Book Review

Wartime Athletes: The Stories of Sports Stars Who Joined the U.S. Team
By Bill Brown
Kindle Direct Publishing (May 9, 2025)
345 pages
Available in hardcover, paperback, and Kindle

By Marc Yablonka

The following previous review of this book was posted on the VVA Veteran magazine’s Books in Review II website at https://vvabooks.wordpress.com/tag/wartime-athletes/.

When Pittsburgh Steelers veteran running back Rocky Bleier was wounded in Vietnam, he prayed to God, “You have my life to do with what you want. I’ll share the good times, and I won’t complain about the bad times. That’s the best I got to offer.” “But just to make sure that I was committed,” he told Bill Brown, author of the just published book Wartime Athletes: The Stories of Sports Stars Who Joined the U.S. Team, “He let me get wounded one more time!”

Brown, the author of Wartime Athletes (Kindle Direct Publishing: Paperback $15, Kindle Unlimited $1.99), himself a Vietnam veteran, plied the broadcast journalism trade he learned at the University of Missouri’s renowned School of Journalism for the Hometown News Service based at Long Binh, and as a sportscaster for the American Forces Vietnam Network. After Vietnam, Brown went on to do play by play on radio and TV for the Cincinnati Reds and Houston Astros.

He has put together a fascinating book of profiles of professional athletes from World War I to Afghanistan, boxing to baseball, bowling to golf, who served in the US Military in times of war. Names like New York Yankee slugger Joe DiMaggio, and Brooklyn Dodger Jackie Robinson, the first Black player in the Major Leagues, come to mind. As does Pat Tillman, Arizona Cardinals linebacker killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan. Each of the athletes’ stories are engrossingly juxtaposed against what was happening in history during the wars in which they fought and make for an extremely captivating read.

Six of the 18 known professional athletes who served in Vietnam are featured in the book. Baltimore Orioles Hall of Famer Al Bumbry was one of them. Author Brown highlights what Bumbry called the changes he went through as a result of his service in Vietnam as a platoon leader.

“I realized that I had been in a do or die situation. That I was responsible not just for my life but for other men as well. It made me focus more on what I had to do and what my responsibilities were. After that, baseball didn’t seem as hard as it was before.”

Readers may learn a side of Dallas Cowboys quarterback Roger Staubach’s life that they never knew.

“I was not out there in combat,” he told the author. “I supported the Marine Corps and South Vietnamese troops.” None the less, Staubach drew valuable life lessons from his time in Vietnam. “You learn about the importance of someone other than yourself to get that balance in life. Not only to take out of life, but to give back.”

According to Brown, a newspaper article quoted Staubach as saying he felt guilty that he did not contribute more to the fighting. However, what he did do was command 100 enlisted personnel and 30 Vietnamese troops at a “Sand Ramp” at Chu Lai where LST’s handled moving supplies.

By far the most endearing profile in Wartime Athletes belongs to Buffalo Bills guard and Hall of Famer Bob Kalsu, who once said, “I gave my word to my country. Just because I play pro football doesn’t make me any better of a man than the men already serving our country. I’m going to live up to that commitment and the word I gave.”

Lt. Kalsu, at 25, was an acting field artillery commander with the 101st Airborne when he was killed when the firebase he was serving on was barraged by hundreds of NVA rounds.

(The only other NFL player to die in combat in Vietnam was Cleveland Browns offensive tackle Don Steinbrunner, who left football in 1954 to fulfill his military obligation).

Wartime Athletes: Stories of Sports Stars Who Joined the U.S. Team will be a welcome addition to the libraries, not only of Vietnam veterans, but sports fanatics who never knew that the men they admired on the playing fields of America should also be revered for their selfless service to our country.