 ports are a familiar avenue for parents to build relationships with their sons and daughters. Seeing your child's career as a shortstop, center, or midfielder develop alongside their youth is a special process, even if carting them to practices, tryouts, and tournaments can get tiresome. Sports allow dads and moms to mentor: it's often easier to get a message across about selflessness, working together, or persistence when you've got a racket or a glove in hand. It's also an opportunity for kids to learn more about their parents and to share their own history in athletics.
For Gary Moore, speaking to his dad about sports was more momentous than learning lessons of character, but a topic that sparked a personal odyssey toward learning more about his father and the nature of the life he lead. On the day before his death, Gary's father Gene Moore opened up for the first time about the depth of his experiences as a baseball prodigy, as a soldier, and why the sport he grew up on became a burden to him later in life.
As a 15-year-old in 1940, Gene loved to do what any other country boy from Illinois did at that time: play baseball. The only difference for Gene was that he wasn't tagging-up and turning double plays with other youngsters. A gifted all-around player, Gene was batting better than boys twice his age and could throw out grown men from his knees at home plate - he played on the city team while living in rural Sesser, Ill. As Moore's son writes, Gene was “a boy, playing like a man, in a game where men play like boys.”
Before too long, word of Moore's talent at the plate caught wind outside his humble hometown. Still in his mid-teens, he was given a look by professional scouts, “barely old enough to shave and still awaiting his first kiss,” as Moore's son describes, Moore had captured the rookie of the year award at 16 as a member of the Brooklyn Dodgers' Class C minor league team in the summer of 1941.
In addition to 20 home runs, Moore led the Southeastern League in assists and was selected to the all-star team. All the pieces were in place for a youthful star to ascend into the big leagues in a few short years.
But as was the case for many young men in the early '40's, World War II put Moore's dreams on delay. Gene joined the Navy as soon as he turned 18, following in the footsteps of his older brother. After being stationed in North Africa for a period, Gene returned to the United States with his company on special order from the military to guard prisoners of a German U-boat, U-505, a craft currently on display in the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago.
While in Camp Ruston, Louisiana, Moore would convince his commanding officer to allow him to teach their German captors to play baseball to pass the time. Even if the Nazi mariners didn't have a firm understanding of a double play or how to lay down a safe bunt, the baselines gave the soldiers common ground to connect in a way from the frontlines. Tragically, Moore's good intentions to bond with the opposition would indirectly put an end to his baseball diamond dreams: an innocent play at the plate on the final out of the final game between the prisoners and troops resulted in a broken leg for Moore.
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Even with treatment Moore did not fully recover from the injury. Moore would have the opportunity to eventually play for the Pittsburgh Pirates' minor league squad because he could still swing well and make good contact on the ball, but his damaged leg made his running skill a liability. Moore's dreams of playing in the majors were crushed.
Finding a story of struggle, inspiration, and perseverance in his father, Gary Moore authored “Playing With the Enemy: A Baseball Prodigy, A World at War, and a Field of Broken Dreams,” a memoir that details these experiences in his fathers life and how he came to deal with them.
“It's (the book's) about his life and baseball and how it was interrupted by war,” Moore says. “The baseball is a backdrop for it; what the book is about is what a man does with a second chance in life.”
For Moore, chronicling Gene's history was a personal journey as much as it was one to share his father's unique experience with sport in a time of struggle in himself and the world.
"My father, like many people of his generation, didn't talk about his generation," said Moore. For his father Gene, dealing with the loss of his dreams of playing big league ball may have been a bigger battle than the war he fought in overseas.
Moore says his book is rooted in oral histories from family members, soldiers his father served with, and the citizens of Sesser.
“I think there's a very clear message here: that we should have goals, we should reach for the best we can be, but we should do so with understanding,” Moore said. “What's most important is what we become in the process, by striving to honor God and be the best we can be - the greatest gift we receive is how it changes us and forms us.” The realization that baseball wasn't his father's destiny, says Moore, is something he hopes readers will be able to relate to and connect with.
“Baseball was part of the path he took to arrive at his destiny,” Moore underlined.
Though “Playing With the Enemy” doesn't describe itself as a distinctly Christian book, Moore says that writing something that isn't written solely for Christian readers can have a positive impact on faith. “We're exposing people that wouldn't normally be exposed to the life-changing message of Jesus,” he said. “I don't think there are enough Christians in the entertainment industry in general - in the past, Christians ran away from the industry. There's a very small but strong community growing.”
More's in store for Moore's story - Academy award winning Producer Gerald Molen, who has worked on films including “Jurassic Park” and “Shindler's List,” recently announced that he will produce a film based on Moore's book and his father's story. Who will play the lead role of Gene Moore? None other than his grandson, Gary's son Toby Moore. The young actor is the first to be cast as his real life grandfather, according to Moore. With filming set to begin in June, and the film scheduled to appear in theatres near Father's Day of 2008, Moore's story of a dream denied may help foster his grandson's dream to be a successful actor.
“I certainly feel God has placed an incredible blessing with my family,” Gary Moore says. “It's certainly an exciting and humbling experience.”
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www.PlayingWithTheEnemy.com
