FDR Sends the Green Light Letter to Keep Baseball Playing

On January 15, 1942, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt wrote a one-page letter to Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis that kept Major League Baseball alive during World War II. The letter, later known as the "Green Light Letter," arrived five weeks after the attack on Pearl Harbor, at a moment when the sport's leaders were uncertain whether baseball should continue while American soldiers fought abroad.

Landis had written to the President seeking guidance. Roosevelt's response was direct. "I honestly feel that it would be best for the country to keep baseball going," he wrote. He argued that the game offered affordable recreation that lasted only two or two and a half hours, providing a necessary diversion for workers and citizens enduring wartime conditions. He also encouraged teams to schedule more night games so that war workers on daytime shifts could attend.

Roosevelt made clear that individual players with military obligations should fulfill them. He was not asking for exemptions. But he believed the sport itself served a public good during a period of sustained national stress.

The letter gave owners the political cover they needed. Baseball continued through the war years of 1942 to 1945, though rosters were depleted as more than 500 major leaguers entered military service. Teams filled their lineups with older players, teenagers, and men classified 4-F by their draft boards. The quality of play declined, but the games went on.

The Green Light Letter is now held in the collection of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. It remains one of the most significant presidential statements about the role of sports in American life. Roosevelt died on April 12, 1945, just months before the war ended and baseball's stars returned home.