August 12, 1936: The Biggest Baseball Crowd -- In Berlin?

Bill Sayles. The "B" stands for "Brooklyn," not "Berlin."

August 12, 1936, 90 years ago: What was definitely the biggest crowd in baseball history to that point, and may still be, sees a game in... Nazi Germany?

After having been a "demonstration sport," rather than an actual competition, at the Olympic Games in Paris in 1900, and again in Stockholm, Sweden in 1912, baseball returned to Olympic display, though still not yet joining official Olympic competition, in 1936.

There was a single exhibition game, played at the Olympiastadion in Berlin. Since Olympic competitors had to be amateurs until 1992, all of the players in the game were Americans who had not yet played in the minor leagues, let alone in the major leagues. The umpire was Leslie Mann, whose 16-year major league career included playing as an outfielder for the 1914 World Series-winning "Miracle" Boston Braves. He had been among the leading advocates for putting baseball in the Olympics.

The "visiting team," the one batting 1st, was called the "U.S. Olympics." The "home team" was called the "World Champions." The game was set for 7 innings. The game was set for 8:00 PM, and for most of the players, this would be their 1st experience in a night game. (The 1st night game in MLB had been played the season before, at Crosley Field in Cincinnati, but that was still the only major league park with lights.)

Although the Olympiastadion was built for soccer and for track & field events, and didn't have room for a standard baseball field, I can find no reference to whether any accommodation was made for any "short fences."

The Berlin Olympiastadion

A crowd then estimated at 90,000 came out. Officially, the biggest crowd that had ever attended a single Major League Baseball game (rather than a doubleheader) was the 74,217 who were said to have attended the opening game of the original Yankee Stadium in 1923. (And that was almost certainly a lie, exaggerated by around 12,000 or so.)

But the Associated Press reported the crowd as being over 100,000, without getting any more specific than that. If so, then this remained a record for any baseball game until 2008, when 115,300 packed into the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum for an exhibition game. Regardless of the actual total, neither the Chancellor of Germany at the time, Adolf Hitler, nor any official of the Nazi Party, was said to have attended.

For the U.S. Olympics, 1st baseman Bill Shaw hit a 2-run home run in the 1st inning. At the end of 6 innings, the World Champions led, 5–4. The Olympics scored in the top of the 7th to tie the game, before Les McNeece hit a solo home run, what would now be called a walkoff home run, in the bottom of the 7th, to win the game for the World Champions, 6-5.

Bill Sayles was the starting pitcher for the World Champions. He was the only player in this game who would go on to play in the major leagues: He pitched in 5 games for the Boston Red Sox in 1939, 18 for the New York Giants in 1943, and 5 for the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1943, with a record of 1-3, and an ERA of 5.61. Most likely, he made those 1943 appearances solely because of the manpower drain caused by the war the Nazis started. He lived on until 1996.

Baseball would once again be a demonstration sport at the Olympics in Helsinki, Finland in 1952, and then occasionally, until finally becoming an official competition sport in Barcelona, Spain in 1992. After 2008 in Beijing, it was dropped. It was restored for Tokyo in 2020 (2021), but dropped again for Paris in 2024. It will be restored for Los Angeles in 2028, with a 6-team tournament to be played entirely at Dodger Stadium, during a planned 11-day break in the Major League Baseball season.