by PKMitchell

Created on: April 09, 2009   Last Updated: April 11, 2009

In January of 1942, shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt wrote to Baseball Commissioner Kenesaw Landis, "Baseball provides a recreation which does not last over two hours or two hours and a half, and which can be got for very little cost." In his famous "Green Light Letter" to Commissioner Landis, the President reassured Landis that the game of professional baseball should continue during wartime and that, indeed, it would be good for the country to do so.

Spring training changed quite a bit during World War II, as did the sport of baseball as a whole. A number of major players were either called up or volunteered for service during the war. Yogi Berra, Bob Feller, Ted Williams, and over 500 other major leaguers served their country, even though most were considered exempt from the draft. And so spring training continued in 1942, and throughout the war years, at the urging of the President but without a significant number of its major players.

Location was also a major issue for spring training games during World War II. By the early 20th century, spring training had developed into a series of games, mostly played in warm climates, against other major league teams as well as minor league and college teams. The Grapefruit League took shape in Florida and many teams also played in Texas, New Orleans, and even Havana.

The war changed all of that, mainly because of transportation concerns. Trains and other transport modes were needed for soldiers and supplies. In 1943, the director of the Office of Defense Transportation, Joseph Eastman, requested that spring training be held closer to each ball club's home field, so that the country's transportation system could be used for the war efforts instead of for players and fans headed to and from spring training games.

The Landis-Eastman Line, or the Potomac Line, as it came to be known, actually drew out the boundaries for how far a team could travel for spring training games during World War II. According to Steve Gietschier, writing for The Sporting News, spring training was confined to "the area north of the Potomac and Ohio Rivers and east of the Mississippi, except for the two St. Louis clubs and the two Chicago clubs, which could train in Missouri, Indiana or Illinois." For the next three years, baseball teams such as the Yankees went no farther than New Jersey for spring training, a bit of a change from the warmth of Florida and Texas.Once the war was over, the restrictions of the Landis-Eastman Line were lifted, major players got back in the game, and most teams returned to the south to play their spring training games. However, some teams decided to head southwest instead and in 1948, the Cactus League was born in Arizona.

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