by Yoichi Nagata
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.
We will begin with the first foreign baseball club to visit Japan: the St. Louis team from Hawaii which arrived in 1907 and played ten games.
Located on the pathway between the US mainland and Japan, Hawaii was important in the history of US-Japan baseball exchanges. The baseball ties between the two islands began in 1907, triggered by a rivalry between two Tokyo universities.
In June 1907, Suejiro Ito was dispatched to Hawaii by the Toyo Migration Company to survey the labor situation of the 50,000 Japanese immigrants working in the sugar and pineapple fields. There, he came across a rumor that Waseda University was negotiating with Stanford University for a baseball team tour of Japan. Ito, a graduate of Keio University, thought, “I wanted my alma mater to be the first to invite a foreign team to Japan. Before Waseda.”
For many years the college teams were the pinnacle of baseball in Japan. Right after the turn of the twentieth century, a group of teams in the Tokyo area, Waseda, Keio, Gakushuin University, First Higher School, and the Yokohama Cricket and Athletic Club (YC&AC: a sports club of foreign residents), battled to be the top team in Japan. The two universities, Waseda and Keio, developed a fierce rivalry. The Waseda-Keio match was called the Sokei-sen (the abbreviation for Waseda-Keio game), and it was watched with great interest by baseball fans across the country.
The history of the Sokei-sen began as follows. Keio University founded its official university baseball club in 1892. Waseda, on the other hand, had to wait for nine years, until 1901, for its baseball club to be bom. In 1903 the latecomer Waseda University sent a written challenge to Keio University. Following proper etiquette, Waseda asked in a humble manner for the more experienced Keio team to teach them baseball. The letter read, “Our team is still underperforming, and our players are still immature. We would be honored to have a lesson from you in the near future.” The first game of the Sokei-sen was played on November 21, 1903, with Keio beating Waseda, 11-9.
However, things changed in 1905. Waseda upset Keio, not on the field but in the international scene. Waseda carried out a monumental tour of North America, becoming the first Japanese team to visit the United States. The Waseda team, led by baseball director Isoo Abe, swung around the US West Coast, winning seven games and losing 19 against colleges, high schools, and semipros. Although the results were not encouraging, Waseda brought back to Japan the latest in baseball techniques and strategies, known as “scientific baseball,” including the hit-and-run, second-shortstop cooperative play, and pregame warmup, as well as equipment such as baseball shoes and gloves. Waseda willingly shared the new knowledge with other teams. With this, Waseda became the leaders of Japanese baseball.
After the US tour, the Waseda-Keio rivalry flared up even more. In the fall of 1906, the two teams planned a three-game series. After Keio won the first game, the school’s cheering group congregated outside the home of Waseda’s founder, Count Shigenobu Okuma, and shouted, “Banzai Keio!” The Waseda students viewed this as an extreme insult. At the second game, Waseda packed the stands with 1,200 cheerers, in clear violation of the agreement that limited the cheering groups to 250. The horde celebrated Waseda’s victory by marching to the former home of the late Keio founder Yukichi Fukuzawa (who had died in 1901) and yelling, “Banzai Waseda!” Fearing a riot at the third game, Keio president Eikichi Kamata and Isoo Abe of Waseda agreed to cancel the final match. The Sokei-sen would not be played for years to come.
The void left by the extinction of the Sokei-sen caused a sense of crisis in Japan’s top baseball world. A number of attempts were made to revive the Sokei- sen, but all failed. For example, at the end of 1906, the Tokyo Sports Press Club made a vain effort to mediate between the two schools. Another attempt was made in the summer of 1907 when Leroy E. McChesney, baseball captain of the YC&AC, proposed a formation of Japan’s first baseball league “Keihin Yakyu Domei,” but Keio refused to join. Waseda won the first and last championship, as the league lasted only one fall season.
Ito was annoyed that Waseda had been the first Japanese team to travel abroad so he wanted to make sure that Keio would be the first to invite a foreign team to Japan. Luckily enough for Ito’s plan, Kakugoro Inoue, a graduate of Keio University and member of Japan’s House of Representatives, stopped in Honolulu on the way back from a four-month tour of Europe and the United States. On August 22, Ito met with Inoue to ask for his cooperation for Keio to bring over a baseball team from Hawaii. Inoue gave his word (“I will give my all for our alma mater”) and left for Japan.
Ito selected the St. Louis College alumni team for the Japan tour, because it had recently won the 1907 championship of the Honolulu Baseball League. The Pacific Commercial Advertiser thought highly of the team: “The makeup of this team is nearly as strong as any aggregation which could be picked up in the Territory [of Hawaii].” The Hawaiian Star noted that a Japanese student who had seen St. Louis play believed that the team would be a very attractive drawing card if it came to Japan.
The captain of the St. Louis team, Pat Gleason, brimmed with confidence and excitement: “We will certainly show those Japs something that they do not know about baseball, and the chances are we will come back with another championship tacked on our pennant.” It was a once-in-a-lifetime chance for many of the St. Louis players who had never been away from the islands.
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