Oh, Doctor! July 4
- ON BASEBALL AND HOLIDAYS
- By Jerry Coleman, San Diego Hall of Champions
The Fourth of July and Memorial Day holidays usually meant a double-header when I played for the New York Yankees.
Although double-headers ceased to be fixtures on Major League Baseball schedules long ago, the holidays remain as important to me now as when I played. That’s because of my time as a Marine Corps pilot in World War II and Korea.
People often point out to me how much of my career I lost from serving in the military. Yes, I lost about four years, but I don’t think of it that way.
The highlight of my life has been my baseball career, but the real source of who I am is a result of my military career. You grow up fast when you’re 18, 19 or 20 and you’re fighting in World War II.
The military taught you about teamwork. For some guys, playing sports is the only teamwork they know. But learning teamwork in the military is the best thing that ever happened to me.
In World War II, I was 19 when I started flying missions in the Pacific Ocean and my gunner was 18. We were rubes. I like to say if the Japanese knew who they were fighting against, they never would have surrendered.
But my second tour of duty in Korea was tougher. I was 28 and had a family.
I never thought I would be killed in World War II; I thought I would be killed in Korea.
In Korea, I shared a tent with three other guys, and when we weren’t flying missions, we were playing bridge. I think the final score was 228,000 to 210,000. Two of my old friends from our tent have since died. I talked to my other friend, and he had to whisper because of throat cancer.
Before the war, I had planned to play in college at USC after my high school career at Lowell High in San Francisco. But Dec. 7, 1941 at Pearl Harbor changed those thoughts.
Although I missed about four years of baseball in the military, I spent the summer of 1942 playing professional baseball in Wellsville, N.Y. I was 17 and too young to enlist, so I signed with the Yankees. It was a way to kill the summer until I could enlist.
I enlisted in the Navy in October, 1942 as a naval aviation cadet in the V-5 program and trained in North Carolina, Colorado and Texas. I was commissioned as a 2nd lieutenant in the Marines.
We were sent to Guadalcanal in August 1944 to join my squadron, VMSB-341. We also were known as “The Torrid Turtles.”
As I get older – I’m turning 30 soon, right? – people tell you that you were a hero, but we were just doing a job we had to do.
I don’t care much for most war movies because they’re not realistic. “Saving Private Ryan” was probably as realistic as it gets.
But I always enjoy a baseball game on The Fourth of July or Memorial Day.
EDITOR'S NOTE: Lt. Colonel Coleman flew a total of 120 combat missions in World War II and the Korean War. He was awarded two Distinguished Flying Crosses, 13 Air Medals, and three Navy Citations.
