D-Day +64

BaseballLibrary.com
1944

D-Day begins. All ML games are canceled as the country's focus is turned toward Europe as allied forces invade occupied France. Yesterday was an off-day after all teams played Saturday doubleheaders.

And this story from mlb.com from 06/06/2004

Thirty-five Hall of Fame members and more than 500 Major League players served in World War II, according to the National Baseball Hall of Fame. Many of them served as fitness trainers, morale officers or in other non-combat roles. But among the sailors and soldiers participating in the D-Day invasion were future Hall of Fame baseball players Yogi Berra and Leon Day.

About a year before D-Day, the New York Yankees signed Berra and sent him to Norfolk in the Class D Virginia League, but he was drafted soon after and went into the Navy. Berra had been offered $250 to sign with the St. Louis Cardinals, but turned it down because he wanted the same $500 the Cardinals gave his boyhood friend Joe Garagiola.

On D-Day, while Leon Day was landing on Utah Beach with an Army amphibious unit, Berra was on an LST participating in the Normandy invasion, then went off the LST onto a 50-foot rocket-launcher boat that went within 20 yards of the beach.

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