WWII ballplayer military service guidelines

[Le Grande Orange]

For those folks who'd like to mimic the effect that WWII had on baseball team rosters, here are some numbers from the real MLB to offer some guidelines.

These numbers aren't perfectly accurate, as there is quite a bit of incomplete information. However, they are pretty close and will give a pretty good idea of the impact the war had.

A couple of notes on how I got these numbers:

First, I got from the site http://baseballinwartime.freeservers.com a list of all the players who served during WWII. Then, using Baseball-Reference.com, I made a spreadsheet which contained the full rosters for each team during the war years. These rosters contained every player for each team who played at least 1 game at the major league level during that year. I then went through this list and made note of all the players who subsequently went into military service, and for how long.

I only included full seasons served; if a player returned during part of a season, that season is not included as a year served in the military. This is because the military service info is often incomplete and thus some extrapolation had to be done. It is also much easier to work with full seasons rather than trying to determine partial seasons served. Also, I limited a player's service to a maximum of 4 years, even if that player actually served longer than that. And lastly, players who served in the military prior to playing any major league games are not included; I only wanted to see how many players who were already playing in the majors ended up leaving to serve in the armed forces.

Here are the numbers:


1941

A total of 546 players played at least one game in the majors that year. Of those, 88 (or 16.1% of the total number of players) left for military service starting in 1942.

The breakdown of years served is:

1942-43: 3 players (3.4% of the total number who started service in 1942).
1942-44: 9 players (10.2%)
1942-45: 76 players (86.4%)

1942

A total of 512 players played at least one game in the majors that year. Of those, 151 (29.5%) left for military service starting in 1943.

The breakdown of years served is:

1943: 2 players (1.3%)
1943-44: 11 players (7.3%).
1943-45: 133 players (88.1%)
1943-46: 5 players (3.3%)

1943

A total of 518 players played at least one game in the majors that year. Of those, 127 (24.5%) left for military service starting in 1944.

The breakdown of years served is:

1944: 17 players (13.4%)
1944-45: 99 players (77.9%)
1944-46: 11 players (8.7%)

1944

A total of 548 players played at least one game in the majors that year. Of those, 90 (16.4%) left for military service starting in 1945.

The breakdown of years served is:

1945: 85 players (94.4%)
1945-46: 5 players (5.6%)


With these numbers in hand, it now becomes possible to mimic the effects on rosters that WWII had for either fictional leagues which are set in the past, or for those doing historical leagues and who would like to fictionalize the players' war service (if anyone is interested in following the real world players' service, just say the word and I can compile a list of the players and the years served. It would take some time to do though).

For fictional leagues or for fictionalized war service, this is what I would suggest: first, after your 1941 year is done, find all the players in your league who played at least 1 game in the majors and are between 20-36 years of age. Then, use the percentages listed for 1941 to determine just which players will end up serving, and for how long. It would require a lot of dice throwing or a random number generator, but it could be done.

Once you've got the list of players who are serving, you then use a player editor to either make them retire for the appropriate seaons, or give them a season long injury each year as is necessary. Then you repeat the process for the following 4 seasons.

Now, I'd like to ask the resident utility creation experts here if perhaps one of them might be willing to write a small utility to automate some of this process. If the utility could read the rosters and find all the players with 1 or more games players in the majors and in the right age range, then it could "roll the dice" for each player to determine who ends up serving and for how long. It then finishes by outputting a text or html file listing all the players who were selected for military service and for how long.

The player could then take it from there to edit the necessary players. Having the utility making the list of serving players would cut out a lot of manual work for the OOTP player.

Of course, if the utility could also automatically "retire" or "injure" the selected players that'd be great, although it sounds to me like it'd be too complicated. Just having it do all the "dice rolling" would still be very helpful.

If anyone thinks this a worthwhile little utility, just let me know.

Comments and suggestions welcome...

[Nukester]

Nice Orange. I know there was a discussion about this type of thing along time ago that was pretty interesting. I was just getting to the WWI years and asked a question whether anyone had tried to remove players during the war years (WWI, WWII, Vietnam). For the WWI years, since it only effected about 1 1/2 seasons, I decided to just leave the players alone. By the time I get to WWII (probably OOTP8 at this pace), I was thinking of randomly taking a few players per team (based on age) and giving them season ending injuries (and editing the history) then bringing them back later. I would record all ratings and talents and edit back incase they change....Or maybe Ill just leave them to what they change to, to simulate the effects the war had on them (some may get better perhaphs from physical training, some may get worse perhaphs from shellshock).