Author Archives: Joel

Shanghai’s–and Old China’s–glory days of baseball came in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Those days still are linked with memories of Liang Fuchu and the Shanghai Pandas. Remembered a generation later as the “grandfather of Chinese baseball,” Liang had gone to Japan in the 1920s as a student and returned as a businessperson. He learned baseball in Japan and formed a powerful team nicknamed the Pandas when he came back to China.

Liang Fuchu’s ties to baseball spanned half a century. In the 1950s, shortly after the founding of the People’s Republic, Liang was brought in to teach the game to a group of Chinese sailors in the port city of Qingdao. His popularity there led him to the attention of Marshal He [Long, head of Physical Culture and Sports Commission], who decreed during the 1950s that certain units of the People’s Liberation Army should be taught baseball. In 1953, Marshall He sent Liang Fuchu to coach army teams in Shandong and Sichuan Provinces.

Liang Fuchu passed his love of baseball on to his sons–three of whom were coaching the game in Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou in the 1980s. Liang’s fourth son was an umpire in Guangzhou.

One of the last happy moments for baseball in China in the first half of the twentieth century came in 1934, during the heyday of Liang Fuchu and the Shanghai Pandas, when Babe Ruth and a team of U.S. All-Stars stopped in Shanghai after their final prewar tour of Japan. Ruth predictably provided the greatest thrills, hitting three home runs in a game against a team of U.S. Marines. But another bit of baseball history came out of the trip. It involved a Shanghai native named Li Bao-jun, who was catcher, manager, and coach of a local team. Li volunteered to serve as tour guide and escort for some of the U.S. All-Stars, taking them to lunch at the famous Sun Ya restaurant and walking them along the city’s world-renowned waterfront, the Bund.

To show their appreciation, the players gave Li two autographed baseballs. Fifty-five years later, one of those balls ended up in the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. Li had hidden and protected it through the 1937 bombing of Shanghai, the Japanese occupation, the war between the Communists and Nationalists, the Great Leap Forward, and the Cultural Revolution. He donated it to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1989….

Communist revolutionaries played baseball throughout the 1930s and 1940s … In the past baseball was known as junqiu, or “army ball.” … For more than a decade after the founding of the People’s Republic in October 1949, baseball was played across China. Both baseball and softball were included in the first postrevolution National Games held in 1956. The winning baseball team, from Shanghai, was coached by Liang Fuchu. Three years later, baseball was popular enough to attract more than thirty provincial, military, and city teams to the first New China Baseball Tournament.

It only fell from grace during the 1960s, like so many other traditions.

SOURCE: Taking in a Game: A History of Baseball in Asia, by Joseph A. Reaves (U. Nebraska Press, 2002), pp. 42-44

Probably the most famous baseball-addicted member of the Chinese Educational Mission [to the U.S. in the 1870s] was Liang Pixu, also known as Liang Pe Yuk, Pi Yuk, and, later, as Sir Chentung Liang Cheng. A member of the final detachment of students, he was just twelve years old when he arrived in the United States in 1875. He was in his third year of college preparatory work at Phillips Andover Academy when the mission was scuttled in 1881. Liang Pixu would return to the United States years later as China’s top diplomatic representative, but not before he gained a measure of fame in New England as a clutch-hitting baseball star. His reputation was made in a game between Phillips Andover Academy and Phillips Exeter Academy in 1881, just weeks before the Chinese Educational Mission was called home.

Andover and Exeter were bitter rivals. The two schools were founded just five years apart–Andover in 1778 and Exeter in 1783–and were located just twenty-five miles (forty kilometers) from each other–Andover in the northeastern corner of Massachusetts and Exeter in the southeastern corner of New Hampshire. They attracted the elite of New England, who, like students everywhere, were prone to measure their pride as readily in athletics as in academics. The first time the two schools met on a baseball field was in 1878, the centenary of Andover’s founding, when Exeter crushed Andover 11-1. Three years later, though, Andover got its revenge with a 13-5 win at Exeter. The star of that sweet victory was outfielder Chentung Liang Cheng, who drove in three runs with a pair of key extra-base hits under ugly circumstances. Seeing a Chinese student wearing the flannel baseball uniform of their bitter rivals, the Exeter fans behaved predictably. They greeted Chentung Liang Cheng with derisive ethnic jeers that played on the racial stereotypes of the times, yelling: “Washee, washee; chinkee go back benchee.” Chentung Liang Cheng ignored the taunts and responded by hitting the first pitch he saw for a two-run triple. An inning later, he doubled home another run.

Judging from accounts of other baseball games of the times, the ethnic jeers that greeted Chentung Liang Cheng at Exeter were but a trivial annoyance. An Andover official recalled arriving at another baseball game on that campus and finding “the air blue from the smoke of exploding firecrackers hurled at the players by the respective opposition. In addition, a small cannon was installed near first base. Loaded with grass and dirt, from time to time it added to the hazards of trying to play on the diamond itself. Any base runner had to bury his face in his arms to protect his eyes, if not his life.” Baseball games in New England at the time were chaos–much as they would be in Korea a century later.

There was chaos of a different kind when Chentung Liang Cheng and his Andover teammates returned home from their win over Exeter. In a speech he delivered twenty-two years later to mark the 125th anniversary of the founding of Phillips Academy, Sir Chentung Liang Cheng described the scene. “When the train arrived with the victorious nine, the whole school turned out to welcome (us) with torchlights, a brass band and an omnibus drawn by enthusiastic students with long rope,” he recalled. “Even Rome could not have received Caesar with greater enthusiasm and pride when he returned from his famous campaigns in triumph.”

The joy of baseball and of that triumphant moment stayed with Chentung Liang Cheng the rest of his remarkable life. After returning to China, he spent years in service of the Qing Dynasty government, rising steadily through the diplomatic ranks. In 1897, while serving in London as secretary to the Special Chinese Embassy to Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations, Liang Cheng was named an Honorary Knight Commander of Michael and George. At that time, he placed his Western “courtesy name,” Chentung, before his family name to more readily conform to British custom. Had he failed to do so, his English-speaking friends inevitably would have called him Sir Liang, which would have been as wholly inappropriate as referring to Winston Churchill as Sir Churchill after his knighthood. Decorum decrees the nomenclature should be Sir Winston and Sir Chentung.

The crowning moment of Sir Chentung’s diplomatic career came on July 12, 1902, when he became China’s minister to the United States–the emperor’s ambassador to Meiguo–a post he held until July 3, 1907. He was a natural at the job, fostering good relations on every level, from the White House to the New England schoolrooms where he had gotten his education years earlier.

In 1905, three decades after he left China as a twelve-year-old student, Sir Chentung wrote an article for a youth magazine in the United States in which he used baseball, among other games, to explain the wonders of life in his adopted country. “In a Chinese school it is all work and no play,” he wrote. “There is no intermission from morning till night except for meals. There is no recess during school hours. There are no regular holidays, like Saturdays and Sundays, to break the monotony of daily routine. There is no summer vacation to look forward to as a season of relaxation and freedom.” Things were different in the United States. “Here work is seasoned with play. Baseball, football, and other athletic sports furnish the necessary outlets for the escape of the superfluous energy of youth. In fact, what is positively forbidden to a schoolboy in China may be freely enjoyed to the full in America.” The lengthy article was accompanied by a line drawing of a batter swinging at a ball and two photographs–one showing Liang Cheng in his Andover baseball uniform and one showing him as he appeared in 1903, dressed in elegant Chinese robes.

Liang Cheng was proud of his baseball experience and believed his proficiency at such an intrinsically American game helped his diplomatic career in Washington. Once, shortly after taking his post, Sir Chentung met U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt, who said an old friend recently told him he thought the new Chinese minister played baseball for Andover and helped win a championship with a key hit in the 1880s. Sir Chentung happily confirmed the story, and Roosevelt asked who had been the best player on that Andover team? The new minister temporarily abandoned his Chinese manners and diplomatic reserve and replied simply, he was. “From that moment the relations between President Roosevelt and myself became ten-fold stronger and closer,” Liang Cheng said.

SOURCE: Taking in a Game: A History of Baseball in Asia, by Joseph A. Reaves (U. Nebraska Press, 2002), pp. 24-27

All baseball teams in the Olympics may play by the same set of international rules, but there are many, many variations at national, local, and league levels. Here are some of the hitherto unknown rules of the game in different parts of the world.

• In Mongolia, baseball is played on horseback, but without saddles. The horses wear shinguards and shaffrons. If the pitcher beans either the batter or his horse, the batter is awarded first base–provided he manages to stay on the horse.
• In the U.S. Beantown League, by contrast, any batter who is beaned is permitted to go directly to second base–by way of the pitcher’s mound, but without the bat.
• In Philippines Peoplepowerball, the spectators in the stands are permitted to throw an umpire out of the game if they disagree with the call. The hometeam usually wins.
• In U.S. Ownerball, the owners of the opposing teams are permitted to place bids with the homeplate umpire for as many as three strikes and four balls per game. The richer owner’s team often wins.
• In the sparsely populated Australian Outback, where the outfield is the outback and a home run is a walkabout, Ockerball only requires three players (and 27 beers) per side. On the tiny islands of the Torres Straits, this is known as Beach Baseball.
• China’s Iron Ricebowl League, by contrast, allows up to 18 players per side, two at each field position. In ideal cases, one is a better fielder and the other a better hitter, but in actual practice, one is usually an unambitious young person and the other an elder dependent.
• In China, spitballs are permitted.
• In Korea and the Philippines, hot dogs are served in bowls, not buns.
• In Japan, tie games are permitted, but not counted as wins or losses. In Canada and New Zealand, a tie game is regarded as a win-win.
• Japanese Pro Baseball allows foreign players, but with restrictions: only two foreign players are permitted in the field at any one time, and only one foreign player is allowed to be on base at any one time. If a foreign player comes up to bat when another is already on base, the former must either bring the latter home, sacrifice to move him forward, or strike out. (A walk, whether intentional or not, will advance the lead runner unless the manager of the team at bat elects to replace the batter with a native-born pinch runner. This is an example of how protectionism breeds regulatory excess.)
• In China, first base is down the left foul line and base runners run clockwise around the diamond. In Taiwan, first base is down the right foul line and base runners run counter-clockwise around the diamond.
• North Korea requires all players to bat, throw, and pitch left-handed. South Korea used to require all players to play right-handed, but its new Sunshine Policy now requires all players to be ambidextrous. The home team must play right-handed and the visitors left-handed.
• In the Micronesian Lagoon League, the ball field is underwater and the infield must be at least 1 meter deep. A hit that lands in the ocean outside the atoll is a home run, and one that touches the land qualifies as a ground-rule double, even if it rolls into the ocean.
• In the old Siberian League, the bases were 90 meters apart, the outfield barbed wire was at least 500 meters distant, the 50-meter warning track was mined, umpires were armed, and guard towers were placed at the end of each foul line. Home runs were extremely rare, but ground balls could go a long way on the ice if they got past the outfielders, and mine-rule doubles were fairly common.

SOURCES: Herodotus, Confuseus, Marco Polo, Reuters, Katie Couric, faroutliars

Baseball reached Japan the way it reached most of the rest of Asia, courtesy of missionaries and the military during the heady days of U.S. expansion. Commodore Matthew Perry arrived with his Black Ships in 1853 and forced the Japanese to end nearly three hundred years of feudal isolation and open their ports to the West. Little more than a decade later, the Japanese embarked on a national revolution, the Meiji Restoration, designed to unite the country under a strong central leadership and avoid foreign domination by embracing those areas such as education, technology, and military tactics where the West seemed superior.

During the early years of the Meiji Era (1867-1912), Horace Wilson, a young American brought in to teach history and English at Tokyo’s Kaisei Gakkô (now Tokyo University), introduced his students to the fundamentals of baseball. The exact date, even the year, seems lost in history. But it was some time between 1867 and 1873 because by the latter year, another American teacher, Albert Bates, is credited with organizing the first formal baseball game in Japan. That game was played at Kaitaku University in Tokyo and is widely accepted as the birth of baseball in Japan.

Few historians, and even fewer fans, realize that baseball was being played in China more than a decade before Bates organized the first game in Japan. Baseball can trace its roots in China back to at least 1863, when the Shanghai Baseball Club was formed, two generations before the collapse of the Qing Dynasty. But while baseball was confined mainly to the expatriate community and a scant few Western schools in China, the game was almost immediately popular in Japan–first among elite university students and later among the population at large.

By 1878, Japan had its first organized team, the Shinbashi Athletic Club Athletics, founded by railway engineer Hiroshi Hiraoka, who had become a die-hard Boston Red Sox fan while studying in the United States. By the 1890s, baseball was hailed as “the fastest-growing college sport” in Japan. And by 1922, University of Chicago coach and educator Nels Norgren declared baseball already had become “more the national sport of Japan than it is of America.”

A world war that pitted the baseball-loving lands of Japan and the United States against one another did little to slow the progress of the sport in Asia. If anything, the war quickened and legitimized devotion to baseball in Japan–and thence the rest of Asia. True, the dream of U.S. Army Major Roger B. Doulens still is a long way from reality. Doulens wrote to The Sporting News in March 1946 and painted a picture of the happy day–perhaps, he said, as early as 1955–when a shortstop for the Shanghai Spartans of the Yellow River League might be sold to the New York Giants for 500,000 Chinese dollars.

By 1955, Chinese dollars had fled the mainland to Taiwan. There were no Shanghai Spartans, no Yellow River League. And there certainly wasn’t a shortstop within a thousand miles of Shanghai who could displace Alvin Dark of the Giants. But nearly half a century later, amateur baseball is gaining a measure of popularity in China. A baseball stadium recently was built in Ulan Bator, the capital of Mongolia. Professional baseball leagues–highly competitive leagues–flourish in Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and Australia. And nearly every country in Asia and Oceania competes in both the amateur International Baseball Association and the worldwide Little League baseball program.

Just as in the Americas, where the United States is baseball’s foremost power, so, too, in Asia one nation dominates the sport. Japan is the keeper and guiding light of Asian baseball. The style of play and strategy, the reaction of fans and players–even the way games are officiated and reported–all mirror Japanese values, not American. That is why scoreboards in Japan, and across Asia, have an extra column labeled “B” for bases on ball. A walk may not count as an official at bat, but it helps the team and therefore deserves a place of prominence on the scoreboard.

In 1981, Masaru Ikei, professor of Japanese diplomatic history at Keio University, wrote: “Baseball, in Japan, though an imported sport, has been assimilated into the natural culture. Japanese values have suffused the sport.” Ikei, of course, was correct. But he could have gone further. Confucian values have become rooted in baseball and have helped define the game in Asia. The Great American Game has become the Great Japanese Game in Asia largely because the Japanese suffused it with social and cultural priorities that more closely mirror their society–and those of their neighbors–than they do in North, and even South, America, where all too often money means everything and “me” is more important than “we.”

To many baseball fans in North and South America, that might sound like heresy. But to most Japanese it is reality. The Japanese have done to baseball what they did to McDonald’s hamburgers. They have taken something once thought to be “uniquely American” and turned it into something that is, without question, “intensely Japanese.”

When McDonald’s decided to expand to Japan, the company chose as its partner a Japanese businessperson who was at once both rebel and conservative. Den Fujita broke the Japanese stereotype of the team player who owed his loya!ty and identity to one of Japan’s prestigious giant corporations. He was an aggressive entrepreneur who struck it rich at age twenty-five by starting his own business importing U.S.-made golf shoes and clubs. Yet Fujita was inherently conservative enough to understand and exploit the paradox of the Japanese, who envied the success of the West but cherished their own culture to the point of exclusion. “All Japanese have an inferiority complex about anything that is foreign because everything in our culture has come from the outside,” Fujita once said. “Our writing comes from China, our Buddhism from Korea, and after the war, everything new, from Coca-Cola to IBM, came from America. Japanese people are basically anti-foreigner. We don’t like the Chinese, we don’t like the Koreans, and we especially don’t like the Americans because we lost the war to them.”

Fujita knew those feelings, and he knew how to use them to make a success of McDonald’s. He created and carefully nurtured the impression that McDonald’s was for all intents and purposes a Japanese invention. A survey done in the 1970s confirmed that the vast majority of young people in Japan believed McDonald’s was a Japanese company. A similar survey done in late 1997 by Harvard University scholar James L. Watson revealed Hong Kong University students were unaware that McDonald’s was a U.S. company. And in an article written for Foreign Affairs magazine in 2000, Watson cited other examples of the “localizations” of McDonald’s, including a story about the children of colleagues from Taiwan and South Korea who were overjoyed to see the Golden Arches in the United States. “Look! They have our kind of food here,” an eight-year-old South Korean shouted.

Much the same kind of localization, acculturation, and assimilation has occurred with baseball. The Japanese took a foreign product and made it their own–then became a driving force, and comforting example, in helping the same thing happen in other areas of Asia.

SOURCE: Taking in a Game: A History of Baseball in Asia, by Joseph A. Reaves (U. Nebraska Press, 2002), pp. 14-16

“Special books don’t come along too often – if you are capable of looking past MLB then this book is a must read; it will change your whole take on America’s game.

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