[ericnease84]

As the United States entered World War II, baseball continued on (minus a few players who had enlisted in the military). There were not too many big names who went to the military (at least not yet), but there were still several of them. The New York Knights were competitive once again, but the Boston Patriots were proving to be a challenge for them. In the end, the Patriots finally vanquished their long-time rival and won the division out from under them. The Knights stayed close all season long, but could never quite catch up. And in the ABC West, the Silverbacks ran away with the division. In the NBC East, the Lions ended the streak of no repeat division winners by capturing the division crown again. And the St. Louis Browns continued their dominance of the NBC West, winning it again.
In the playoffs, the NBC Championship Series had the same result as last year: the Browns defeated the Lions in four games. And in the ABC Championship Series, the Cincinnati Silverbacks won it in four games to go to the World Series for the first time in their history. In the World Series, the Silverbacks won it in six games for their first ever championship.

In 1943, several more players went to the military, including several New York Knights stars. And as expected, that hurt them. They looked somewhat competitive, but they were not the same. The Patriots wound up running away with the ABC East division. And in the ABC West, the defending champion Silverbacks won the division again over the Blackbirds. In the NBC, the Trenton Tigers won the East narrowly over the Bears. The Browns' reign ended in the NBC West, as the Charlotte Roadrunners won the division and punched their playoff ticket for the first time ever. That left only one team that has never appeared in the playoffs: the hapless Dover Green Sox, who finished in last place once again.
The playoffs featured three teams who had never won a World Series, and the defending champions who had just won their first. In the NBC, the Roadrunners swept the Tigers to win their first ever NBC pennant...it only took 43 years for them to get one. And in the ABC Championship Series, the Patriots got revenge on the Silverbacks for last year and defeated them. Now the World Series, featuring the Patriots and the Roadrunners, was guaranteed to see someone win their first ever championship. At first it appeared to be Charlotte, who won the first three games. But then the Patriots won Game 4, and continued on to pull the "reverse sweep," winning the final four games and the World Series.

As the war dragged on, the 1944 season began. The defending champion Boston Patriots got off to a blistering hot start and took a big lead in their division right off the bat. The other three divisions looked competitive, at least in the early part of the season. The leaders put some distance between themselves and their competitors as the season wore on, but their leads were never as comfortable as Boston's. In the end, the same four playoff teams from last year all went back for another go at it: Boston vs. Cincinnati in the ABC, and Charlotte vs. Trenton in the NBC. And just like 1943, the Patriots and Roadrunners won their respective series once again to set up a World Series re-match. The World Series looked similar to the year before as well, as the Roadrunners won the first three games and then lost Game 4. They dropped Game 5 as well, but they rebounded to win Game 6 and capture their first World Series championship in team history.

As the 1945 season began, the war was coming to an end. Several star players were still gone from their teams due to military service, but it looked like a good chance that they would all be back for 1946, at least, if not before. The Dover Green Sox also announced that the 1945 season would be their last in Dover as they were moving to Orlando, Florida for the 1946 season. They were deep in debt and had given up even trying to make it where they were. Their hope was that a new fanbase and an untapped market would give them the boost that the Roadrunners had gotten after moving from Kentucky. Dover still stands as the only team to have never made the playoffs in FBL history.
As the season began, the Green Sox were playing in front of a bunch of empty seats, as the fans were giving them the same treatment that the Kentucky Kings' fans had given them in their final season. But the Green Sox were competitive, hanging around in the division race for much of the first half of the season. The real story was the Toledo Ravens, who got off to a blistering hot start and sat with a 43-12 record in mid-June with a whopping 16-game lead in the division. They continued to tear through the league, going 101-39 to easily win the NBC West. On the flip side, the New York Bears won the NBC East with a 70-70 record (and they had to win 7 of their last 10 games just to get to that point). Over in the ABC West, the Indiana Fireflies took control of the division to win it by 7 games over Cincinnati. And the Virginia Beach Captains captured the ABC East division title, although the Green Sox finished the season--and their tenure in Dover--with a respectable 72-68 record and second place finish. That did not change the fact that they still played in front of a bunch of empty seats and were deep in debt. The move to Orlando was seemingly the only thing that could save this franchise.
Almost everyone expected the Ravens to demolish the Bears in the NBC Championship Series, given how they looked in the regular season. It was not the sweep many expected, but the Ravens did win the series in four games. In the ABC Championship Series, the Fireflies won it in five games to face the Ravens in the World Series. In a hard-fought seven game series, the Fireflies defeated the heavily favored Ravens to keep Toledo without a championship. This was the Fireflies' third championship in team history. Toledo was now 0-4 in their World Series appearances.