When Cliff Stewart enlisted in the Navy in World War II, he didn't know he would wind up making baseball history in a northern Russian seaport.

There's no official world record for what Stewart and his forlorn shipmates did in 1943 in Molotovsk, but hereby submitted to Guinness: They established and played in what has to be the most godforsaken baseball league ever - The White Sea League.

You've heard of the low minors? This was the high minors, so close to the North Pole that four merchant ships reached Molotovsk in the wake of Russian icebreakers that scattered vast herds of floe-riding seals.

Stewart, now 97 and living in Healdsburg, was a merchant seaman in the Forgotten Convoy. The four ships put into Molotovsk in March of '43, the crews expecting to sail back to the U.S. within days, but were put on a hold from hell, cut off from the world for nearly nine months.

"We had no idea we were ever going to get out," Stewart says.

What do American guys do when they're stuck forever in a bleak hellhole at the top of the world during a raging global war?

"Why don't we play baseball?" Stewart says, casting his memory back seven decades. "The Russians helped us level a field. We got some good-looking branches and put them on a lathe. One of the ship's (uniform menders) said he could make us some baseballs. He used our boots. We organized a league, one team from each ship, drew up a schedule and played baseball."

Ball a work of art

Stewart still has one of the balls. It's a work of art, black boot leather stitched beautifully over string wound around a rubber core cut from a boot heel. Has the heft of a small cannonball.

"It didn't go like the balls here," Stewart says.

The ball and bat have caught the attention of the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown N.Y.

"As a historian and curator, I just love the Stewart story," said Erik Strohl, Hall of Fame vice president of Exhibitions and Collections. "My colleagues were also instantly excited. ... The Hall of Fame is deeply interested in the connection between baseball and American culture, which includes baseball and war."

Strohl, responding to a letter from Stewart's neighbor, Brian Gallaway, wrote to Stewart expressing a strong interest in the items and in Stewart's story.

Whether or not the historical items make it to Cooperstown remains to be seen. But Stewart's story, and those of his baseball-playing, World War II colleagues, is an enduring snapshot of perseverance worthy of remembrance on this Memorial Day weekend.

The journey to Russia

Stewart was a country boy from Missouri whose family was fractured by the Depression. He joined the Civilian Conservation Corps and wound up in Northern California, working as a forest fire lookout and school bus driver and studying at San Jose State and Chico State, before enlisting in the Navy.

Stewart was stationed in Brooklyn in January of '43 when he got orders to report at midnight to the merchant ship City of Omaha, a WWI Hog Islander, departing in the morning. Naval adventure-wise, it was on.

The six American ships sailed through severe storms and rendezvoused near Scotland with 24 British merchant ships and 28 allied warships. The convoy set out for Murmansk on Feb. 15 in a howling gale.

Stewart was a signalman. Although ship-to-ship communication was almost impossible and visibility often zero, he stood a frozen roller-coaster deck watch eight hours a day.

"The sea was rough, it was cold," Stewart says, matter-of-factly. "It was hard. It was hard."

'Had to be there'

But Stewart adds, "You don't even think about it. You knew you had to be there."

That gale became a hurricane that damaged six of the merchant ships, forcing them to turn back. The trip around German-held Norway to Murmansk took 12 days, most of it under cover of vicious weather, but three clear days allowed uninterrupted German attack.

After unloading at Murmansk, the City of Omaha and three other ships were ordered farther southeast along the Russian coast to await formation of a return convoy. Ice-breakers got the ships into Molotovsk (now Severodvinsk) in early March. They waited for return orders, but all convoys had been shut down.

The Boys of Arctic Summer

They were safe from German attack and had nonstop daylight, so the seamen became the Boys of Arctic Summer.

Gunny sacks were used as bases. The outfield was deep sand. Russian soldiers drilled just beyond the field. Gloves were regular ship work gloves. The catcher wore a large padded gunner's asbestos glove, used for heaving unexploded antiaircraft shells off ship decks during attacks.

Spectators were the other seamen, who bet heavily with the combined $2,000 total bank of the four ships, and a handful of curious Russians.

"The weather was good, we played every day," says Stewart, a good-fielding/mediocre-hitting shortstop. "It was regular baseball. We played regular baseball."

The season was divided in half. The first-half winner, Stewart's City of Omaha, played the second-half winner, Francis Scott Key, in what could have been called the Top of the World Series. FSK prevailed.

The Forgotten Convoy had no contact with the outside world until the men got a mail shipment in October. Stewart eagerly tore open his acceptance to officer training school.

"It said to report to Columbia (University) May 30, 1943," Stewart says. "It was October, and my butt's stuck in Russia."

In November, with winter closing in, the Forgotten Convoy got found, ordered back to the U.S. They ran the German gantlet and steamed back into New York Harbor one year after departing.

Stewart was on one more convoy, to the Red Sea, then entered officer training school. He rose to captain and was given seven commands - in Korea, Vietnam and on the home front, five years at the Pentagon.

Stewart's lifetime love of learning helped him rise through the ranks. He recalled that as a lad in Missouri, every Saturday morning he hitched up the family's horse and buggy, rode into town and checked out six books at the library, replacing the six he'd just read.

During his officer training, Stewart received a personal phone call from Eleanor Roosevelt, inviting him to a White House reunion of the Forgotten Convoy, a party he was unable to attend.

Home in Healdsburg

Capt. Stewart's final command was at Hunters Point, his duty ending when the base closed in 1974 and Stewart retired.

Stewart and his wife, Dorothy, who died last year, purchased a 13-acre ranch in Healdsburg, built a barn and planted nut and fruit trees, groves he now shows off during a lively golf-cart tour. He spent many years involved in local politics.

Stewart lives alone, with daytime assistance, his daughter Anita and son Phil nearby and helpful friends just up the road.

The old mediocre hitter, wielding the beautiful Russian bat bearing the autographs of all the players in the White Sea League, looks like he could still hit 'em where they ain't.

Stewart's account of his Arctic adventure sounded far less harrowing than the horrors of which I read in researching the Arctic convoys.

After dodging a few "How bad was it?" questions, Capt. Stewart finally says, "I had a job to do, Christ, and I always did my job. ... You knew why you were up there. I never had a bad day in the Navy."

Attababy.