The Cloudbuster Nine: The Untold Story of Ted Williams and the Baseball Team That Helped Win World War II

About this book

In 1943 the New York Yankees won the World Series but one of the nations strongest baseball teams practiced on a skinned-out college field in the heart of North Carolina. Ted Williams Johnny Pesky and Johnny Sain were among a cadre of fighter-pilot cadets who wore the Cloudbuster Nine baseball jersey at an elite Navy training school at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. As a child Anne Keenes father Jim Raugh suited up as the team bat boy and mascot. He got to know his baseball heroes personally watching players hit the road on cramped tin-can buses dazzling factory workers kids and service members at dozens of games including a war-bond exhibition with Babe Ruth at Yankee Stadium. Jimmy followed his baseball dreams as a college All-American but was crushed later in life by a failed major-league bid with the Detroit Tigers. He would have carried this story to his grave had Anne not discovered his scrapbook from a Navy school that shaped Americas greatest heroes including George H.W. Bush Gerald Ford John Glenn and Paul "Bear" Bryant. With the help of rare images and insights from World War II baseball veterans such as Yankees legends Dr. Bobby Brown and Eddie Robinson the story of this remarkable team is brought to life for the first time in The Cloudbuster Nine: The Untold Story of Ted Williams and the Baseball Team That Helped Win World War II.