The Gas and Flame Men: Baseball and the Chemical Warfare Service during World War I

Historian Leeke (The Best Team Over There) offers a meticulous and informative account of the Chemical Warfare Service, an army unit hastily formed when the U.S. entered WWI to catch up to the conflict’s extensive reliance on new weapons like flamethrowers and poison gas. Conscripting chemists and engineers to design the weapons, the government also widely advertised the need for men of daring to serve as the unit’s foot soldiers. This recruitment effort (in what was most likely an intentional effort to spruce up chemical warfare’s negative image) drew in a handful of prominent athletes, including Major League Baseball players Christy Mathewson, Ty Cobb, and Branch Rickey. With a strong focus on the backstories and careers of the Major Leaguers, Leeke follows the unit through a period of research and development at American University in Washington, D.C.—where weapons were tested on animals, some of them reportedly kidnapped local pets—and their deployment in France, where the soldiers laboriously and stealthily carried heavy projectors and mortars close enough to German lines to launch cannisters of gas into their trenches. While the narrative is somewhat waylaid by an unpersuasive closing argument that Mathewson’s death from tuberculosis was not connected to gas exposure, the end result is nonetheless an enjoyable and distinctive blend of war story and sports chronicle. It will appeal especially to baseball history buffs. (Feb.)