I hadn't really thought about this for a long time, but when I was younger I used to be fascinated by baseball history, and specifically any history related to the Negro Leagues.  My memory was jogged by this photo I found in the September 1916 issue of The Crisis.​ Although the photo doesn't seem to give too strongly an editorial of the war, the photo is on a page with the caption, "Shadows of Light."  The 25th Infantry, stationed in Hawaii during WWI were never commissioned for combat, however, the baseball team represents an important wartime medium through which African American service men were heroized.  As a consequence, the civillian and wildly popular Negro Leagues were established immediately following the war in 1920. Baseball was an impetus for racial integration, as evidenced by the inclusion of such players as Jackie Robinson after WWII--before Jim Crow laws were outlawed by the US Supreme Court.

I was interested to find information about the 25th Infantry ball-players in William McNeil's book, Black Baseball Out of Season: Pay For Play Outside of the Negro Leagues, which you can view here. Particularly interesting to me (since I'm a Tulsa, Oklahoma native) were the details I read about Oklahoma native Cap Rogan, who was a player on the 25th who later became a player for the Kansas City Monarchs, a Negro League baseball team. Coming back to the war, McNeil writes that several black service men bought their way out of the Army in order to join the Negro Leagues for as little as $150 (did other members of the military have this opportunity? I'm guessing not--it would make much more sense for black service men to leave the military since they were rarely utilized).  The military ball-players exhibited extreme talent, and were followed by many black publications back home.

I really enjoyed looking into the information I found for this post.  If you're interested in the Negro Leagues, you can check out the website for the museum in Kansas City here.