October 7, 1918: Bun Troy Is Killed In Action

October 7, 1918: A man born in Germany, who played major league baseball in America, is killed in battle, for his new country, against his old one.

Robert Gustave Troy was born on August 27, 1888 in Bad Wurzach, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. As a boy, he moved with his family to McDonald, Pennsylvania, outside Pittsburgh. I can find no record of why he was nicknamed "Bun."

A pitcher, he played in the minor leagues from 1910 to 1914. He appeared in only 1 major league game, pitching for the Detroit Tigers, on September 15, 1912. He started the game, against the Washington Senators, at the new Navin Field in Detroit. (It would be renamed Briggs Stadium in 1938, and Tiger Stadium in 1961.) The opposing pitcher was the best pitcher in the American League at the time, Walter Johnson. For 6 innings, they both pitched shutout ball. But the Senators scored 6 runs in the 7th inning, and ended up winning, 6-3.

It's not clear why he never pitched in the major leagues again, especially since the Federal League opened up major league jobs in 1914 and 1915. But when America got into World War I, he enlisted in the U.S. Army. He was probably safer at an Army base than in civilian life, as discrimination against people of German descent got very nasty.

He was a Sergeant in the Army's 80th Infantry Division, a.k.a. the Blue Ridge Division, when he was shot in the chest outside Verdun, France, just 35 days before the Armistice ended the war.

There is no mention of this single-day Tiger's service, in baseball or in the Army, at Comerica Park.

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October 7, 1918 was a Monday. The War Department had ordered that the baseball season end a month early, in September, and that all players obey the "work or fight order": Enlist, or get a job in an industry essential to the war effort, or get an otherwise necessary job (like police or firemen), or be subject to the military draft. Hockey season hadn't started yet. Professional basketball barely existed. And football was in midweek. So there were no scores on this historic day.

February 21, 1916: The Battle of Verdun

The Douaumont Ossuary, at the Verdun Battlefield

February 21, 1916: The Battle of Verdun begins, in what had been the village of Douaumont, 5 miles northeast of Verdun, and 168 miles east of central Paris. It turns into the longest battle of World War I.

The German 5th Army, under the command of General Konstantin Schmidt von Knobelsdorf, attacked the French Second Army, under the command of Marshal Philippe Pétain. For 3 days, they made significant progress. But their advance slowed, and by March 6, French reinforcements had arrived. The battle became typical of the war: A stalemate between France and Germany.

Philippe Pétain

No British troops were in this battle. They would be involved at The Somme, a battle which began on July 1, and forced the transfer of some troops from France and Germany. Finally, on December 18, the French recovered Fort Douaumont and Fort Vaux, and the battle was over. France claimed that 143,000 of their troops had been killed; Germany, 163,000 -- for, essentially, nothing. Again, typical of this war.

Schmidt von Knobelsdorf retired from the German Army after the war, and died in 1936. Although he did not actually say, "Ils ne passeront pas!" ("They shall not pass!" -- that was his second-in-command, Robert Nivelle -- Pétain become known as "The Lion of Verdun," and was one of the great heroes of the war, and a symbol of French patriotism.

Thinking they could use this, the Nazis enticed him to be Chief of the French State under their control in World War II, then convicted of treason thereafter, his sentence commuted to life due to his age. He died in 1951, and Charles de Gaulle called his life "successively banal, then glorious, then deplorable, but never mediocre."

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February 21, 1916 was a Monday. Baseball and football were out of season. Professional basketball barely existed. There was not yet an NHL. There was an NHA, a National Hockey Association, but it had no games scheduled for that day. There was also a Pacific Coast Hockey Association, but they had no games that day, either. So there were no scores on this historic day.