Gene Moore

He was a baseball prodigy. At the age of fifteen, Gene Moore was a boy, playing like a man, in a game where men, play like boys.

Headed for baseball stardom with the Brooklyn Dodgers, his destiny was interrupted by
Pearl Harbor.
His life... and
maybe our
national
pastime...
would be
forever altered.

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Impromptu "The Best of Everything" Magazine - Spring 2006

He was just 57 years old when he died of a heart attack in 1983, but Gene Moore’s life could fill a book. And in fact, it soon will, thanks to his son, Kankakee native Gary Moore.

The project started because Moore “wanted to preserve my father’s story so my kids and grandkids could pass it down.”

With the encouragement of his oldest son, Toby, a successful actor, living in LA (www.tobymoore.com) and local judge and friend, Mike Kick, what began as a 60 page-outline turned into a two-and-a-half-year-long research and writing project for Moore. The result: Playing with the Enemy, a manuscript about the elder Moore’s life in professional baseball and his service in World War II.

Getting to point A from point B was not easy, though. Moore had to retrace his father’s steps in history. He contacted the Pentagon to obtain his father’s war record and spoke to representatives from both the Dodgers and Pirates baseball teams’ for information on his father’s background. Moore also contacted relatives who knew more about his father’s baseball career than he did himself. “(My father) was embarrassed (to talk about it). He felt like he destroyed his baseball career,” Moore said. “He was hurt by the whole experience.”

Born Warren Eugene Moore, but known by everyone in the small town of Sesser, IL as ‘Gene,’ Moore’s father had a gift for playing baseball. Recruited by the Brooklyn Dodgers at the age of 15, Gene was a catcher during the 1940-41 minor league baseball seasons. When WW II broke out, Gene was placed on a traveling Navy team called the United States Navy North African Exhibition Baseball Team. He and his teammates played against other similar teams to entertain the troops.

“They (the baseball players) became sailors, but their sole purpose in the military was to play baseball all day,” Moore said.

A broken ankle, received in Louisiana while playing a game against captured German prisoners from the U-505, ended Moore’s baseball career in 1944 and the Dodgers released him soon after the war ended.

“(That) absolutely broke my dad’s heart, because everyone had told him he was destined to be one of the greatest baseball players of all time,” Moore said.

Gene returned to his hometown of Sesser and worked on his father’s small hog farm for four years until a baseball scout from the Pittsburgh Pirates invited him to play ball once again. Gene reunited with many of his former Navy teammates and played the 1949 minor league season in Greenville, MS. But Gene, still limping as a result of his ankle injury in 1944, was released again after the season.

Because he was one of only three baseball players in history to be recruited at the age of 15, Gene blamed himself for what he perceived to be a career failure and looked at his past with bitter sadness.

“So (the book) is a story about how my father dealt with the disappointment,” Moore said.

Moore and his publisher are planning a three-month-long book tour once Playing with the Enemy hits bookstores nationwide in late September of this year. His wife, Arlene Moore, will join him for most of the tour.

Not surprised with Gary’s decision to write this book, Arlene said she is however “constantly surprised by the facts and research that have come out of writing this book.”

“I feel I have personally gotten to know my father-in-law and mother-in-law better through this, and Gary has gained a deeper understanding by discovering the truth about his father’s past,” Arlene said.

Specific book tour details are yet to be determined, but the focus will be on the 25 largest metropolitan areas in the U.S., Moore said. Other future prospects for the book include a movie deal (currently being negotiated) and a possible reality television series based upon his father’s experience in baseball and war.

Playing with the Enemy is being published by famed historical publisher, Savas Beatie, LLC (www.savasbeatie.com).

For those looking for local Kankakee River Valley flavor, the books forward is being written by John C. Skipper, a well known baseball writer and sports historian, who began his career as a sports writer for The Daily Journal in Kankakee, and one of the last chapters of the book takes place at Skinny’s Tap in Bradley.

You can learn more about Playing with the Enemy at www.playingwiththeenemy.com

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