Free 56: Joe DiMaggio and the Last Magic Number in Sports by Kostya Kennedy Page B

the Versailles in Manhattan not a drink was served, spirits temporarily on hold. Taxis with radios in them pulled to the sides of the lamplit city streets. The drivers turned off their meters, rolled down their windows, and strangers came and stood close to hear. Others lingered next to newsstands at Times Square and Grand Central Terminal.
    In Queens, the Bellefair and the other ice cream shops stayed open late, radios brought forth and set down onto the countertops as the customers leaned in. Even now, despite the late hour and the darkness of the sky, neighbors in Queens convened around portable radios on building stoops, just as they did in Brooklyn and the Bronx. It was not unlike the way many of these same listeners often gathered round for an afternoon ball game, to hear the Dodgers’ Red Barber, the best announcer going, unfurl a game in all its savory details, people as attentive to Barber’s syrupy Southern lilt—“They’re tearin’ up the pea patch!”—as they were now to Roosevelt’s raspy baritone.
    “In the Nazi book of world conquest . . . ” the Voice continued, “. . . they plan to strangle the United States of America and the Dominion of Canada.” Lose this fight, Roosevelt went on to say, and lose your way of life. The American laborer would have his wages and hours fixed by Hitler, his right to worship decided by Hitler. Roosevelt reminded people that in Africa the Germans were occupying Tripoli and Libya and threatening to claim Egypt. Again and again he came back to his essential point: “The war is approaching the brink of the Western Hemisphere. It is coming very close to home.”
    The President reached far back into history, recalling the U.S.’s success in beating back the Barbary Pirates, in helping to expel Napoleon from Mexico. He cited the Battle of Bunker Hill and spoke of the dedication and effectiveness of U.S. convoys in the first World War. “In this Second World War, however, the problem is greater,” Roosevelt said, his tone deeper now, foreboding. The enemy, he explained, had far more dangerous weapons these days, more lethal submarines and a “bombing airplane, which is capable of destroying merchant ships seven or eight hundred miles from its nearest base.” In other words, the President was saying, this was no time to flinch.
    Now Roosevelt’s speech entered its coda and with it a series of emphatic vows:
    “We shall actively resist . . . every attempt by Hitler to extend his Nazi domination.
    “We shall give every possible assistance to Britain and to all who, with Britain, are resisting Hitlerism or its equivalent.
    “We are placing our armed forces in strategic military positions.”
    Then Roosevelt announced that he had issued a proclamation declaring that in America a state of “unlimited national emergency exists and requires the strengthening of our defense to the extreme limit of our national power and authority.”
    In a suburban tavern north of New York City, a man drained the last of his beer, slapped his hand on the bar and announced, “We’re in, boys!” In Washington, D.C., a crowd standing outside a Ninth Street restaurant soberly applauded. On a sidewalk in midtown Manhattan, a woman said: “It frightens me. But what else can we do?”
    Who wasn’t frightened, even as Roosevelt’s words roused in his listeners a sense of resolution and solidarity? Who wasn’t afraid of war? There were those who simply opposed America’s involvement, isolationists or anticommunists such as the aviator turned public speaker Charles Lindbergh, who whipped up thousands as he toured the country decrying the Allies, saying that he’d prefer even an alliance with the Nazis than with any side that might soon include the Soviet Union. Or New York congressman Hamilton Fish who a few hours before Roosevelt’s fireside chat had addressed a crowd in a high school auditorium and warned that if the U.S entered the war “we would have chaos and revolution at home and