Meet the American who inspired American Legion Baseball, John Griffith, WWI vet and sports pioneer

Members of the American Legion joined 'Fox & Friends First' to commemorate and explain the significance of Poppy Day and the reading of 'In Flanders Field.'

Major John Griffith envisioned a nation made better, healthier and stronger — more powerful and patriotic — and forged by youthful competition that preached good citizenship. 

To this day, his legacy thrives on baseball fields across America and in the highest levels of intercollegiate competition.

Griffith, a World War I veteran, inspired the creation of American Legion Baseball. 

It is the nation's oldest organized youth baseball league, founded 98 years ago this month. 

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About 100,000 teenagers in the United States ages 15 to 19 play American Legion Baseball each summer on 3,500 teams from coast to coast.

"Fitness and health posed problems for military personnel in World War I," Jeffrey Stoffer, editor of American Legion Magazine, told Fox News Digital.

John L. Griffith was commissioner of the collegiate Western Conference, later the Big Ten, in 1925 when he encouraged American Legion members in 1925 to support sports as a way to train American youth. American Legion Baseball was created the following year in response to his call to action. (Public Domain)

"The veterans who came back and started their Legion posts remembered those problems vividly."

By some accounts, half of all World War I enlistees failed to meet basic physical fitness requirements. 

Griffith at the time was a nationally recognized college sports administrator, the first commissioner of the conference now known as the Big Ten. 

"Fitness and health posed problems for military personnel in World