Bill Nichiolson, a slugging outfielder, didn't join the team until opening day. He wanted to hang on to his job at a defense plant for as long as possible, given the uncertainty of the times. Second baseman Don Johnson had a draft exemption as a father of three. But he didn't get the hero worship that fans accorded players before the war, as he later recalled.
"When we traveled, there would be lots of troops on the trains," Johnson said. "GIs would come up and ask why you weren't in the service -- some jocularly, others not."
Though he never saw a battlefield, Johnson did get a close-up view of the war's toll when the Cubs played an exhibition game at a military hospital. The stands were unnaturally quiet. War had left many of the patients deaf.
--GreGen
The USS North Carolina (BB-55) My all-time favorite warship. As an elementary school student in North Carolina, I donated nickels and dimes to save this ship back in the early sixties.
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