Eisenhower baseball controversy

The Eisenhower baseball controversy refers to the allegations that the former general and President of the United States, Dwight Eisenhower, played minor league baseball for the Junction City Soldiers in the Central Kansas League the year before he attended the United States Military Academy at West Point.

[2]Though Eisenhower graduated in 1915, before the formalization of the Honor Code, playing amateur football while having formerly been a professional athlete would constitute either lying, cheating, or both.

In the early, informal, sometimes characterized as vigilante justice, phase of the Honor System, it is unclear if Eisenhower would have graduated to become an officer in the United States Army had he been found to have played for pay.

He is quoted as saying: When I was a small boy in Kansas, a friend of mine and I went fishing and as we sat there in the warmth of the summer afternoon on a river bank, we talked about what we wanted to do when we grew up.

According to articles in The New York Times (June 20, 1945) and Life (July 2, 1945), he acknowledged in a meeting with the two teams' managers that he had briefly played semi-pro ball in Kansas.

After his election as president in 1952 there was renewed interest in Eisenhower's sports activities, and he received numerous inquiries regarding his having played semi-pro baseball.

[citation needed] Charlie Wheatley claimed that he played professional baseball with Eisenhower with the Abilene Reds of the Class D Central Kansas League in 1910.