As Memorial Day approaches and we reflect on some of our more well known national heroes, it is also the perfect time to remember the loss of Captain Eddie Grant, the very first member of Major League Baseball to die in combat in service to the U.S.A.
By all accounts, Eddie Grant was a serviceable third baseman, a smart player, and an able pinch player for such teams as the Cincinnati Reds and the New York Giants. He was a Harvard-educated man who became a lawyer and played baseball for most of his adult life. He even had the fortune of playing in the 1913 World Series. But, it was his final sacrifice that we should most remember.
According to writer Mike Bates, the young Eddie Grant paid his way through Harvard and law school as a journeyman ball player until he finally broke into the major leagues in 1907, when he got his shot with the Philadelphia Phillies.
Ever the Harvard man, some players were amused by the well-spoken Grant, especially as he shagged fly balls yelling in his always proper English, “I have it,” instead of the more common, “I got it.”
Over the next decades, he played about three seasons each for the Phillies, the Cincinnati Reds, and the New York Giants before he retired. As Bates reports, he had a solid, if not shining, career in the majors, he was well liked, and retired in 1915 with accolades from everyone who knew him.
Grant was already in his 30s when war broke out in Europe, and in 1917 when the U.S. jumped in to go “over there,” Grant decided he was obligated as an American to put himself on the line for his countrymen.
The pinch hitter had already retired from baseball, but in 1917 he joined the Plattsburgh Movement, a military training organization backed by former President Theodore Roosevelt meant to help train military officers for the coming war in a country that was woefully unprepared to field an army.
“I am going to try to be an officer,” Grant wrote to his sister. “I don’t know how much of a success I shall make at it. I had determined from the start to be in this war if it came to us, and if I am not successful as an officer, I shall enlist as a private, for I believe there is no greater duty that I owe for being that which I am — an American citizen.”
Because these training camps were a citizen-led movement and not backed by the federal government, Grant had to pay for his membership, schooling, and supplies himself. But the effort paid off, because once he passed his training the U.S. Army was pleased to take him on as an Infantry officer.
Grant successfully completed officer training, and in 1918 shipped out as captain of Company H of the 307th Infantry Regiment, 77th Division in the U.S. Expeditionary Forces.
Eventually, Grant and his men headed for the Argonne Forest as part of the last major allied offensive in September of 1918 where they would face off against the combined forces of the German Empire and the Austria-Hungarian army.
This offensive was an incredible slugfest that became famous in America most especially as being the battle where the famed Lost Battalion of American forces were cut off and stranded from reinforcement. The Lost Battalion went into the Argonne Forest nearly 600 strong, but after spending about a week cut off from their army and surrounded on all sides by enemy forces, the unit came back with only about 194 men upon its rescue.
Grant was not part of the Lost Battalion, but at one point it became his duty to attempt to break though enemy lines and help to rescue the missing force. But, Grant and his men were unable to break through the enemy’s lines to give aid to the Lost Battalion. As it turned out, it was his last, best effort. Grant lost his life during the onslaught.
At 35-years-old on October 5, 1918, the former baseballer was struck down by shrapnel from an exploding shell as he yelled for stretcher bearers to take his wounded men off the field. The well-being of his troops was the only thing on his mind that fateful day.
After news had filtered back home that the New York Giants player had fallen in action, the team held a ceremony for him. He was eulogized by MLB commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis as well as Giants manager John McGraw, and sports writer Grantland Rice penned a poem to his memory. The team also laid a memorial plaque to him at the Polo Grounds stadium where the Giants played.
Sadly, when the stadium closed in 1963 someone stole the bronze plaque bearing his name and service, and it hasn’t been seen since.
One more tidbit concerning the eulogizing of this American hero: At the time it was a policy of Major League Baseball that a team could wear a gold star on their uniforms if a player should happen to die in service to the country. But, when the Giants appealed to MLB to wear their star to commemorate Grant’s battlefield loss, the commissioner denied them permission to do so. His reason was sound enough. The rule stated that the player had to have been a current member of the team, and Grant had retired from baseball two years before his death.
Even then MLB was sticking like a bulldog to rules that could have logically been relaxed. Not even an American hero could get the MLB to relax a rule.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com.
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