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Asian Baseball History and Culture is Our Passion

Tag: baseball

  • The School in Korea That Has Produced the Most MLB Players: The History of Gwangju Ilgo

    The School in Korea That Has Produced the Most MLB Players: The History of Gwangju Ilgo

    by Taein Chun

    Gwangju Jeil High School, known as Gwangju Ilgo, is located in Gwangju Metropolitan City in the southwestern region of Korea and is the school that has produced the greatest number of Major League Baseball players in the country. In the early 2000s, Jae Weong[c1]  Seo of the New York Mets and Los Angeles Dodgers, Byung-hyun Kim of the Arizona Diamondbacks and Boston Red Sox, and Hee-seop Choi of the Chicago Cubs and Los Angeles Dodgers reached the MLB stage one after another. Although the three played for different teams, they shared the distinction of being Gwangju Ilgo alumni, and they were called the Gwangju Ilgo Trio as they demonstrated the international competitiveness of Korean baseball. In the mid-2010s, Jung-ho Kang of the Pittsburgh Pirates became the first KBO hitter to move directly to MLB, opening a new path. In 2025, Kim Sung Joon signed with the Texas Rangers as the next emerging player. A total of five Gwangju Ilgo alumni have signed with MLB organizations, the most among Korean high schools. The school also ranks among the highest domestically for producing KBO league players, with 119 Gwangju Ilgo graduates appearing in first division games as of 2024.

    1924, The Spark of Anti-Japanese Spirit That Began on a Baseball Field

    Baseball at Gwangju Ilgo was not simply a sport from the beginning but a symbol of resistance and pride. The baseball team, founded in 1923, is one of the oldest in Korean high school baseball. In June of the following year, the baseball team of what was then Gwangju Higher Common School defeated a Japanese select team called Star by a score of 1 to 0 in an exhibition match. In colonial Korea, the victory of Korean students over a Japanese team was a rare moment of national joy. The field filled with cheers as players and spectators celebrated together, shouting manse. The atmosphere changed abruptly when Star’s manager, Ando Susumu, stormed onto the field in protest, causing chaos as spectators and players clashed, and the Japanese cheering section also joined. Japanese police intervened, and Ando claimed that he had been struck in the forehead by a spike, identifying nine Gwangju players as the attackers. They were immediately detained. Outraged students launched a schoolwide strike that lasted three months. This incident marked the first organized student protest against colonial rule and served as a catalyst for the 1929 Gwangju Student Independence Movement. A monument to the movement still stands on the school grounds. Before national tournaments, Gwangju Ilgo players bow their heads before the monument, renewing their resolve never to give up. This tradition grew into the team’s philosophy, and their strong fundamentals and concentration reflect this spirit.

    Gwangju Ilgo students reenacting the starting point of the Gwangju Student Independence Movement

    1980, The Silent Time That Baseball in Gwangju Protected

    If Gwangju Ilgo in the 1920s contained an anti-Japanese consciousness, then its baseball in the 1980s walked alongside the era of democratization. In the spring of 1980, citizen protests for democracy against the military regime took place in Gwangju. This event, which is called the May 18 Gwangju Democratization Movement, became a major turning point in modern Korean history. At the time, some Haitai Tigers players were still students, and that generation experienced up close the confusion and sacrifice that engulfed the entire city. The atmosphere of that time, when soldiers fired guns at citizens, left a deep impression on the team’s attitude. The more their home city, Gwangju, fell into turmoil, the more the Haitai Tigers players banded together and comforted the hearts of citizens with strong teamwork and hustle play. Former Haitai Tigers player Chae-geun Jang was in Gwangju on May 18. He remembers it as follows. “There were helicopters, soldiers, and the sound of gunfire. At night, we turned off the lights and stayed quiet. I even remember seeing bodies on the street.” Jang said that when May came, fans and players naturally spoke about those memories. For several years afterward, due to political instability, home games were not held in Gwangju around May 18. The government, concerned about large crowds in the Gwangju area around the May 18 memorial, requested that the Korea Baseball Organization adjust its schedule. As a result, throughout the 1980s, the Haitai Tigers had to play games in other regions around May 18. Only in 2000, the twentieth anniversary of the democratization movement, was a home game in Gwangju finally held again on May 18.

    In 1986, the military regime instructed the KBO to move the May 18 game in Gwangju to another region

    Even so, Haitai did not waver. Beginning with their first Korean Series championship in 1983, they went on to win four consecutive titles from 1986 to 1989, five championships in the 1980s, and four more in the 1990s, establishing what came to be called the Haitai dynasty. At the center of this dynasty were core players from Gwangju Ilgo such as Dong-yeol Sun, Lee[c1]  Kang-chul Lee, and Jong-beom Lee. With solid fundamentals and concentration as their weapons, they led the team and helped raise the overall standard of Korean professional baseball. In this way, baseball in Gwangju took root as a source of regional pride.

     

    The Characteristics and Development Environment of the Gwangju Region

    The intense baseball passion in Gwangju began during the golden age of the Haitai Tigers in the 1980s and 1990s. Haitai’s repeated championships became a source of pride for the region, and baseball took firm root as Gwangju’s representative sport. From this period on, parents increasingly tried to raise their children as baseball players, and Gwangju came to be recognized as a city where one could succeed through baseball. Gwangju is a mid-sized city with a population of around 1.4 million. In general, in a city of this size in Korea, maintaining elementary, middle, and high school baseball teams in a stable way is difficult, but Gwangju is an exception. Baseball teams at schools across the region operate on a steady basis, and youth baseball teams are also active. This environment has led to a youth baseball culture in which many players set Gwangju Ilgo as their target school. In addition to Gwangju Ilgo, there are other prestigious baseball schools in the city,such as Jinheung High School and Dongseong High School, the former Gwangju Commercial High School. These schools also have experience winning national tournaments, but in terms of the concentration of player resources and students who hope to advance, Gwangju Ilgo stands at the top. Former KBO technical committee chair In-sik Kim evaluated the situation by saying that while Busan divides its talent between Kyungnam High and Busan High, in Gwangju, the player pool is concentrated at Gwangju Ilgo. Gwangju Ilgo recruits players not only from Gwangju but from all across South Jeolla Province, and promising prospects from middle schools in the area, such as Mudeung Middle School and Chungjang Middle School, as well as nearby cities including Naju and Suncheon, also join the program. As a result, internal competition becomes very intense, and players who pass through that competition show a high level of fundamentals, physical conditioning, and game focus.

    Founding members of the Haitai Tigers

    Industrialization and economic growth in Korea have taken place mainly in the capital region, meaning Seoul and Gyeonggi, and in the Gyeongsang region, including Busan, Daegu, Ulsan, and the surrounding provinces. In contrast, the Honam region has had a relatively weaker economic base. Because of this, baseball has been seen as a realistic career path through which one can raise social status by effort and performance. In such an environment, when parents made decisions about their children’s future, they often favored sports, especially baseball. This culture has continued across generations up to the present. Gwangju Ilgo still supports the roots of Korean baseball today. Even as generations change, the philosophy of valuing fundamentals and mental strength has not changed. From its founding in 1923 to MLB advancement in 2025, Gwangju Ilgo has been both the place that has created the present of Korean baseball over a century and the site where its future is being prepared.

  • Herb Hunter’s Dream Tour: A Rabbit, Two Leftys, and an Iron Horse Visit a Dangerous Japan in 1931

    Herb Hunter’s Dream Tour: A Rabbit, Two Leftys, and an Iron Horse Visit a Dangerous Japan in 1931

    by Dennis Snelling

    Every Tuesday morning we will post an article from SABR’s award-winning books Nichibei Yakyu: Volumes I and II. Each will present a different chapter in the long history of US-Japan baseball relations. This week  Dennis Snelling tells us about the 1931 Major League tour of Japan.

    It was a tour initially framed by the dreams of retired fringe major-league outfielder Herb Hunter, the continuing quest of a Japanese newspaper publisher to bring Babe Ruth to Japan before he retired as a player, and the metastasizing of Japanese militarism.

    The tour ended with the best baseball team to visit Japan up to that time—including seven future Hall of Famers—winning all 17 games they played in the country, Japan’s political landscape in violent disarray, Babe Ruth still not having visited the country, and the beginning of the end of Herb Hunter’s global baseball aspirations.

    By 1931, Hunter was considered “Baseball’s Ambassador to Japan.” He had first crossed the Pacific Ocean 11 years earlier with a group of minor-league and marginal major-league players. During that trip, Hunter partnered with pitcher Charlie Robertson to earn money on the side, coaching the Waseda University baseball team.

    Hunter developed an affinity for the country— and the potential it offered him to make his mark on the baseball world—returning in 1921 to coach the baseball teams of both Waseda and Keio universities, wearing a chrysanthemum in his lapel each day. The San Francisco Chronicle reacted to this news by derisively challenging its readers to visualize the ex-San Francisco Seals outfielder coaching baseball to anyone, since Hunter’s reputation was that of the proverbial million-dollar athlete with a ten-cent head. He was physically gifted, but legendary for his onfield blunders.

    He once executed an outstanding running catch with the bases loaded and one out in the ninth, only to absent-mindedly exit for the clubhouse, oblivious to the fact that the ball was still in play. On another occasion, with two out and the bases loaded, he decided to showboat on an easy fly, making a one-handed swipe at the ball, which he dropped. Three runs scored.

    It was said that Hunter had once nearly spiked himself dodging a line drive. “He played that ball like a camel,” the account went. “He was not hurt but he had a narrow escape. A lot of runs scored while Herbie was untangling himself.”

    Even when Hunter’s efforts won a game, it sometimes resulted from a bonehead move. He stole home in a game against Portland on a 3-and-0 count and two runners on base. He was called safe, his run the eventual game-winner despite the fact that he never touched home plate, not to mention that during the play the shocked hitter had backed into the catcher, which should have been ruled interference. Al C. Joy of the hometown San Francisco Examiner wrote, “Just why he stole home at that particular moment nobody seems to know. And just why Umpire Casey did not call him out for several reasons nobody seems to know.”

    Despite his shortcomings, Hunter’s connections to Japanese universities enabled him to organize a troupe of major leaguers to Japan in 1922, and make several subsequent visits, including in 1928, when he enlisted Ty Cobb, Bob Shawkey, and Fred Hofmann. Hunter was now ready to bring another team of major-league all-stars to the Orient in 1931.

    But he was not to be wholly in charge of the effort. Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis, mindful of the international implications of such an event, and noting Hunter’s checkered success with past ventures—especially when it came to handling money—permitted the tour to proceed only under the supervision of veteran sportswriter Fred Lieb.

    Hunter acquiesced—he had no choice—and once the tour was approved by major-league owners in mid-January, he prepared to finalize arrangements with Japan’s largest newspaper, Mainichi Shimbun.

    Catching wind of Hunter’s intentions, Matsutaro Shoriki, publisher of the rival Yomiuri Shimbun, intercepted him, ultimately persuading the American to award his newspaper exclusive sponsorship of the tour’s Tokyo segment. When Mainichi Shimbun backed out of sponsoring games in other parts of the country, Shoriki stepped in despite the added, and significant, financial burden, gambling that the event would put his publication on the map.

    Arrangements complete, Hunter returned to his home in Red Bank, New Jersey, where he managed a semipro team headquartered on his diamond, Hunter’s Field, while Fred Lieb pursued ballplayers for the trip.

    A 14-man roster was ultimately secured, including four 1931 World Series participants: A1 Simmons, Mickey Cochrane, Lefty Grove, and Frankie Frisch. To Shoriki’s disappointment there would be no Babe Ruth—who claimed barnstorming and movie commitments—but Ruth’s teammate and co-American League home run champion Lou Gehrig would be there. So would Willie Kamm, Rabbit Maranville, Muddy Ruel, George Kelly, Lefty O’Doul, Larry French, and Tom Oliver. Boston Braves pitcher Bruce Cunningham, a right-hander who had won only three of 15 decisions in 1931, and outfielder Ralph Shinners, who was just completing his career in the International League, rounded out the roster.

    Fred Lieb had thought the All-Stars unbeatable— although they did not start out that way.

    The team initially gathered in California in early October for a series of games in the Bay Area, and lost four of five against lineups composed almost entirely of Pacific Coast League players. The third game, against the San Francisco Seals, proved the most embarrassing. Lefty Grove, who arrived after the first two games along with the other World Series participants, took the mound and was battered for six runs in the first inning. The All-Stars began pointing fingers, with Grove loudly complaining about not having enough time to warm up. The left-hander settled down, shutting out San Francisco from the second inning through the fifth and striking out seven. But the All-Stars lost, 7-4, while collecting only four hits.

    Stateside exhibitions complete, the All-Stars boarded the luxury liner Tatsuta Maru for Japan; ship captain Shunji Ito, a talented golfer, accommodated the Americans by converting his deck-side course into a batting cage. On the way, there was a quick stop in Honolulu to play another tune-up game against locals.

    During the brief sojourn in Hawaii, the team slaughtered a group of local semipros, 10-0, before 12,000 fans—many of them arriving from other islands. The famously dour Grove displayed uncharacteristic enthusiasm afterward, declaring himself enamored with Hawaii and musing, “.. .wonder what my chances are of buying a small place here, I can use this old sunshine in January and February.”

    While the All-Stars cavorted in paradise, events in Asia were unfolding at a dramatic and dangerous pace. A month before the players’ departure for Japan, a renegade faction of the military, seeking war with China, destroyed a section of the South Manchuria Railway and blamed it on the Chinese. This contrivance provided the pretext for Japan to invade Manchuria; the Japanese government was caught off-guard by its own armed forces, but did nothing of consequence to curtail the action, and was widely condemned in the court of world opinion. As a result, the country the American ballplayers entered was far more dangerous and unstable than they appreciated.

    1931 tour program featuring Lou Gehrig

    Thousands of enthusiastic Japanese baseball fans were on hand when the Tatsuta Maru docked following its two-week passage. After the mayors of Yokohama and Tokyo made brief presentations, the players boarded a special train bound for the capitol. There, the party was met by limousines waiting to convey them through the streets of downtown Tokyo.

    Fred Lieb described the journey “a continual ovation.” Special flags combining the emblems of the American and Japanese national banners were provided to those lining the route. Fans jammed the streets, pressing in on the motorcade as shouts of “banzai” and “welcome” rained down from office windows. Some of the more enthusiastic jumped onto limousine running boards to shake the hand of Rabbit Maranville or Lefty Grove—repeatedly shouting “Thirty-One!” at the latter in recognition of his total wins for Philadelphia that year.

    The Americans were flabbergasted. “I will remember this reception to my dying day,” remarked Lou Gehrig. “I do not know of anything in my entire career that has touched me as much as this welcome.” Frankie Frisch added, “It made me feel like a great military hero or a man who had flown across the Pacific.”

    Other than George Kelly, who had been a member of Hunter’s 1922 All-Stars, none of the players had previously visited Japan. The world was more compartmentalized than today, and the visitors were surprised and astonished by the modernity of Tokyo, on course to becoming one of the world’s major cities. At the same time, there were obvious differences in food, language, and customs—it was both fascinating and disorienting.

    Because Japan lacked professional baseball, the Americans would challenge college teams from the Tokyo Big Six University League—the highest level of baseball in the country—as well as all-star teams of alumni from those colleges and a few industry-sponsored squads.

    Despite massive unemployment in Japan due to the collapse of the silk industry, 65,000 attended the opening contest; the ceremonial first pitch was thrown by Japanese Education Minister Tanaka, decked out in formal dress, including a top hat. The starting pitcher for Rikkyo University, Takeshi Tsuji, pitched well, allowing only four hits and four runs, all unearned, in six innings. Three of the unearned runs were due to missed fly balls by the Japanese right fielder, who did not wear sunglasses—according to Fred Lieb, it was considered cowardly to use them.

    Al Simmons complimented Tsuji afterward for his deceptive sidearm delivery and impressive control, but the first game was an easy, 7-0, win for the All-Stars behind Bruce Cunningham, who allowed only two hits.

    The second game nearly resulted in a shocking Japanese victory. Masao Date, pitching for Waseda University, impressed Lieb, who afterward said that the Americans felt he would be a major league prospect if he were in the States. Date calmly escaped a first-inning bases-loaded jam by fooling Frankie Frisch on a full-count curveball, taken for strike three.

    The game was tied, 1-1, until the seventh, when Larry French surrendered a bases-loaded two-run double that gave Waseda a 3-1 lead. French, the possessor of an explosive temper, was removed from the game and furiously hurled his glove in disgust upon reaching the bench, cursing and screaming, “I’ve traveled nine thousand miles to be knocked out of the box by a bunch of Japanese college players!”

    Things did not get better. With only three pitchers along for the tour, others were utilized as emergency hurlers, including Lou Gehrig, who relieved French and allowed two more runs to score on a wild pitch and an out, stretching Waseda’s lead to four runs.

    Lieb, whom Landis had made responsible for the comportment of the players, watched in horror as French began hurling racial epithets from the bench. He attempted to shush the pitcher, pointing to Viscount Taketane Sohma, sitting at the end of the bench. Sohma, director of general offices at the Imperial Palace, had been educated in America and understood every word. To Lieb’s relief, he diplomatically chose not react to French’s tirade, which continued despite Lieb’s entreaties.

    The Americans ultimately stormed back to win, 8-5, saving French the embarrassment of losing, as Masao Date tired while Lefty Grove, who replaced Gehrig, struck out six straight batters on 19 pitches to end the game. Lieb later revealed that the All-Stars were arguing among themselves on the bench until Date walked the bases loaded and Lefty O’Doul promptly cleared them with a double to key a seven-run eighth inning.

    Continue to read the full article on the SABR website

    Herb Hunter’s Dream Tour: A Rabbit, Two Leftys, and an Iron Horse Visit a Dangerous Japan in 1931
  • BASEBALL DOCUMENTARY: Gary Carter Visits Japan

    BASEBALL DOCUMENTARY: Gary Carter Visits Japan

    This 1982 documentary on Gary Carter’s visit to Japan is dated and at times cringy by today’s standards but is nevertheless interesting and contains some great footage of Japanese baseball from the 1982 season.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1s5jxJw7zso

  • Ty Cobb’s Last Hurrah: The 1928 Japan Tour

    Ty Cobb’s Last Hurrah: The 1928 Japan Tour

    by Tom Hawthorn

    Every Tuesday morning we will post an article from SABR’s award-winning books Nichibei Yakyu: Volumes I and II. Each will present a different chapter in the long history of US-Japan baseball relations. This week Tom Hawthorn tells us about Ty Cobb’s visit to Japan.

    On an off-day on the road in Cleveland, Tyrus Raymond Cobb, hailed for much of his career as the greatest player the game had ever known, announced his impending retirement. It was September 17, 1928. He had last been a starter in late July when he batted second for the Philadelphia Athletics before trotting out to right field. He went 2-for-5 that day with a single and a double, scoring what would be the winning run in a 5-1 game on a passed ball. Since then, he had been used sparingly as a pinch-hitter, going 1-for-9.

    The Georgia Peach was in his 24th season, a 41-year-old man who was now caught stealing more often than not. He appeared in only 95 games for Connie Mack’s team. While his .323 batting average was far from disgraceful, it was still his poorest performance in two decades.

    Many of his younger teammates spent the rare offday at the racetrack. Cobb invited reporters to gather in his room at the glamorous Hollenden Hotel, where he handed each of them a typewritten statement in which he announced his retirement even “while there still may remain some base hits in my bat.” The player spoke informally with the writers for hours, examining his career (he called Carl Weilman the toughest pitcher he faced) and expressing a desire to do nothing but enjoy his family’s company for a year. The only item on his agenda was some winter hunting near his home in Augusta, Georgia.

    “I am just baseball tired and want to quit,” Cobb said. “I will be leaving baseball with a lot of regrets and still with a light heart. It’s hard to pull away from a game to which one has given a quarter-century of his best manhood and which paved the road to lift me to a place of prominence and affluence.”

    He had been for a time the highest-paid player in the game, earning nearly a half-million dollars in salary over the seasons, while investments in a car company later absorbed by General Motors, as well as in Coca-Cola from his home state, ensured that he faced few future privations.

    The news of his pending retirement was greeted by newspapers as the passing of an era.

    “He is worth more than a million dollars,” noted the Morning Call of Allentown, Pennsylvania, “and is not worrying about his future or the price of pork chops.”The newspaper predicted that he might become a minority owner of a franchise in the high minors.

    Cobb recorded his 4,189th hit, a double, against the Washington Senators as a pinch-hitter on September 3. He played what would be his final game in the majors eight days later, popping out to Mark Koenig at shortstop to lead off the ninth in a 5-3 loss at Yankee Stadium. He would get his final two hits in an A’s uniform in Toronto in an exhibition game at Maple Leaf Stadium on September 14. Then it was on to Cleveland to sit on the bench.

    For a player reputed to be ill-tempered, he was wistful about spending time with his family.

    “Guess it’s time to get out of the game and play with my kids before they grow up and leave me,” he said in announcing his pending retirement. “And there’s that trip to Europe that I promised Mrs. Cobb this year.”

    His wife, Charlotte Marion Lombard, known as Charlie, did not get to see Europe in 1928. Three weeks after the hotel room session to announce his retirement, Cobb was traveling through Virginia on his way home to Georgia when he told friends of plans to play baseball overseas. In Japan.

    The news broke nationally on October 7 when the Associated Press carried on its wires a news item based on a Richmond Times-Dispatch story. The report said Cobb would spend seven weeks in Asia, accompanied by former pitcher Walter Johnson, the manager of the Newark Bears of the International League.

    Three days later, George A. Putnam, secretary-owner of the San Francisco Seals and a friend of Cobb’s, offered further details. The player was going to give lectures on the game. He was also going to suit up and play with university teams. The tour was sponsored by the Osaka newspaper Mainichi Shimbun and four universities—Waseda, Meiji, Osaka, and Keio, whose own baseball team had toured the United States for six weeks earlier in the year.

    The Pittsburgh Press had a scoop on the pending trip by several days. Sporting editor Ralph Davis, who was in New York to cover the first game of the World Series on October 4, slipped in a final paragraph at the end of his lengthy report on the Yankees’ 4-1 victory over the St. Louis Cardinals. He noted that Cobb had popped into the press box at Yankee Stadium and mentioned that he was off to Japan later in the month with two players on a tour organized by Herb Hunter.

    Hunter, whose own major-league career as a weak-hitting infielder-outfielder lasted 39 games with four different teams, first traveled to Japan with Doyle’s 1920 All-Americans and ended up coaching at several Japanese universities after the tour. In 1922, after what was his final season as a player, he led an all-star team of players, including Waite Hoyt, Herb Pennock, Casey Stengel, and George “High Pockets” Kelly, on a successful tour of Japan, Korea, China, the Philippines, and Hawaii. Hunter would go on to become a baseball ambassador, making at least 10 goodwill trips to Japan between 1920 and 1937.

    A month before Cobb made his announcement, Hunter got a cablegram from Japan inviting him to bring over another team of major leaguers. The assignment was going to be difficult, as active players were now banned from playing exhibition games after October 31. Hunter hoped whatever disappointment the hosts might feel would be assuaged by bringing the greatest all-around player the game had seen. According to Cobb biographer Charles C. Alexander, Hunter offered Cobb $15,000 for his services.

    Also joining the tour were Bob Shawkey, a savvy right-hander who had gone 195-150 over 15 seasons as a starter in the majors, mostly with the Yankees. When they released him after the 1927 season, Shawkey held team records for wins, shutouts, strikeouts, and innings pitched. He was a pitching coach and starter with the Montreal Royals in 1928, going 9-9.

    His catcher was former Yankees teammate Fred Hofmann, a 34-year-old journeyman who when once asked how he batted (right, left, or switch), responded, “Poor.” He was nicknamed “Bootnose” for an obvious facial feature. Hofmann hit .226 for the Boston Red Sox in 1928 in what proved to be his final major-league campaign, though he continued playing in the minors until age 43.

    Joining the three players was Ernest Cosmos “Ernie” Quigley, a stocky umpire bom in the Canadian province of New Brunswick. Quigley lettered at the University of Kansas as a football player and hurdler in track and field for the Jayhawks. A limited minor-league career gave way to coaching football and officiating in three sports. By the time he retired, he estimated he had worked 400 college football games, 1,400 college basketball games (as well as the 1936 US Olympic qualifying tournament), and more than 3,000 major-league games. He officiated three Rose Bowl games and six World Series, the most notable being the one remembered as the 1919 Black Sox series.

    Tagging along were Seals owner Putnam and travel agent Frank Ploof of Tacoma, Washington, described as a sponsor of the trip. The latter, who stood nearly 6-feet tall though weighing just 150 pounds, posed for a photograph in a baseball uniform with the three players.

    After traveling across the continent to Seattle, Cobb met with Japanese consul Suemasa Okamoto and his wife. He also led his tour mates, bolstered by local players, in defeating an amateur team from West Seattle by 12-5. Cobb went 4-for-6.

    The baseball tourists boarded the steamship SS President Jefferson of the American-Oriental Mail Line in Seattle on October 20, the ship departing at 11 A.M. Cobb was accompanied by his wife and three youngest children, Herschel, Beverly, and James. Quigley and Hunter were also joined by their families. Although some newspapers were still reporting that Johnson was on the tour, the old pitcher had backed out after signing days earlier to manage the Washington Senators.

    Continue to read the full article on the SABR website

    Ty Cobb’s Last Hurrah: The 1928 Japan Tour
  • Gentle Black Giants — Negro Leaguers in Japan: 1927 Philadelphia Royal Giants Tour

    Gentle Black Giants — Negro Leaguers in Japan: 1927 Philadelphia Royal Giants Tour

    by Bill Staples Jr.

    Every Tuesday morning we will post an article from SABR’s award-winning books Nichibei Yakyu: Volumes I and II. Each will present a different chapter in the long history of US-Japan baseball relations. This week  Bill Staples Jr discusses the Philadelphia Royal Giants 1927 visit to Japan.

    Kazuo Sayama, baseball historian, author, and member of the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame (enshrined in 2021), states with great passion and conviction that had it not been for the tours of the Negro Leagues’ all-star Philadelphia Royal Giants in 1927 and the early 1930s, a professional baseball league in Japan would not have started when it did, in 1936.

    “There is no denying that the major leaguers’ visits were the far bigger incitement to the birth of our professional league. We yearned for better skill in the game,” said Sayama. “But if we had seen only the major leaguers, we might have been discouraged and disillusioned by our poor showing. What saved us was the tours of the Philadelphia Royal Giants, whose visits gave Japanese players confidence and hope.”

    Sayama first learned about the Royal Giants as a member of the Society for American Baseball Research in the early 1980s. Like the fictional Ray Kinsella, who heard voices telling him to build a baseball diamond in the middle of his cornfield, Sayama was a man possessed during much of the early part of that decade, researching and documenting the history of the Royal Giants.

    Also fueled by the desire to honor the Black US soldiers who coached him as a boy in Yokohama during the post-World War II occupation, Sayama hit the library stacks and microfiche in the archives and traveled the world interviewing anyone with a connection to the team.

    In doing so he discovered that the Negro Leaguers had visited Japan just as many times as the famous All-American major leaguers during the 1920s and 1930s (three times each), yet historians on both sides of the Pacific had all but forgotten the Philadelphia Royal Giants.

    “It is unfair that no words of gratitude have been spoken by the Japanese to this team,” lamented Sayama. He changed that by publishing his seminal work in Japan in 1985, Kuroki Yasashiki Jaiantsu, which details the events of their tours and the impact the team made while in Japan. Best of all, he captured firsthand accounts from many Japanese players who competed against the all-Black team, men who were so impressed and impacted by the touring players’ unique blend of baseball skill and human kindness that it inspired a term of endearment from Japanese players—with gratitude and fondness in their hearts, they referred to their guests as “Gentle Black Giants.”

    The Philadelphia Royal Giants were indeed the first all-Black team to play in Japan, but their games did not mark the first time for Black and Japanese baseball teams to compete head-to-head on a diamond. The history of games between ballplayers of Japanese ancestry and Black teams dates to at least May 19, 1908, when the Issei (first-generation Japanese in America) Mikado’s Japanese Base Ball Team from Denver played the Lexington (Missouri) Tigers. But earlier undocumented games probably took place. After that contest, and long before the Royal Giants set sail for Japan in 1927, dozens of such games occurred. Of those matchups, the following are noteworthy for their ties to the Royal Giants:

    • December 4, 1915, Honolulu—Chinese Travelers vs. 25th Infantry Wreckers. Outfielder Andy Yamashiro, the first Japanese American to sign a contract in Organized Baseball (in 1917), honed his skills competing in Hawaii as a member of the mixed-Asian Chinese Travelers (comprising Chinese, Japanese and Hawaiian players) against top-Black talent like Wilbur “Bullet” Rogan, Robert Fagen, Dobie Moore, and Oscar “Heavy” Johnson, all members of a military team known as the 25th Infantry Wreckers. Fagen and Rogan later barnstormed across the Pacific as members of the Royal Giants.Yamashiro managed the Hawaii Asahi ballclub that competed against the Royal Giants in 1927.
    • June 2, 1924, Washington, DC—Meiji University vs. Howard University. This game marked the first time a visiting team from Japan defeated an all-Black team. The Meiji roster included Saburo Yokoza- wa, a second baseman who in 1927 would compete against the Royal Giants in Japan as a member of the Daimai club.
    • September 6, 1925, Los Angeles—Fresno Athletic Club vs. L.A. White Sox. Over 3,000 fans packed into White Sox Park to witness Kenichi Zenimura’s Japanese nine defeat Lon Goodwin’s ballclub, 5-4. This encounter led to a rematch a year later, setting the wheels in motion for Goodwin to take his ballclub to Japan in 1927.

    Plans to take a Negro League team to Japan were proposed in the early 1920s but failed to materialize. On February 21, 1921, the Chicago Defenderwrote, “A syndicate of Japanese here representing authorities at Waseda, Tokio [sic], Yokohama and Kobe Universities in Japan, announced last week that they are eager to take an all-star baseball team made up of members of the Race to their fatherland next fall for a series of games. A large sum of money has been deposited in a local bank to defray all expenses, which guarantees the proposition is in good faith.”

    The goals of the planned 1921 tour were ambitious. “The spokesman further stated that … the main idea is to put baseball on a firm foundation, and to have the interest manifested in the pastime [in Japan] as in this country [United States].” The stars never aligned for that Negro Leagues all-star tour of Japan to occur. That would take another five years.

    As a follow-up to their thriller in 1925, Lon Goodwin and Zenimura scheduled a rematch for the L.A. White Sox and the Fresno Athletic Club (FAC), a doubleheader in Fresno over the Fourth of July weekend, 1926. Zenimura’s team, bolstered by a few non-Japanese players, called themselves the Fresno All-Stars. They defeated the L.A. White Sox in both games, 9-4 and 4-3.

    Off the field, it was customary for Zeni to invite visiting teams to social outings the night before a game. Thus, the Fourth of July weekend created the opportunity for Zenimura and Goodwin to discuss the possibility of parallel tours of Japan in the future.

    Born in Hiroshima, Japan, Zenimura had visited his motherland as a baseball ambassador a few times prior to 1926. In 1921-22 he traveled to Hiroshima, where he coached baseball at Koryo High School. In 1924 he returned with his FAC, completing a successful 46-day tour of Japan, playing 28 games and finishing with a 21-7 record.

    By the summer of 1926, Zeni already had plans in place for another tour of Japan for the following spring. He had learned valuable lessons during the first tour and shared them with the Fresno press. “In Japan it doesn’t pay to win a game [by] a far margin. If we do then there won’t be any crowd coming to the next game … One day we played against the pro team of Osaka which is known as Diamonds and in our first game we defeated them by a score of 11-2. In this game quite a many fans [sic] came to see the outcome but on the following day with the same teams there was hardly any people in the stand[s]. For this reason, it is hard for the visiting team to play a game in Japan.”

    Months later, Goodwin received a chance to put Zenimura’s advice into practice. On December 21, approximately five months after the series in Fresno, the Nippu Jiji reported that Goodwin’s L.A. White Sox—not the Philadelphia Royal Giants—had received an invitation to tour Japan from officials in Fukuoka City, one of the locations where the FAC competed during the 1924 tour.

    To help plan his team’s tour, Goodwin turned to Joji “George” Irie, a Japanese native who was known in Los Angeles’s Little Tokyo area as an active sports and entertainment manager. The Japanese Who’s Who in California described Irie as a man “with an impressive mien and stature of such dignity,” adding that professionally he was “agile and enthusiastic, quick to weigh the interests, and daring enough to take any means to achieve his ends; his inscrutable ability defies imagination for his swiftness and vehemence.”

    Bom in 1885 in the Yamaguchi Prefecture of Japan, Irie arrived in the United States at age 20 and went east to study law at the University of Pennsylvania. He returned to California in the early 1920s and worked as a translator in sectors that served the legal needs of the Japanese immigrant community. He eventually caught the attention of Yoshiaki Yasuda, president of the Japan-US Film Exchange Company, who hired him to be the organization’s secretary. In that role, he helped Yasuda oversee the world of entertainment in LA’s Little Tokyo, including sumo, kembu (Japanese sword-fight theater), baseball, and gambling. In 1935, several years after Irie’s involvement in the Royal Giants ended, Yasuda was assassinated by the yakuza (Japanese mob). According to Professor Kyoko Yoshida, this murder, coupled with the photos of the Royal Giants posing with sumo and other figures of Japan’s underworld, suggest that Irie’s work might have placed himself, Goodwin, and the Royal Giants, in close proximity to the Japanese mob during the 1927 tour.

    Before the team departed for Japan, Irie sent officials there an advance roster of the players slated to join the tour. The names reflected on the list included all of the members of the Philadelphia Royal Giants entry in the 1926-1927 California Winter League: O’Neal Pullen, C; Frank Duncan, 1B-C; Newt Allen, 2B; Newt Joseph, 3B; Willie Wells, SS; James Raleigh “Biz” Mackey, SS, P, C; Carroll “Dink” Mothell, Utility; Norman “Turkey” Steames, OF; Herbert “Rap” Dixon, OF; Crush Holloway, OF; Andy Cooper, P; Bill Foster, P; George Harney, P; Wilbur “Bullet Joe” Rogan, P-OF.

    Of those 14 players, Goodwin could persuade only five to take him up on his offer to tour Japan—Pullen, Duncan, Mackey, Dixon, and Cooper. Goodwin had fallen out of favor with organized Negro Leagues baseball in the East, and delivered a parting shot when the team sailed off for Japan. “The National Negro and the Eastern Leagues are cutting salaries to a place where a ballplayer is not fairly paid for services rendered,” Goodwin told the press.

    To fill out the roster, Goodwin recruited players from his semipro team, the L.A. White Sox. Thus, when the ship pulled away from Los Angeles on March 9, 1927, the revamped Philadelphia Royal Giants roster comprised O’Neal Pullen, C; Frank Duncan, 1B-C; Robert Fagen, 2B; Jesse Walker, 3B; James Raleigh “Biz” Mackey, SS, P, C; John Riddle, 3B-SS; Julius “Junior” Green, OF; Herbert “Rap” Dixon, OF; Joe Cade, OF; Andy Cooper, P; Ajay Johnson, P; Eugene Tucker, P; Alexander “Slowtime” Evans, P; Lonnie Goodwin, manager; and George Irie, promoter/ interpreter.

    As a result of the roster change, the team chemistry changed too. For the five members of the Philadelphia Royal Giants of the California Winter League, baseball was their full-time profession. For the others, it was a passion and an extracurricular activity outside of their day jobs. For example, Ajay Johnson was a police officer who would later become one of the first Black lieutenants in LAPD history. John Riddle attended the University of Southern California, where he also played football and earned a degree in architecture. Joe Cade was a US Navy Veteran and firefighter, who became a favorite in Hawaii to fans with military ties. The captain of the team was Mackey, whose ability to play multiple positions combined with his laid-back demeanor and patience in teaching others made him the perfect fit as a team leader on a goodwill tour.

    After a rocky 5,497-mile, 20-day journey crossing the Pacific Ocean, the Royal Giants arrived in Yokohama on March 29. The team spent two days working out their sea legs and preparing to do battle against the best college, amateur, and industrial leagues teams Japan had to offer. Their first game, against the Mita Club, was scheduled for April l.

    Coverage by Yakyukai (Baseball World) magazine revealed that the Japanese media misunderstood the ethnicity of their dark-skinned guests. “The ‚ÄòPhiladelphia Royal Giants’ sounds like a magnificent name. This team of American Indians became very famous. …”

    Setting aside the mix-up on players’ racial backgrounds, Yakyukai detailed the events of the first game: “The stadium was jam-packed because people had heard that the black players had the reputation of being a powerful team. While the Mita Club were practicing on the field, the Royal Giants entered with big smiles and were welcomed by loud applause from the crowd. They wore off-white jerseys just like the Sundai uniform. The Royal Giants started to entertain the fans. They began light warm-ups and batting practice. They hit very well for sure. All their hits looked like line drives. They were well-built and physically much stronger than Mita’s batters. During fielding practice, the shortstop, Mackey, showed off his strong arm. The speed of the ball was like a bullet. The first baseman (Duncan) also performed well with his slick glove work. Both Mackey and the first baseman shined among the infielders. However, some flaws in their fielding skills were noticeable. If the Japanese team were to stand a chance, they needed to take advantage of the Giants’ weak points. … There were two umpires, Ikeda and Oki. The game started with the Mita going to bat first. The pitchers were Takeo Nagai and Cooper.”

    Continue to read the full article on the SABR website

    Gentle Black Giants — Negro Leaguers in Japan: 1927 Philadelphia Royal Giants Tour
  • Join Rob Fitts at Japan Society on December 9 at 7pm for a discussion about Japanese baseball.

    Join Rob Fitts at Japan Society on December 9 at 7pm for a discussion about Japanese baseball.

    Author Robert Fitts will talk about his new book In the Japanese Ballpark: Behind the Scenes of Nippon Professional Baseball and highlight key differences between the American and Japanese games. A cocktail reception and book signing will follow.

    Fitts is the author of 11 books on Japanese baseball and is the curatorial consultant to the Yakyu-Baseball exhibit at the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown.

    Tickets are available through the Japan Society.

    https://boxoffice.japansociety.org/events/0199e8ae-4d8f-7b6a-41cf-e9b813b50fb8?fbclid=IwY2xjawOQcptleHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETFNQnM5c1RHYXZpdHBPUEFDc3J0YwZhcHBfaWQQMjIyMDM5MTc4ODIwMDg5MgABHgiyOvqNCEUuSmXKiSp7Ub4aExJGhbF68dP9_VV_yBOjtp-vMA3sWpvmue_T_aem_3bZ__i9eGExwT1CFT7BBUA

  • Rethinking the Philadelphia Bobbies 1925 Tour in Japan: ‘Embarrassment to the Nation’ or ‘Great Success’?

    Rethinking the Philadelphia Bobbies 1925 Tour in Japan: ‘Embarrassment to the Nation’ or ‘Great Success’?

    by Kat Williams

    Every Tuesday morning we will post an article from SABR’s award-winning books Nichibei Yakyu: Volumes I and II. Each will present a different chapter in the long history of US-Japan baseball relations. This week  Kat Williams discusses the Philadelphia Bobbies 1925 doomed visit to Japan.

    “Crack! The ball hits the bat. Smack! That ball hits Edith Houghton’s waiting glove at short who quickly throws to first to get the batter and all in a twinkling of an eye. These women play the game in a manner that would no doubt delight the heart of many a manager who ever saw them play.”

    Leona Kearns of the 1925 Philadelphia Bobbies in Japan. (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-DIG-ggbain-38869)

    Writing about a baseball game between the Passaic Girls and the Lansdale Chryslermen, this unnamed reporter was shocked to see women play baseball with talent and dedication. “It was surprising to watch the brand of ball that these girls can play,” he continued. “They take their baseball in a serious way and all the jeering of the “wise guys’ who stand on the sidelines and do the looking on cannot daunt them.” Even the crowd’s “jeers soon turn to cheers when they see the girls in real action.” The reporter’s shock at the women’s quality of play was not a new phenomenon. Rather, it echoed hundreds of other local news reports about female baseball players written in sports pages during the early 1920s. Why so shocked? Did they not read each other’s work?

    Perhaps it was a lack of public interest in women’s baseball that kept reporters from recognizing a growing trend? But that wasn’t the case. Even reports of large crowds and fervent fans did not stick in the minds of sports reporters. Approximately 1,500 fans showed up to the Lansdale, Pennsylvania, game, roughly 20 percent of the town’s population. Meanwhile, in Maple Shade, New Jersey, the largest crowd of the season came to watch the “famous invading lassies,” the Philadelphia Bobbies, play the local baseball club. In that game, shortstop Edith Houghton had five hits, including two doubles and a home run. By this time, the late 1920s, Houghton had been widely written about. She was a standout on the Philadelphia Bobbies team that toured Japan in 1925 and was so well-known that fans in small towns clamored to see her play. There was public interest. Still, in story after story, sports reporters seemed shocked to see women playing baseball at a high level.

    Were they skeptical of other reporters’ assessment of good baseball? Some of the language was kind of over the top. In a Philadelphia Inquirer article, “The Quaker City Maids of the Diamond,” Gordon Mackey hailed the play of Edith Houghton and Edith Ruth. “Both members liked to play baseball and they COULD play the game—make no mistake on that score.” In a baseball barnstorming tour their play was legendary but, “like Alexanders in skirts or Hannibals in bloomers, they longed for other worlds to conquer after they had cleaned up most of the alleged sterner sex in duels of the diamond in 1925.” Houghton “could play shortstop in a way that would make Joe Boley toss his glove in the air and yell, “bravo,’” and Ruth was “the holder of the initial sack and how she can go after those quick throws and hug that base is nobody’s business.” Team play was also lauded with the same exaggerated language. “What an infield. They work with the rhythm and snappiness that is characteristic of any big-league team.” That over-the-top language—Hannibals in Bloomers and shouts of bravo!—made the players appear aberrant. There is almost a freakshow quality to the enthusiastic description.

    Reporters’ continued surprise at women’s good play was most certainly related to the more common descriptions of women’s baseball which emphasized the players’ femininity.” For decades reporters introduced female players as “neat,” “attractive in their uniforms,” and as “spectacles.” They simply skipped over a discussion of their play and instead focused on their appearance, their “dainty hands,” and how it must have been hard for them to hold the glove. They marveled at their “feminine strength” and how hard it must have been to play against “professional strength.” They were used to writing about women who were, in their eyes, not very talented and unwilling to get dirty or to take the game seriously. A report about the Hollywood Bloomer girl team began, “A bevy of beauties from Hollywood, California took time out from powdering their noses and gave a picked team of the Coca Cola Greys the battle of their lives. … The ladies put up a good game but couldn’t stand up under the strain.” Even when their play was good and the individual talent exceptional, reporters were still likely to describe games as “an unusual tussle,” played by nine “fair maidens.” Most women had been described in these terms for decades. Just because they donned a baseball uniform did not mean that would change.

    To reporters and to many men who played, managed, or promoted baseball, there was a set of expectations, standards for play, and a distinct language used to discuss the game and its male players. There were no such expectations or standards for women. As a result, women’s play was judged against that of men, making it difficult for them to be seen as talented players. So they were not. Because it was unfathomable to even think of women in actual baseball terms—a slugger, a hurler, or aggressive on the basepaths—a whole other language emerged to describe women’s baseball. Reporters sprinkled some baseball terms in among talk of their physical appearance—”The longlegged beauty on the third base bag sure can play the hot corner.” And because women were used to being described this way they did not resist. They just kept playing.

    Women’s insistence on playing and the dilemma of reporters tasked with reporting on their games ultimately combined to establish a separate set of standards and expectations for female baseball players. And over time, two separate baseball spheres, one for men and one for women. From our twenty-first-century perspective, we could claim that these gender-specific standards worked against women who sought legitimacy as baseball players. It could be argued that creating separate baseball spheres took agency or control away from women. Nothing could be further from the truth.

    Existing in separate spheres was not new to women. They lived, worked, and studied under a different set of standards than men. So it was likely no surprise to them that the same would happen within the game of baseball. As they had always done, though, women never stopped pushing against the boundaries forced upon them. They learned the game, played it, and from within their baseball sphere, they defined for themselves what baseball meant. They set their own standards and, most significantly, they defined baseball success in their own terms. As it was for men, winning games, playing well, and making money were all part of women’s definition of success, but that was only the beginning. Baseball was an opportunity, a new experience, and a location where women could excel in an endeavor previously off-limits to them. Playing the game provided women with a chance to see the country and ultimately the world. It allowed them to make their own money and to realize a sense of independence. To many players, success was found in the opportunities baseball afforded them and not only in the box score.

    There are many examples to illustrate the ways in which women embraced their separate baseball sphere and used it to their benefit, but none is more engaging than the story of the Philadelphia Bobbies and their 1925 barnstorming tour of Japan. The Bobbies’ tour provides an opportunity to show how women not only embraced their separate baseball sphere but used it to challenge traditional definitions of baseball success and to define for themselves how and where they fit into the narrative of baseball. The tour shows how one set of baseball standards were used to plan, guide, and then judge the tour, and how another set, the ones defined and accepted by the women themselves, provide a completely different interpretation. One side saw the tour as an unmitigated disaster, while the other saw it as a great success.

    Continue to read the full article on the SABR website

    Rethinking the Philadelphia Bobbies 1925 Tour in Japan: ‘Embarrassment to the Nation’ or ‘Great Success’?
  • Players Are Workers Too: Breaking the Silence and Speaking About Rights

    Players Are Workers Too: Breaking the Silence and Speaking About Rights

    by Taein Chun

    MLB fans are familiar with the MLBPA. Strikes, negotiations, and collective action are deeply etched into the history of American sports. However, in Korean professional baseball (KBO), player rights were long treated as a taboo. Players were stars, yet at the same time they were almost like property of the club. If they spoke up, consequences awaited them. But the cries of a few players eventually began to change history.

    Dong-won Choi: The First Voice for Player Rights

    In the 1984 Korean Series, Lotte Giants ace Dong-won Choi led the team to victory in four out of five games. He was the hero of Busan and a symbol of Korean baseball. Yet at the peak of his career, he began another fight, this time about rights. At that time, Korean players were treated like the property of the club. Salaries were unilaterally dictated. If they raised objections, release or trade awaited them. Injuries were to be borne solely by the players, and there were no mechanisms to guarantee life after retirement. Dong-won Choi pointed out that “players’ lives are treated too lightly” and pushed to establish a players’ association.

    Dong-won Choi, regarded as a symbol of athlete rights in Korean sports

    His demands were simple: abolish the salary cap and floor, introduce a player pension, and allow an agent system. Looking back now, they were completely reasonable proposals. But the clubs resisted, and the media denounced him: “How can a player earning hundreds of millions talk about unions?” Public opinion was cold. Choi was not alone. He sought legal counsel through acquaintances and also turned to Jae-in Moon, who was working as a labor lawyer in Busan at the time. Though he would later become President of South Korea, back then he was a young lawyer defending workers’ rights. This scene shows how unfamiliar and even dangerous the idea of “players are workers too” was in Korean society at the time.

    President Jae-in Moon encouraging Soo-won Choi, the younger brother of the late Dong-won Choi and a professional umpire (2017)

    However, without institutional support, the attempt could not last long. The price was harsh. He was traded overnight, from the symbol of Busan to Samsung. Everyone knew it was retaliatory, but there was no official explanation. Later he said, “Players are workers too. But I was too far ahead of my time.” His challenge ended in frustration, but it was the first voice ever raised in Korean baseball. Just as Curt Flood fought a lonely battle against the reserve clause in MLB, Dong-won Choi planted the seed in Korea.

    The Players’ Association: From Frustration and Turmoil to Recognition

    The seed planted by Choi did not die out. In the 1990s, Dong-yeol Sun and Sang-hoon Lee attempted to reestablish a players’ association. But faced with the wall of the clubs and the absence of legal structures, they ultimately failed. Still, traces remained, the growing recognition that “rights can be discussed.” In the winter of 1999, stars including Jun-hyuk Yang took the lead. The movement to form a players’ association led to the inaugural general meeting in early 2000, but due to lack of preparation and internal conflict, it fell into chaos. The KBO declared it would release as many as 75 players to stop the movement. The secretary-general at the time even said in an interview, “The league will function without those players.” But such pressure only backfired. Player rights were no longer an internal issue but a matter of public debate.

    The second attempt, made after the 2000 season, was different. They emphasized procedure and strengthened internal representation. The first president was Jin-woo Song, a veteran pitcher from Hanwha. He is the all-time wins leader in Korean professional baseball. The fact that such a legend stood at the forefront showed that the players’ association was no longer just a minority voice but an institution representing the entire league. With the support of civil society and public opinion, the players’ association was finally recognized by the KBO in January 2001.

    January 22, 2000, Launch of the Professional Baseball Players Association

    But recognition did not mean stability. Core players such as Jun-hyuk Yang, Hae-young Ma, Jung-soo Shim, and Ik-sung Choi had to endure retaliatory trades and disadvantages. The history of player rights in Korean baseball is one of institutional recognition accompanied by simultaneous suppression. In 2009, six players from Hyundai Unicorns were declared free agents for participating in players’ association activities. This time, even players who had not been involved in the association sent letters of protest to media outlets. “This is too much.” The issue of rights grew from the concern of a few to that of the entire community.

    This scene overlaps with MLB history. In the 1960s and 1970s, when Marvin Miller led the MLBPA as its first full-time executive director, it was the same. His leadership earned the trust of the players, and through strikes and negotiations he secured collective bargaining rights. The moment Jin-woo Song became the face of the Korean players’ association resembles the moment in the United States when Miller brought the MLBPA into the institutional mainstream.

    Player Protection: Voices Rise Again

    Ik-sung Choi was one of the players who stood at the very front during the establishment of the players’ association. But the cost was severe. Due to a retaliatory trade, he had to leave his team overnight. Though he continued playing through frustration, he eventually retired. Many players, bearing similar wounds, chose silence, but he kept speaking. Even after retirement, he did not stop. He founded the Sports Athlete Protection Research Institute and in 2024 held Korea’s first-ever Player Protection Forum. Active players like Kyung-min Heo of Doosan and Young-pyo Ko of KT stood on stage alongside retired players such as Soo-chang Shim and Dae-eun Lee. It was also symbolic that the players’ association and the retired players’ association participated together. In the past, such a coalition would have been unthinkable.

    The First Sports Player Protection Forum in Korea (2024)

    At the forum, topics such as injury compensation, post-retirement life, and the power imbalance between clubs and players were openly discussed. These were once conversations reserved for barrooms, but now they were addressed in institutional language before the media and the fans. MLB fans would find this scene familiar as well. When Curt Flood fought against the reserve clause, he was completely isolated. But his sacrifice became the starting point for major league free agency, and Marvin Miller institutionalized it through the MLBPA. The way Ik-sung Choi expanded his personal wounds into intergenerational and collective solidarity through the forum after retirement mirrors that very process.

    And he did not stop. Through the institute he established, he also joined hands with the Korean Professional Football Players Association, expanding solidarity beyond baseball to other sports.

    The Message Left for Korean Baseball

    The protection of player rights in Korean baseball started late and has followed a difficult path. The challenge of Dong-won Choi against club abuse of power, the collective strength that brought the players’ association into the institutional sphere, and the return of Ik-sung Choi who organized Korea’s first Player Protection Forum, all these steps have formed today’s movement.

    Yet even now in Korea, players are often seen not as “workers” but as “independent contractors.” Criticism persists over whether well-paid stars have the right to speak of rights. But the essence of rights is not about income level. The right to be respected in the workplace and to safeguard one’s body and future safely is not determined by salary scale.

    The message of Korean baseball is clear: players are workers and human beings deserving of respect. Rights do not emerge on their own. They take root only through sacrifice, solidarity, and the empathy of society. The journey for rights in Korean baseball continues to this day.

  • San Jose Asahi’s 1925 Tour of Japan and Korea

    San Jose Asahi’s 1925 Tour of Japan and Korea

    by Ralph Pearce

    Every Tuesday morning we will post an article from SABR’s award-winning books Nichibei Yakyu: Volumes I and II. Each will present a different chapter in the long history of US-Japan baseball relations. This week  Ralph Pearce discusses the Japanese American San Jose Asahi’s 1925 tour of Japan and Korea.

    The San Jose Asahi Baseball Club was one of a number of Japanese teams to organize in Northern California between 1903 and 1915. Other cities to organize early teams included San Francisco, Oakland, Alameda, and Florin. The name Asahi means Morning Sun in Japanese and was a popular team name. San Jose’s first Asahi team was made up of Issei (first-generation immigrants) players and lasted only a few years. In 1918 one of the former Issei players encouraged a young Nisei (second-generation) fellow, Jiggs Yamada, to reconstitute the team with Nisei players. Jiggs, a catcher, enlisted the assistance of 15-year-old pitcher Russell Hinaga, and the two soon put a team together.

    Unlike the Issei players, these young Nisei players were bom in the United States and had attended English-language schools with a largely Caucasian enrollment. Because of this, both a generational and cultural gap existed between the Issei and Nisei. Through the shared love of baseball, Nisei teams like the San Jose Asahi helped bridge this divide. In the early 1920s, a sympathetic newspaper columnist in San Jose, Jack Graham, encouraged the Asahi to extend that bridge by participating in games outside the Japanese leagues. This participation drew the larger San Jose community to the Asahi Diamond in Japantown, and there Caucasians began to mingle with Japanese Americans, helping to establish familiarity and friendship.

    Another bridge in the making was the growing baseball friendship between the United States and Japan. Japan’s enthusiasm for the game had been spreading since its introduction in the 1870s. The tradition of international baseball exchanges began with Waseda University’s 1905 tour of the American West Coast and continues to this day. This friendship through the two nations’ shared love of baseball helped foster cultural appreciation and understanding.

    San Jose’s opportunity to visit Japan came in 1925 at the invitation of Meiji University, whose baseball club had toured the United States the year before. The timing couldn’t have been better for the Asahi; several of the players—Jiggs Yamada, Morio “Duke” Sera, Fred Koba, and Earl Tanbara—were anticipating retirement from the team. It was agreed that they would stay with the Asahi until their return from Japan.

    It is believed that Meiji University provided some funds for tour expenses, though much of the burden was on the team and its Issei supporters. The first obstacle was the cost of transporting 17 passengers to and from Japan. Jiggs Yamada explained how this was accomplished:

    Well first, we had to get some way to go to Japan. A boat was the only thing we could get. We happened to have a boy, Earl Tanbara. … Tanbara’s folks, mother and father, worked for the Dollar Steamship Company family in Piedmont. So when he graduated high school, we had his father talk to Mr. Dollar and ask him if he could do us a favor. He said, “Sure, as soon as Earl [goes] to Cal [Berkeley] and graduated, he’s got to work for me at the steamship company.” They were going to open up an agent in India. So he said, “Sure, if he promises to do that, I can have him going on our boat to Japan.” .. .So that’s how we got to go to Japan on a boat. People figured it was funny how we got to go to Japan . because at that time the steamship boat was expensive.

    A few days before departure, Asahi supporter Seijiro Horio gave $800 to Nobukichi Ishikawa, the team’s treasurer. This appears to have been the primary funding source for the team’s trip.

    Jack Graham publicized the coming tour to Japan in a number of articles. On March 18, 1925, the day before the team departed, he wrote: “There will be a big delegation of fans in attendance and a bumper crowd of Japanese fans will be on hand to see their favorite sons in their final game in this city. The Asahi team will sail on Saturday for Japan, where they will play a series of games in the flowery kingdom. On their return, they will stop in the Hawaiian Islands, where they will play seven or more games. It will be the latter part of June before they return. The Asahi team has made many friends in this city by their gentlemanly manner in playing the national game, and whenever they stage a game here there is always sure to be a big turn-out.”

    The next day, Graham ran a column praising the Asahi and encouraging local pride in the team as representatives of San Jose. A large photograph of the team ran at the top of the sports section, remarkable in that images of local teams rarely appeared in either American or Japanese American papers at the time. The caption read in part: “The Japanese Asahi baseball team will leave San Jose on the first leg of its joumey to the land of cherry blossoms this morning, when it takes the train to San Francisco where it will stay until Saturday, when it will embark on the President Cleveland for Japan.”

    The team members making the trip to Japan were pitchers Jimmy Araki and Russell Hinaga; catchers Ed Higashi and Jiggs Yamada; first baseman Harry Hashimoto; second baseman Tom Sakamoto; third baseman Morio “Duke” Sera; shortstop Fred Koba; third baseman-outfielder Sai “Cy” Towata; outfielders Frank Takeshita, Frank Ito, and Earl Tanbara; and utility players Jitney Nishida and Jimmie Yoshida. While the team was in Japan, the strong Asahi “B” team continued to play in San Jose against teams of its caliber. Asahi Diamond was also made available for use by other local teams and management of the diamond was temporarily turned over to locals Happy Luke Williams and Chet Maher.

    The Asahi, along with the trip’s manager, Kichitaro Okagaki, and its treasurer, Nobukichi Ishikawa, left San Francisco on March 21, 1925, and a little over two weeks later they arrived in Japan, giving them about a week to recover before their first game. When the team arrived in Japan, Earl Tanbara purchased two Mizuno baseball scorebooks. Earl kept meticulous track of each game, including dates, locations, and the names of all the players.

    The Asahi played their first game on Thursday, April 9, against their hosts Meiji University. They lost 8-2 with Araki going the distance on the Meiji grounds. The Asahi played their second game on Saturday, April 11, against Waseda University. They were playing better now, though they lost in a 12-9 slugfest. Russ Hinaga and Jimmy Araki shared the pitching chores, Frank Ito got a double, Harry Hashimoto had a triple, and Cy Towata and Earl Tanbara hit home runs. Each side recorded only one error.

    The Asahi played their third game two days later with a rematch against their hosts, Meiji University. Jimmy Araki again pitched the entire game with Ed Higashi doing the catching. Araki was knocked around for a 9-4 loss, despite a batch of errors by Meiji. Next up—the very next day—was Keio University, another tough team. If the Asahi were ready for a win, it would have to wait for another day. Araki and Hinaga pitched the team to a 20-4 shellacking, the Asahi racking up seven errors along the way.

    Two days later, on April 16, the Asahi faced Tokyo Imperial University. Once again Araki and Hinaga teamed up. The team was sharper that day, making only one error. Harry Hashimoto hit two doubles, chalking up a run. That was the Asahi’s only run, though, to six for Tokyo and their fifth loss in five games. The Asahi played for the love of the game, but they were serious competitors and this situation was not acceptable. Jiggs Yamada explained the problem and the remedy:

    We didn’t play so good because our legs were shaking and all that and the ball was different. It was a regular size American ball, but the cowhide, it slips. The pitcher couldn’t play, pitch curves or anything and the players themselves couldn’t throw the bases, so we couldn’t play good. So finally we told the manager [Okagaki] of our team “Get us some American balls.” So they sent us a one dozen box of American balls, then we started to play different. Then we started to play our regular play.

    Teammate Duke Sera confirmed the situation, saying that after leaving Tokyo, the manager saw to it that future Japanese teams could use their own baseballs when they were in the field, and that the Asahi players would use American balls when they were in the field.

    On April 18, the Asahi played yet another strong university nine. This time it was against Hosei. Jimmy Araki took to the mound for the Asahi and despite several errors, the team finally got its first win. The Asahi won 7-4 and scored all their runs in the first three innings, thanks in part to a home run by Araki himself. The team followed up a week later with a 25-5 victory over Sendai, with Hinaga pitching and Araki sharing left field with Tanbara. The Asahi suffered another loss on May 1, against Takarazuka before beginning a 13-game winning streak.

    The Asahi had played their first six games in Tokyo against strong university teams before venturing north to Sendai. From Sendai, they headed south about 500 miles to Osaka. They played three games in the Osaka area and one game in nearby Kyoto. In the game against Kyoto Imperial University, Tom Sakamoto hit a dramatic “Sayonara Home Run” or walk-off home run in the 10th inning to win 3-2.

    From Osaka, the team headed south to Hiroshima for two games. As they traveled the country by train, they continued to accumulate wins and, more importantly, became acquainted with the land of their parents.

    One of the players, Duke Sera, had been bom in Hawaii, and then raised by his uncle in Hiroshima. His uncle had sent him to Stanford University to complete his education. When the team visited Hiroshima, Duke’s uncle held a reception for the team. According to Yamada, when the uncle met Duke and the team he quipped, “What the hell are you doing with this bunch here? You’re supposed to be studying!”

    After the final game in Hiroshima on May 12, the Asahi traveled 400 miles back to Tokyo. It was the team’s original intention to return to the United States sometime in June. Whatever plans they may have had, however, were altered upon their return to Tokyo (except for Duke Sera, who had to return to his studies at Stanford). Jiggs shared the change of plans:

    Continue to read the full article on the SABR website

    San Jose Asahi’s 1925 Tour of Japan and Korea
  • Kenichi Zenimura, ‘The Father of Japanese American Baseball,’ and the 1924, 1927, and 1937 Goodwill Tours

    Kenichi Zenimura, ‘The Father of Japanese American Baseball,’ and the 1924, 1927, and 1937 Goodwill Tours

    by Bill Staples, Jr.

    Every Tuesday morning we will post an article from SABR’s award-winning books Nichibei Yakyu: Volumes I and II. Each will present a different chapter in the long history of US-Japan baseball relations. This week Bill Staples, Jr. tell us about one of the most important Japanese American baseball players–Kenichi Zenimura and three of the tours he organized.

    Few baseball fans know the story of early twentieth-century Nikkei (Japanese American) baseball. Despite this lack of awareness, the Nikkei impact is still visible in today’s game. It’s subtle, though, visible only to the well-informed. The legacy is not a retired uniform number displayed inside a major-league ballpark, but the names on the back of the uniforms. In 2022 those names are Akiyama, Darvish, Kikuchi, Maeda, Ohtani, Sawamura, and Suzuki—and in 2025, it will almost certainly include Ichiro on a plaque in the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

    The national pastime has unofficially become the international pastime, and this is the enduring legacy of Nikkei baseball and the work of pioneers like Kenichi Zenimura (1900-1968).

    During the years 1923 to 1930, no major-league team barnstormed in Japan. The highest-caliber competition from the United States during this time came in the form of Nikkei and Negro League teams like Zenimura’s Fresno Athletic Club (FAC) and the Philadelphia Royal Giants. During this major-league void, Nikkei and Negro Leaguers helped elevate the level of play in Japan and set the stage for the 1931 and 1934 tour of stars like Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth, and the start of the professional Japanese Baseball League in 1936.

    In 1962 Zenimura was crowned the “Dean of Nisei Baseball” by veteran Fresno Bee sports reporter Tom Meehan. Shortly after Zeni’s death in 1968, the same sentiment was echoed by Bee reporter Ed Orman. Approximately 25 years later, baseball historian Kerry Yo Nakagawa refined that tribute for a new audience, calling Zenimura “The Father of Japanese American Baseball.” Nakagawa and others believe that Zeni deserves this title for his unparalleled career and collective impact as a player, manager, and global ambassador.

    PREWAR GOODWILL AMBASSADOR

    Between 1905 and 1940, roughly one out of four (26.5 percent) tours across the Pacific featured a Nikkei team visiting Japan. When examining the tours between 1923 and 1940, Zenimura’s impressive impact becomes apparent. Of the 53 tours during this period, Zenimura was involved, to some degree, with 17 (32 percent) of those efforts. When he himself was not traveling, Zeni supported or influenced 14 different tours by other Nikkei teams, visiting Japanese ballclubs, Negro League teams, and major-league all-stars.

    The following is an in-depth look at Zenimura’s three major tours—1924, 1927, and 1937—in which he participated directly, allowing him to shine in his homeland of Japan.

    Kenichi Zenimura (right) with his cousin Tasumi Zenimura (left) in 1928. 

    THE 1924 TOUR

    The seeds for Zenimura’s 1924 tour were planted on Independence Day in 1923 when the Fresno Athletic Club battled the Seattle Asahi for the National Nikkei Baseball Championship. The Asahi had earned the respect of the baseball world by winning the majority of their games during tours to Japan between 1915 and 1923. In a best-of-three series, the FAC defeated the Asahi to become the undisputed Nikkei baseball champions. With the victory, Fresno also won the right to tour Japan the following year.

    In preparation for the tour, the FAC scheduled games against high-caliber competition, including the Pacific Coast League Salt Lake City Bees, who conducted spring training in Fresno. In a three-game series, the FAC surprised the Bees with a 6-4 victory in game one, marking the first time a Nikkei team defeated a PCL ballclub. The series also marked the presence of Frank “Lefty” O’Doul. Newly signed from San Francisco, O’Doul did not compete in the loss, but his powerful bat helped the Bees take games 2 and 3.

    More important than O’Doul’s on-field performance was the historical significance of his involvement. The gregarious southpaw would later be enshrined in the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame for his life’s work as a celebrated ambassador of US-Japan baseball relations. Most likely, this 1924 encounter marks O’Doul’s first interaction with ballplayers of Japanese ancestry.

    On September 2, 1924, the FAC boarded the SS President Pierce for Japan.Six weeks later they stepped inside Koshien Stadium to play their first opponent, Daimai. The FAC recorded a shutout 5-0 victory behind the arm of Kenso “The Boy Wonder” Nushida. Fresno pitchers did not allow a run until their third game, on October 14, a 4-3 loss in a rematch with Daimai.

    During their 46-day stay in Japan (October 11 to November 26), the Fresno team traveled approximately 1,300 miles (about 2,100 kilometers), covering nine cities—starting in Osaka, with stops in smaller locales between Hiroshima, Tokyo, and Yokohama. They played 27 games, finishing with a 20-7 record and an overall .741 winning percentage.

    After watching the Fresno captain compete on the field, a reporter with the Japan Times wrote, “Zenimura is one of the smartest and most colorful players the writer had ever seen. He was the terror of the diamond, a man who played every position in baseball. He was tricky, shrewd and positive poison to every opponent.”

    In Tokyo, Zeni penned his thoughts on the Japan tour experience in a letter to the Fresno Morning Republican, which was published on December 5. It read:

    Tokyo, Japan
    November 16, 1924

    Mr. T.P. Spink
    Sports Editor,
    The Republican.

    Dear Sir: –

    The Fresno team is doing a [sic] good work in Japan and so far our record stands 18 victories and 5 lost. In today’s game we played against Keio and defeated them by the score of 8-to-4. We gave the last four runs in the last of the ninth after two men gone.

    In Japan it doesn’t pay to win a game in a far margin. If we do then there won’t be any crowd coming to the next game, saying that we are too strong for this Japan team and so on. We had many examples in Osaka.

    Beat Diamonds

    One day we played against the pro team of Osaka which is known as Diamonds and in our first game we defeated them by a score of ll-2. In this game quite a many fans [sic] came to see the outcome but on the following day with the same teams there was hardly any people in the stand[s]. For this reason, it is hard for the visiting team to play a game in Japan.

    Another thing disadvantaging us is the way these Tokyo umpires calls [sic] on decisions against us. … I can’t figure the way these umpires make a bad decision when ever the play is close. We had enough of the raw decisions in Tokyo, but what can we do in Japan!!!

    Meet Champions

    Tomorrow we are playing against Waseda, the intercollegiate champions of Japan. We hope to beat them badly and by the time this letter reaches you, you will be able to get the result.

    On the way to the States I am figuring of stopping over to Honolulu and spend my Christmas and New Year’s there. About five of the players are going to do the same and eleven of the remaining players will be in Fresno by 13th of December 1924.

    As soon as the team reaches to Fresno we would like to play a three game series with the Fresno Tigers.

    Yours truly,

    K. ZENIMURA
    (Captain).

    The Waseda contest mentioned in the letter resulted in a 3-2 loss for Fresno. FAC lost the game, but won the respect of the opposing manager, Chujun Tobita. He praised the visiting team’s baseball skills, saying they were “amazing” in their demonstration of technique and power.

    Continue to read the full article on the SABR website

    Kenichi Zenimura, ‘The Father of Japanese American Baseball,’ and the 1924, 1927, and 1937 Goodwill Tours
  • The Diamond Stage: Herb Hunter’s 1922 Tour of Japan

    The Diamond Stage: Herb Hunter’s 1922 Tour of Japan

    by Adam Berenbak

    Every Tuesday morning we will post an article from SABR’s award-winning books Nichibei Yakyu: Volumes I and II. Each will present a different chapter in the long history of US-Japan baseball relations. This week Adam Berenbak tells us about the 1922 MLB tour led by Herb Hunter.

    THE PLOT

    The Polo Grounds. New York’s National League champs were on the verge of beating the mighty Yankees for the second year in a row. The 1922 World Series was once again a series in one park, as each game for the past two years had found a home at Coogan’s Bluff. As the triumph neared, Herbert Hunter, a former Giant attending the game, received a cablegram inviting him and the stars of the Series on a tour of Japan. Eager to capitalize on this moment, he recruited several Yanks and Giants, including the dashing George Kelly, to make the trip across the Pacific. Little did they know that they had just been swept up in an international plot to corrupt baseball, a plot not too distant from the Black Sox conspiracy that had nearly ruined faith in the great game.

    Luckily for the history of the sport, this was not the truth of the 1922 tour of Japan, nor a plot in any sense other than fictional. The United Pictures Company had assembled a team of actors, both American and Japanese, as well as a loose script about an international conspiracy plot, to travel with the group of major-league all-stars, assembled by Hunter, during their trip overseas.Known officially as the All-American Baseball Team but often called the Herb Hunter All-Stars, they sailed across the Pacific after the 1922 season to face college and club teams that represented the height of Japanese talent. In addition to the professional actors, the American and Japanese ballplayers portrayed themselves in the film, participating in the unique experience of acting on two stages at once—in front of the crowds that gathered in Japanese ballparks as well as future crowds in theaters. It might be said that somewhere between fact and fiction lies the truth, and while the tour did not produce the kind of melodrama filmgoers would be eager to view, the games generated their own drama and myths, straddling that line between fact and fiction in the legacy of international baseball.

    VANCOUVER

    The Canadian Pacific Railway train number 1 arrived in British Columbia on October 17, 1922, carrying with it the team of major leaguers set to sail for Japan and begin a tour of baseball diplomacy. On the 19th the Vancouver weather held and the touring pros, led by Herb Hunter, opened their trip with a 16-1 walloping of Ernie Paepke’s local squad, providing a thrill to a crowd that had little access to major-league ball as well as a proper warm-up prior to the long boat ride to Japan. During the game, George Kelly, Irish Meusel, Joe Bush, and Fred Hofmann all saw playing time. Because all four had participated in the recent World Series, this technically broke the rules against Series stars barnstorming together. However, due to the pickup nature of the game, neither the press nor the players, and especially not the fans, seemed to care. The team boarded the Empress of Canada for Honolulu immediately after the game.

    Once aboard and on their way, the team received a telegram from Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, hired as commissioner two years prior to clean up the game wrecked by what has become known as the Black Sox Scandal. Reports had reached Landis that the barnstorming rules he guarded with such ferocity had been broken. Just the year before, he had chastised, suspended, and fined Babe Ruth for similar barnstorming infractions. He was furious, especially after only reluctantly giving Hunter permission for the tour. The tourists communicated with home via Bob Brown, sponsor of the Vancouver game, to whom they messaged a wireless reply to Judge Landis’s barnstorming complaint. Brown in turn sent an explanation over the wire assuring Landis that there was no intentional rule-breaking and that the entire experience fostered nothing but goodwill and economic possibilities in the Northwest. What went unmentioned in the press was that the game was not on the printed schedule, and it was probably the unscheduled barnstorming that added to Landis’s ire. Landis made no reply but was reported sleepless over the incident. His objections to barnstorming, along with his reported racial prejudice, combined with the events of the 1922 tour to shape the relationship between US and Japanese baseball for the next decade.

    Tour organizer Herbert Harrison Hunter had been a professional ballplayer since 1914, and signed with John McGraw’s Giants in 1915. Though he had been touted as a sure-bet prospect, Hunter was never able to fulfill those promises in New York or anywhere else in the big leagues. He had first made his way to Japan as part of the 1920 Gene Doyle tour that featured primarily Pacific Coast League players. An eccentric among eccentrics, and more of an entertainer on baseball’s stage, Hunter was always a dandy (to McGraw’s consternation and confusion), and enjoyed sticking out, wearing “a fresh chrysanthemum every day” and touring the nightlife of Tokyo as a celebrity. During the 1920 tour, Hunter began coaching the Waseda University nine. He seemed to enjoy the way the students looked up to him; he treated them to elaborate dinners and allowed them to worship him.

    Herb Hunter

    He found work back in the States in 1921, playing the majority of the year in the South Atlantic League before an end-of-season call-up to the St. Louis Cardinals. In the fall Branch Rickey released him in support of his endeavors in Japan. Though Hunter, bom in Boston on Christmas Day 1895, had played in only 39 games over four seasons with the Giants, Red Sox, Cardinals, and Cubs, his major-league experience, however brief, was highly valued in Japan. In the winter of 1921 and into early 1922, Hunter returned to Japan to coach both Waseda and Keio Universities and developed a friendship with the “father of Japanese baseball,” Isoo Abe.

    With Abe’s help, a sponsorship by Mariya Sporting Goods, and the backing of the Mainichi Shimbun newspaper company, Hunter sought to arrange for a group of major leaguers, including Babe Ruth, to tour Japan after the end of the 1922 season.

    Having witnessed the unrealized potential of the 1920 Doyle tour, as well as the value in the promise of Ruth, he knew the revenue was there. And it wouldn’t hurt to align himself with Ruth, the most popular player in the world, to achieve his financial and celebrity ambitions. After spending the whole winter in Japan, he sailed back in February of 1922 with a mission to build a roster, armed with a guarantee of $50,000, though it would be only to cover expenses. Hunter envisioned this as the first of what would be annual tours, with him at the center, his mission to promote himself as much as to establish regular international competition with a real “world series.”

    Although Hunter had also worked with Keio as well as other teams that would eventually form the Big Six University system, it was his relationship with the Waseda team that played the biggest role in getting the first real major-league tour of Japan under way. Waseda was eager to become the dominant team in Japan as well as the foremost ambassador of the Japanese game. Between the beginning of 1920 and the All-Stars’ visit in the fall of 1922, the team had faced US competition seven times on both sides of the Pacific. Instrumental in their drive were Abe, who had founded the Waseda team and had led the first-ever transcontinental tour when his team traveled the US West Coast in 1905, and Chujun Tobita, a man on a mission. Tobita had played with the Waseda nine back in 1910 when the University of Chicago had beaten them soundly, and the loss inspired the second baseman. Now the manager of Waseda, he drove the team with his famous “death training,” developed to hone the skills and spirit of the young players. Success, in part, meant beating Chicago, and “[i]f the players do not try so hard as to vomit blood in practice, then they cannot hope to win games.”

    With Waseda’s support, the backing of the Mainichi Shimbun, a tentative agreement from both American League President Ban Johnson and Landis that goodwill tours would benefit the game (as long as its participants conducted themselves as diplomats and nobody got injured), and even the support of President Warren Harding, who noted the tour’s “real diplomatic value,” Hunter assembled an all-star squad for the 1922 tour.

    But first a roster would need to be constructed. Rogers Hornsby, Harry Heilmann, and Frank Frisch topped Hunter’s list, but all of his backers in Japan were especially pining for home-run hitters Babe Ruth and George “High Pockets” Kelly. Near the height of his fame, Ruth was a draw everywhere he went, and Japanese fans reportedly clamored for a chance to see him in person—something that didn’t happen for another 12 years. Ruth proved to be unattainable, and most of the others declined for various reasons—even an invitation to Art Nehf that was initially accepted fell through when John McGraw requested that he stay stateside.

    In the end, Hunter secured the 1921 National League home run king George Kelly and put together a team featuring members of the 1922 World Series competitors. Included with Kelly were fellow Giants Casey Stengel and Irish Meusel, along with Waite Hoyt, Fred Hofmann, and Joe Bush from the Yankees. Also on the team were future Hall of Famer Herb Pennock, Amos Strunk, Brooklyn outfielder Bert Griffith, Luke Sewell, Riggs Stevenson, and Bibb Falk. Rounding out the group was John “Doc” Lavan, Hunter’s ex-teammate on the Cardinals. The agreement with Landis included a clause that the players would receive no 1923 contract until they reported to spring training in good health after returning from the tour. New York Sun sportswriter Frank O’Neill joined as an organizer as well as reporter, along with George Moriarty, who was along as much to be the eyes and ears of Landis as umpire. It may have been Moriarty who had reported the barnstorming infraction, but nonetheless his role seemed to be keeping an eye on the proclivities of some of those players prone to take a drink outside the confines of Prohibition. Some of the organizers’ and players’ wives accompanied the team, a request made in light of the 1920 tour’s unruly behavior.

    After arriving in Yokohama on the last day of October, the Americans checked into the Tokyo Imperial Hotel. The hotel was one of the few structures to survive the great earthquake that struck Japan in September of the following year. That disaster, known as the Great Kanto Earthquake, devastated Tokyo and led to fires and tsunamis that killed more than 100,000 people.

    Japan’s fortunes had fluctuated since the end of the Meiji period, a decade prior to Hunter’s tour. The silk market, and the stock market along with it, had crashed in 1920, and the country’s place on the world stage was precarious. Tension between the United States and Japan was high as arguments were about to begin in front of the US Supreme Court regarding barring immigrants of Asian descent from becoming naturalized American citizens.28 The importance of the diplomatic aspect of baseball tours grew as these tensions grew, and the 1922 tour proved how successful the tours could be. This diplomatic endeavor was showcased on the baseball diamond at the Shibaura Grounds in Tokyo’s Minato ward.

    Continue to read the full article on the SABR website

    The Diamond Stage: Herb Hunter’s 1922 Tour of Japan
  • Behind-the-scenes look at how Dodgers became a hotbed for Japanese talent

    Behind-the-scenes look at how Dodgers became a hotbed for Japanese talent

    by Michael St. Clair on MLB.com

    A great article on MLB.com by Michael St. Clair on the history of the Dodgers ties to Japan which features SABR president Dan Evans.

    https://www.mlb.com/news/dodgers-japanese-superstars-are-the-result-of-decades-of-work?adobe_mc=TS%253D1761519947%257CMCMID%253D80565796369577879896077867491881439527%257CMCORGID%253DA65F776A5245B01B0A490D44%2540AdobeOrg&affiliateId=mlbapp-ios_webview_news-index&rsid=mlbios.at.bat.new.implementation