Baseball in Wartime - Walter Navie

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Those Who Died That Others Might Be Free

Walter Navie

Date and Place of Birth: April 19, 1918 Chicago, Illinois
Date and Place of Death: October 9, 1945 Laredo, Texas
Baseball Experience: Minor League
Position: Pitcher
Rank: Private First Class
Military Unit: US Army
Area Served: Pacific Theater of Operations

Walter Navie was a 20-game winner in the minors and headed for a career with the White Sox. But four years of military service ended in tragic circumstances.

Using his real last name of Nawiesniak, a 17-year-old left-handed pitcher from Chicago, Illinois, signed with the Rock Island Islanders of the Class A Western League in 1935. In his professional debut for the Islanders against the Davenport Blue Sox, Walt Nawiesniak survived seven innings without allowing a hit, but so did the opposing pitcher. In the eighth inning Nawiesniak’s control wobbled, he allowed three hits and was beaten, 2-1. It was to be the highlight of an otherwise forgettable trial in which he finished with an 0-5 won-loss record in 10 appearances before getting his release.

Later in the year he caught on with the Greenville Buckshots of the Class C East Dixie League, pitching in eight games for a 2-4 record, and the following year - in between working for the International Harvester Company - he made four appearances with the Crookston Pirates of the Class D Northern League for an 0-2 record, and also compiled a 2-4 record in the Class D Alabama-Florida League with the Panama City Papermakers and the Enterprise Browns.

In 1937, he returned to minor league baseball under the abbreviated name of Walt Navie, and made five appearances with the Newton-Coroner Twins of the Class D North Carolina State League. It was in 1938 – at the age of 20 - that Navie finally got into the swing of things. Signing with the Chicago White Sox organization he was assigned to the Rayne Rice Birds of the Class D Evangeline League where he led the pitching staff with a 16-11 won-loss record in 33 appearances. He was back with the Rice Birds in 1939 for a career-best 20-11 record, a 2.27 ERA and a league-leading 223 strike outs. On August 5, Navie played in the Evangeline League All-Star game at Lake Charles, Louisiana, and then made four late-season appearances for the Shreveport Sports of the Class A1 Texas League.

He began the 1940 season with the Marshall Tigers of the Class C East Texas League, and was 7-2 in 13 appearances when he rejoined Shreveport for the remainder of the year. Navie was 2-4 with the Sports and earned a spot on the White Sox’ spring training roster for 1941. On March 6, he made a relief appearance for the major league team in an exhibition game against the Hollywood Stars, hurling two scoreless innings in Chicago’s 8-0 win. On March 29, he made another relief appearance, this time against the San Diego Padres – pitching five scoreless innings after Orval Grove allowed three runs in the Padres 3-1 win. Despite these performances, the White Sox had a steady starting rotation of Ted Lyons, Thornton Lee, Eddie Smith and Johnny Rigney, and Navie was optioned to Shreveport the next day where he appeared in 23 games for a disappointing 4-8 record and 4.13 ERA.

Navie was carried on the White Sox’ National Defense Service List when he entered military service with the Army on February 21, 1942. As a private first class, he served in the Pacific at Guadalcanal where he suffered from recurring attacks of malaria. With the war over, the 28-year-old was at Fort Bliss, Texas, awaiting discharge.

Men who face the horrors of war on battlefields react in different ways. Combat stress reaction and post-traumatic stress disorder were relatively gray areas at that time, and we will never know what was going through Navie’s mind when he shot himself in the head with an Army pistol on Tuesday, October 9, 1945.

Read Walt Navie's Baseball in Wartime blog entry

Added August 14, 2006. Updated February 7, 2010.

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