#PotusGeeks Summer Reruns: Did Dwight Eisenhower Play Professional Baseball?
Although he never openly admitted to it, there is strong evidence to believe that Dwight Eisenhower played semi-professional minor league baseball for Junction City, Kansas in the Central Kansas Baseball League in the year before he attended West Point. Ordinarily, that might not be anything to hide, but for Eisenhower, if true, and if it had been known by the athletic authorities at West Point, Eisenhower would have been ineligible to play college football at the military academy.
Eisenhower accepted an appointment to West Point in 1911. He was a good athlete, excelling in a number of sports, including football and baseball. While at West Point he tried out for the school team for both sports. Although he had been a very good high school baseball player, he failed to make the baseball team at West Point. Eisenhower later said "not making the baseball team at West Point was one of the greatest disappointments of my life, maybe my greatest."
Ike did make the football team, and was a varsity starter as running back and linebacker in 1912. He tackled the legendary running back Jim Thorpe of the Carlisle Indians in a game that year. In order to play college football, one of the requirements was that the player must not have ever played a sport for money. At the time, doing so resulted in the forfeiture of an athlete's amateur status. If Eisenhower did in fact play baseball for money, it would have been in violation of the Cadet Honor Code for him to play college football. According to some sources, Eisenhower was required to signed a document in which he represented that he had never played sports for money. But according to the Eisenhower Presidential Library, there is no documentation as to whether this is so.
Eisenhower loved baseball and wanted to be a professional baseball player. At Abilene High School, he played center field while his brother Edgar, one year older, played first base. (Dwight Eisenhower is second from right in the top row in the picture above). Eisenhower once said: "When I was a small boy in Kansas, a friend of mine and I went fishing and as we sat there in the warmth of the summer afternoon on a river bank, we talked about what we wanted to do when we grew up. I told him that I wanted to be a real major league baseball player, a genuine professional like Honus Wagner. My friend said that he'd like to be President of the United States. Neither of us got our wish." As President, Eisenhower wrote to Wagner on the ballplayer's 80th birthday, stating: "You are truly one of baseball's immortal heroes."
While playing football at West Point, Eisenhower injured his knee. He was told that he could not play team sports, and the news caused him great despair.
Later, when Eisenhower became famous, evidence began to emerge which suggested that he had in fact played baseball for money, using the pseudonym “Wilson” to avoid jeopardizing his amateur status. According to an article in the New York Times on June 20, 1945, Eisenhower was interviewed before joining Mayor Fiorello La Guardia to watch the New York Giants play the Boston Braves at the Polo Grounds. That morning, six weeks after V-E Day, Eisenhower, in his five-star general's uniform, was the guest of honor in what The Times called “the largest and most enthusiastic” parade in New York’s history - a triumph such as Rome never gave a conquering Caesar.”
According to the Times Article, Giants’ manager, Mel Ott, asked Eisenhower if it was true that he had played semiprofessional ball. Eisenhower replied, that he had, “under the assumed name of Wilson.” He told Ott that it was “the one secret of my life.” He also asked Ott, “What the hell has happened to the pitching since I went away to the war?” Several days later, when Eisenhower was visiting his mother in Abilene, he told an Associated Press reporter that he had taken “any job that offered me more money” in preparation for college. He also admitted that he “wasn’t a very good center fielder.” It appears that Eisenhower was later cautioned about talking about his Kansas baseball career before playing sports at West Point because doing so had the potential to tarnish his reputation.
Another source for this assertion is found in the Eisenhower Library. There is a 1961 notation made by his longtime secretary, Ann Whitman, which reads “DDE did play professional baseball one season to make money” and that he made “one trip under an assumed name.” Another note sets down the ex-president’s private order that “inquiries should not be answered concerning his participation in professional baseball - as it would necessarily become too complicated.”
There is also the story told by Eisenhower's grandson David Eisenhower in his 2010 book “Going Home to Glory”. In the book, David recalls watching a Brooklyn Dodgers game in 1948 at Ebbets Field. At the game, Arthur "Red" Patterson, the Brooklyn Dodgers’ ex-publicity chief, told David that, while watching a game that year at Ebbets Field, Patterson had asked Eisenhower about the rumors, saying he had heard that two “Wilsons” had played in the 1909 Central Kansas League. According to Wilson, the conversation went as follows:
Patterson: Which Wilson was Wilson, and which was Eisenhower?
Eisenhower: I was the Wilson who could hit. That’s between you and me.”
According to Baseball Reference at this link, the 1911 Junction City Soldiers of the Central Kansas League did have a player named Wilson who played 9 games for the team, and indeed he could hit. In 31 at bats, he hit safely 11 times for a .355 batting average, best on the team.