Daily Archives: 20 October 2025

by | 20 October 2025 · 8:31 pm

California Baseball in 1921

From Kenichi Zenimura, Japanese American Baseball Pioneer, by Bill Staples, Jr. (McFarland, 2011), Kindle Locations 487-499:

According to historian William F. McNeil, the California Winter League (CWL) experienced an increase in talent during the 1920-21 season. McNeil called it a “breakthrough” year with competition playing at the AA and AAA level. The CWL rise in talent was attributed to the participation of Negro Leagues caliber players with the L.A. White Sox, Lincoln Giants and Alexander Giants. They played all of their games at the newly constructed Anderson Park (aka White Sox Park), named after local black businessman Doc Anderson, and their rosters boasted future Hall of Famers Andy Cooper and Biz Mackey, and a host of local black athletes, including University of Southern California star running back Johnny Riddle. Zenimura and his FAC team would get their chance four years later to test their mettle against these great ballplayers.

In February 1921 in New York, a group of Japanese representatives from Waseda, Tokyo, Yokohama and Kobe universities announced that they were eager to take “an all-star baseball team made up of members of the Race,” also known as Negro League players, to Japan. Spokesmen for the delegation told reporters that they were eager to see a first-class team of Negro Leaguers play Waseda University, with the goal of helping to foster interest in the pastime in Japan.

Waseda University would have to wait another six years to play a first-class team of Negro League players in Japan. Yet, they only needed to wait three weeks to compete against a first-class team of Japanese American players in Hawaii. On May 9, 1921, the college boys from Waseda battled the Hawaiian Asahi, featuring many of Zeni’s former Island teammates and future FAC [= Fresno Athletic Club] teammates. The visiting ballclub was walloped by the Asahis to the tune of 8 to 2.

But U.S.-Japanese baseball relations flourished in the later part of 1921. The Los Angeles Times reported that nine clubs from the Pacific Coast and Hawaii had either made the trip or were making plans to tour Japan. The list of teams invading Japan included a PCL [= Pacific Coast League] all-star star team led by Seattle baseball man Frank Miya; semipro players from Canada and Hawaii; the Seattle Asahi, the top Nisei team of the West Coast; college teams, including the University of California and University of Washington; and the Sherman Indian School of Southern California.

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by | 20 October 2025 · 7:32 am

Early Baseball in Hawaii

From Kenichi Zenimura, Japanese American Baseball Pioneer, by Bill Staples, Jr. (McFarland, 2011), Kindle Locations 266-283, 338-343:

When young Zeni arrived in Honolulu in 1907, … baseball was already the most popular sport in the islands. For that matter, the game was played in Hawaii long before it was introduced to Japan or to most of the continental U.S. In 1849, Alexander Cartwright – the man recognized as the father of the modern game – moved to Honolulu after a failed attempt at life in California. Upon arrival he quickly became one of the Hawaii’s leading citizens by founding the first fire department, library, and baseball field. In 1852, he organized several teams and began to teach the game across the islands. In the mid-1880s, Japanese plantation laborers played baseball to escape the tedious work of the sugarcane fields. As the rivalries between the plantation camp and company teams grew, so did the competition….

The first Japanese American baseball team – the Excelsior – was founded in Hawaii in 1899 by the Rev. Takie Okumura. “I formed a baseball team, made up mostly of boys in my home,” Okumura said. “Being the only team among the Japanese, its competitors were Hawaiian, Portuguese and Chinese.” The Excelsiors were a successful baseball club and considered one of the pioneering Japanese baseball teams in Hawaii.’

Another early all-Japanese team in Hawaii was the Asahi (“Rising Sun”) club, organized by Gikaku “Steere” Noda. The Asahi started off as a group of teenagers honing their skills on the sandlots of Iwilei in 1905. Within a few years they were playing in multi-ethnic leagues competing against the All-Chinese, the Braves (all Portuguese) and the Wanderers (all Caucasians). The diversity of the leagues inspired Noda to say “that through the world of sports, we can promote goodwill and fellowship.” Zeni joined the Hawaiian Asahi ballclub club in 1915, and it appears that he gleaned Noda’s wisdom and applied it throughout his career on goodwill tours.

…

In January 1915, Honolulu witnessed the development of a formal league comprised of four and sometimes six teams, including a native team, a Japanese team, an American team, and an army team. Over time the league developed senior and junior leagues based on skill level. After touring Japan in 1915, the Hawaiian Asahi competed in the junior league in 1916. That same year, Zenimura joined the Asahi.

Between 1916 and 1919, Kenichi dedicated his playing time to two baseball teams, the semipro Hawaiian Asahi and the Mills High School ball club. Mills, which later changed its name to the Mid-Pacific Institute, was a perennial baseball powerhouse in the late 1910s. In his 1943 Gila River Courier interview, Zeni proudly shared that his Mills High school nine “played the Hilo All-Stars for Hawaii’s Inter-Island Championship after defeating prep and semi-pro clubs.”

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