongued youths took their complimentary tickets to the designated scrap gate on Bedford Avenue, on the east side of the park, admitting them to the center field bleachers.
The problem (of course there was a problem; this is Project 3.18) was that there were far more entrants than anticipated and fire department officials quickly decided the section was at capacity, ordering the gate closed. The team could open another one a little further down, into a new section. But this plan was misunderstood by the kids waiting in line, who saw their entry port being shuttered and became alarmed. Would they not get in? Had they missed their chance?
When the nearby gate opened, offering an uncertain reprieve, all the kids still waiting in line dumped their fee where they stood and ran for it, ticket or not.
Ballpark staff, supported by dozens of private security and 100 New York police officers, had been put in charge of managing the logistics of the scrap drive. The adults would prove merely a speed bump for the hookey-playing hordes, driven half-wild by a baseball FOMO that modern fans can scarcely imagine.
The adults were cut, bruised, and trampled as dozens of children shoved past. The police tried to re-establish their lines but before they could do so, school bells rang from Crown Heights to Flatbush and out came the 15,000 rule-followers who’d done their time and already missed part of the game. They converged on Ebbets field in a single fifteen-minute span. It must have seemed like a tsunami.
To prevent a crowd crush, the police ordered all the center field gates thrown open, but this triggered a chaotic stampede, leaving “some 50 youths knocked down, bruised, and trampled.”
By about 4pm, everyone who was going to get in was safely inside, and the gates were closed. Left outside amidst a debris field resembling an exploded secondhand store, a group of stunned and tattered grown-ups checked themselves for damage.
“Policeman had scratched faces, barked shins, and short tempers,” the Washington Post wrote.
They tripped over bedsprings, coat hangers, bedsteads, radiator parts, piping, automobile bumpers, rusty perambulators, rubber tires and tubes, and an assortment of pots and pans, all of it lying where it had been dropped by children eager to join the flood pouring inside.
“25 officers had their uniforms ripped,” and one Deputy Chief Inspector was minus his new wristwatch, liberated by some enterprising and dexterous rascal during the melee.
“Thank heavens the season is over. I’ve never had an experience like this in my police career,” one sweaty precinct captain said.
The children’s pile ran the length of McKeever Place, running along the leftfield boundary of Ebbets Field, and it was estimated to include 300 tons of scrap, half as much in one afternoon as had been collected in the previous five days. The pile proved a fine consolation for shut-out latecomers, who picked through the donations and retrieved salvageable roller skates, toys, and interesting odds and ends.
From within the ballpark came the delighted shrieks and cheers of 20,000 children (and 4,000 paying attendees) as the Dodgers engaged in a taut battle with a terrible Boston team. They were tied 5-5 in the ninth, sending the game to extra innings, and Brooklyn walked off with a victory in the bottom of the 11th when the Braves’ second baseman, Sibbi Sisti, booted a ground ball from Billy Herman, scoring Dolph Camilli. The Dodgers were still alive, sending their juvenile crowd home happy and slightly-battered, but with no regrets.
Both Sisti and Herman would, as Roosevelt envisioned, “go into the services,” Sisti right away after the season, serving three years in the Coast Guard; Herman enlisting in the Navy a year later. Dolph Camilli was 36 years old, too old to serve, or he probably would have gone too. The Most Valuable Player of the National League in 1941, Camilli was traded to the New York Giants in 1943, but he hated the rival Giants so much that he quit baseball rather than play for them. And thus the Project 3.18 story pile grows one higher.
The Dodgers surely did their best in that home stretch, but an 8-0 run was, well, junk compared to the output of the white-hot Cardinals, who lost only four times in the entire month of September. The rivals played each other only twice in that month, but St. Louis won both games, and they ended up being the difference, with the Cardinals clinching the pennant on the season’s final day.
And while they did not win the pennant in 1942, thanks to the Scrap Metal Children, the Dodgers still came away with the hardware—their Ebbets Field promotion netted 156 gross tons of metal for the Allied war effort.
So, the Scrap Metal Children made their world debut on September 25, 1942 at Ebbets Field, but as you can see, nobody forfeited anything as a result (except the cop who forfeited his watch, we suppose).
And that means we’ll be back next week to tell you what happened across town in Dolph Camilli’s personal hell, the Polo Grounds, when the New York Giants decided to try their hand at a scrap promotion. And, we can tell you, it’s going to be a real blast.
Here’s the conclusion:
James V. Forrestal. And you better believe he got a big ole boat out of it.
Cool story especially as I am a war buff too & I never heard of this. TY Paul.