Definitely two other stories there, particularly with regard to the Negro Leagues--I'll keep an eye out for stories that might lead to bigger answers.
Though I will say that the big difference (with regard to baseball) in the WWII draft was the fact that there was no equivalent to the "work-or-fight" order of 1918. President Roosevelt made it immediately clear--players who were drafted would need to leave the game and "go into the services," but the rest could stay with their day job and keep the game up and running, if diminished. That was huge. The killer of the work-or-fight rules was the way it "double-dipped" from the same pool of manpower, first with those called to service, and then again by driving players away from work in baseball to work elsewhere, leaving, in theory, almost no one left.
I’m curious as to how the draft functioned in WWII (another story maybe) with blacks & the Negro League (1920 start - 1946 end).
Definitely two other stories there, particularly with regard to the Negro Leagues--I'll keep an eye out for stories that might lead to bigger answers.
Though I will say that the big difference (with regard to baseball) in the WWII draft was the fact that there was no equivalent to the "work-or-fight" order of 1918. President Roosevelt made it immediately clear--players who were drafted would need to leave the game and "go into the services," but the rest could stay with their day job and keep the game up and running, if diminished. That was huge. The killer of the work-or-fight rules was the way it "double-dipped" from the same pool of manpower, first with those called to service, and then again by driving players away from work in baseball to work elsewhere, leaving, in theory, almost no one left.