Category Archives: baseball

by | 16 September 2013 · 8:43 pm

Japanese vs. Chinese Baseball in Hawai‘i, 1911

From The Barnstorming Hawaiian Travelers: A Multiethnic Baseball Team Tours the Mainland, 1912-1916, by Joel S. Franks (McFarland, 2012), Kindle Loc. 456-490:

The visits of Japanese baseball teams to the American mainland in 1905 and 1911 helped set the stage for the Hawaiian Travelers baseball team’s initial journey in 1912. In 1905, a contingent from Waseda University traveled eastward to the United States. Under the headline of “Japs as Ballplayers,” the Washington Post told readers that Waseda’s trip to America had enhanced baseball’s popularity in Japan as well as “future international contests between the universities of the Pacific Coast and the Orient.” The Japanese nine, moreover, had improved its play during its stay on the mainland. Waseda offered relatively little competition to Stanford, Cal, and St. Mary’s nines. But in Southern California, the Japanese contingent played better.”

Indeed, in Southern California, the Waseda nine managed to take part in the first baseball game played on the American mainland between two teams representing different non-white racial groups. At a Los Angeles ballpark, Waseda encountered a team from Sherman’s Institute, a Riverside County boarding school for Native Americans. Waseda beat the Sherman Institute nine, which included John Tortez, a talented Cahuilla Indian athlete who became better known as “Chief” Meyers, a solid catcher for the New York Giants. Waseda also defeated a Los Angeles High School nine and, more impressively, a team representing the University of Southern California. In all, according to the Seymours, Waseda won seven of 26 games in the U.S.

In 1911, the Waseda nine returned to the American mainland, as did a team from Keio. These Japanese ballplayers from Waseda had a hard time with Stanford but impressed observers. The Daily Palo Alto saw them as both skilled athletes and racialized exotics: “The Japanese proved their reputation for sportsmanlike playing…. They are a nine of small men and they have to work for everything they get. Their native smallness handicaps them in their playing, but what they lose in size is made up in quickness, and in their taking advantage of every opening offered by the opposing nine.”

The next year the “Chinese Traveling Team” left the islands for the U.S. mainland with the blessings of Honolulu’s Chinese community and haole business interests. The team, affiliated with Honolulu’s Chinese Athletic Club, had raised, according to the Hawaiian Star, $6,000 for the trip. Fortuitously, the notion of sending a team of Chinese Hawaiians to the American mainland brought together Honolulu’s Chinese and non-Chinese commercial
interests. The former wanted to divert white mainlanders from their frequently zealous support of anti-Chinese legislation. The latter wanted to entice mainland tourists and investment. The fact that Japanese teams had toured the American mainland in 1905 and again in 1911 with some success and apparently without any major incidents suggested that the logistics of sending a Chinese Hawaiian nine westward were secure and manageable.

Of course, no one wanted to ship off a contingent of incompetents to mainland baseball diamonds. But Honolulu’s small baseball world knew of a number of very good Chinese Hawaiian ballplayers – ballplayers that would be seen as surprisingly skilled curiosities by many mainlanders. Scattered on various Honolulu teams, players such as En Sue Pung, Lai Tin, and infielder Alex Asam were assembled into an All-Chinese nine just in time to greet the Keio University team when it came to the islands in 1911.

Before taking on the Keio nine, the All-Chinese team easily defeated the best team in the Oahu League, the Hawaiis, 8-2. The Pacific Commercial Advertiser bemoaned the inability of the “Celestials” to enter a team in the Oahu League. As it was, fans were surprised that the league champion could fall so readily to the Chinese Hawaiians.

Meanwhile, many Japanese and Chinese Hawaiians were excited about the Keio-All-Chinese game scheduled for July 12, 1911. The Pacific Commercial Advertiser lamented that the game between Keio and the All-Chinese was scheduled for mid-week. Accordingly, Japanese and Chinese Hawaiian working people, as well as other Hawaiian baseball fans, would be prevented from attending. Nevertheless, the game was slated for late in the afternoon and most Honolulu baseball fans, except for Honolulu’s Nikkei population, seemed to back the local team.

A relatively huge crowd arrived for the Keio-All-Chinese match-up. Apparently, feelings ran high. According to the Advertiser, spectators were warned in English, Japanese, and Chinese to refrain from fighting, a warning which was supposedly heeded. The Japanese team won, 6-3. However, a rematch was arranged and the Advertiser speculated on a possible victory this time for the Chinese Hawaiians. “It will be a great feather in the caps of the Chinese team if they can pull a victory from the Japanese players, and the rejoicing in the Chinese community will beat any Fourth of July and Chinese New Year rolled into one that Honolulu has ever seen.” Meanwhile, Chinese Hawaiian baseball fans persisted in attending and rooting against the Keio nine as the Japanese ballplayers opposed Honolulu’s various multi-ethnic teams.

In the rematch, the Chinese Hawaiians proved too much for the visitors. According to the Advertiser, Apau Kau, “the burly, good natured Chinese … pitched the game of his life.” The score was 5-2 to the advantage of the locals when the Keio players left the field to protest an umpire’s decision. The Advertiser surmised as well that violence was simmering between the Japanese and Chinese spectators. However, “the mounted and foot police came in on the lope and stopped the little `tea party’.”

Things had gotten too exciting for all concerned. A rubber match between the All-Chinese and Keio was, indeed, cancelled. Moreover, at least the Advertiser seemed concerned about Asian Pacific athletes assuming a prominent place in Hawaiian baseball. “Aliens” were hurting the sport on the islands, according to the daily, “and the sooner the Europeans and their descendants get busy, and start the best game on earth going like it used to be, years ago, the better for the peace of mind of the Honolulu people.” In truth, the Advertiser appeared most distressed over the behavior of those Nikkei baseball fans determined to boycott all games between Keio and Hawaiian nines because they believed the Japanese ballplayers got a raw deal in the second game against the All-Chinese.

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by | 21 August 2013 · 9:22 pm

Punahou and Baseball in the Hawaiian Kingdom

From: Missionaries, Cartwright, and Spalding: The Development of Baseball in Nineteenth-Century Hawaii, by Frank Ardolino, in NINE: A Journal of Baseball History and Culture 10(2002):27-45 (Project MUSE subscription required).

The person usually credited with the introduction of the Massachusetts form of early baseball is Captain James H. Black, a Boston printer…. The game flourished at Punahou School…. Daniel Dole, the school’s first principal (1841-54), was a noted baseball enthusiast and player…. The school promoted baseball on campus and in the community, arranging match games with other schools and supporting town leagues. Punahou’s encouragement of the game as a major recreational pastime resulted in the flowering of baseball in Hawaii from 1866 to 1890, a period that will be discussed in greater detail after Cartwright’s influence in analyzed.

Alexander Joy Cartwright is considered an important baseball pioneer because he helped to create the New York Knickerbocker ball club in the 1840s and formulated rules for the version of the game that evolved into the national pastime. In March 1849, he left New York for the gold fields of California and on his cross-country journey became a kind of Johnny Appleseed for baseball by introducing the game to American Indians and settlers, as he recorded in his diary. When he quickly grew disenchanted with California, he decided to sail home via China, but he disembarked in Honolulu at the end of August 1849 and soon determined to settle there permanently, bringing his family from New York in 1852.

In the next two decades, Cartwright not only prospered in shipping, whaling, insurance, and real estate but also became a community builder who helped to construct a new Hawaii. He was the organizer and first chief of the Honolulu Fire Department, one of the founders of the Queen’s Hospital, organizer and president of the Honolulu Library and numismatics society, and founder of Masonic Lodge 21, among numerous other achievements. As a result of his business and legal acumen, he also served as financial advisor to five monarchs.

Despite Cartwright’s considerable presence in the political, economic, and legal sectors of Hawaii, there exists little evidence for his similar role in the development of baseball….

Cartwright’s last two children, his sons Bruce and Allie, were born in Hawaii and attended Punahou from 1864 to 1869. There are contemporary references to their participation in the game. The Punahou Reporter recounts the minutes for the meeting of the Whangdoodle Base Ball Club–composed of Punahou students and graduates–on May 14, 1872, in which the club announces that it expects the Cartwright brothers to resume their ball playing when they return from school in the United States. In the following year, Allie is listed in the Punahou tally book as the captain of the club. Further, the box score from the Hawaiian Gazette of August 18, 1875, records Allie as the Whangdoodle second baseman who scored 2 runs in a 11-10 loss to the Pacifics. Bruce is mentioned as a member of the Married Men’s Baseball Club in 1884, and, finally, at the annual meeting of the Hawaiian Base Ball League on March 10, 1886, Bruce was chosen as one of the official scorers for the upcoming season….

The influence of Punahou and Alexander Cartwright as promoters of baseball resulted in its flourishing between 1866 and 1890. The game’s growing popularity resulted in the creation of league play and match games, an increase in the number of ball fields, and innovations in the rules, equipment, tally book, and box scores, which appeared in the Pacific Commercial Advertiser, the Hawaiian Gazette, and the Punahou Mirror, Reporter.…

During this period, the foreign population of Hawaii increased from 4,000 to 49,000, and the native population decreased from 58,000 to 40,000. Although Punahou’s enrollment grew slowly, only tripling its initial enrollment of thirty-four pupils by 1880, its influence on the changing community went far beyond its numbers. Richard Henry Dana, the author of Two Years Before the Mast and a visitor to Hawaii in 1860, described how Punahou extended its system of excellence by sending its graduates to mainland colleges, where they not only were trained to be future teachers at Punahou but also attracted prestigious recruits to teach there. 24 One illustrious mainland recruit was William H. Chickering, who came to Hawaii in 1871 to teach the classics. He had played shortstop for Amherst College, and at Punahou he served as umpire and catcher for both teams, as well as joining the Whangdoodles, “a downtown club composed of Punahou boys, old and new …

In his Reminiscences, W.R. Castle attests to the central role Punahou played in the development of baseball. Castle was the son of pioneer lay missionary Samuel N. Castle, who also founded the firm of Castle and Cooke, which became one of the Big Five corporations that controlled the sugar industry in Hawaii. W.R. Castle attended Punahou from 1860 to 1864 and then went to Oberlin College for two years. When he returned to Hawaii in 1866, he introduced the New York version to the Punahou Baseball club … When he traveled to the other Hawaiian Islands in 1869, Castle attended games played with enthusiasm and skill by residents who called baseball “the gift of Punahou.”… They used a lively rubber ball but had no mitts, masks, or body protectors….

In 1866, an official league was created composed of the Pacifics and the Pioneers, who were joined in a few years by the Whangdoodles, Pensacolas, and Athletics. At the first organizational meeting on June 1, 1866, the original teams adopted the regulations of the California National Baseball Convention. Future meetings were held at various firehouses, perhaps reflecting Cartwright’s influence on the organization of the league. Rules were enforced, fines levied, and sometimes teams disbanded, with their members joining other teams or forming new ones….

The popularity of baseball was also demonstrated by the scheduling of match games between the Whangdoodles and sailors, the infantry and cavalry on King Kamehameha Day, and interisland teams. The Whangdoodles won 2 games, one at the end of 1871 by the whopping score of 88-43 against the Mariners, a team composed of the officers and sailors from the whaling fleet that had been shipwrecked in the Arctic Ocean….

As the popularity of baseball spread throughout the community, both attendance and the number of fields available for play increased. Women would attend games on horseback, and some fans arrived in carriages. So many new spectators came to see the games at Makiki Reserve that in June 1884 a new and larger attendance stand was erected to accommodate them. At this time, nine fields, representing a geographical spectrum of playing areas within and without the boundaries of what then constituted the city of Honolulu, were used: Punahou Field, the Esplanade behind the Custom House, the field on the grounds where Central Union Church now stands in central Honolulu, Makiki Reserve, the area behind historic Kawaihao Church, and the fields on the prison and parade grounds.

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by | 4 September 2011 · 4:31 pm

Wordcatcher Tales: Dorui, Kangou, Funkyuubo, Fujo

The first tourist site we visited on our most recent trip to Japan was Yoshinogari Historical Park in Saga Prefecture, on a stretch of open countryside that turned up lots of artifacts from the Yayoi-period (roughly 300 B.C. to A.D. 300), including many large burial jars, when developers began to prepare the ground for a large shopping center. The site was then turned into an historical park featuring “one of Japan’s largest moat-encircled villages and ancient ruins.” In fact, another pair of visitors we met there were from Perth, Australia, a mother and her daughter who had won a national essay contest by presenting the case for Yoshinogari to be designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The signs describing the major features of the park were quadrilingual—in Japanese, English, Korean, and Chinese (simplified characters)—and one of the guides we met was a young lady from Dalian, China, who spoke some English and Russian in addition to Chinese and Japanese. (She was eager to practice her English, which was full of reading pronunciations.) Thanks to the helpful furigana on those signs, I learned a few new Japanese words and readings that were not even in my old Canon Wordtank G55 electronic dictionary. Here’s a sample.

土塁 dorui ‘earth fort, earthworks’ – The earliest forts in Japan apparently consisted of earthworks, palisades, and moats. The character 塁 ‘fort, rampart’ can be a synonym for 砦 toride ‘fort, stronghold, entrenchment’, but is now much more common in baseball, where it means ‘base’, as in 塁審 ruishin ‘base umpire’ or 塁打 ruida ‘base hit’.

環濠 kangou ‘ring trench‘ – The usual word for the ‘moat’ around Japanese castles is 堀 hori ‘ditch, canal’, related to the verb horu ‘to dig’. By itself, 濠 gou is better translated ‘trench’ (also ‘dugout, foxhole’), another product of digging. The character 環 kan ‘ring, circle, loop’ also occurs in 環境 kankyou ‘environment, circumstances’ (lit. ‘circle boundary’) and 環礁 kanshou ‘atoll’ (lit. ‘fringing sunken-rock’).

墳丘墓 funkyuubo ‘mound-hill-grave‘ – The common word for ‘grave’ is 墓 haka (Sino-Japanese bo) as in 墓石 boseki, hakaishi ‘tombstone’ or 墓堀 hakahori ‘grave digger’. A normal-sized grave mound is 墳墓 funbo ‘mound grave, tomb’, but a seriously hill-sized grave mound is 墳丘墓 funkyuubo (with 丘 ‘hill’, read oka in many placenames). Grave-mound building was carried to even greater extremes during the next major period of Japanese history, the Kofun 古墳 (‘old tomb’) period (c. 250–538).

巫女 fujo, miko ‘shaman, sorceress, shrine maiden’ – After immigration from the Korean peninsula began, but before Buddhism was established (during the 8th century), the chief spiritual practitioner in Japanese villages was a shaman, who was usually female, although the etymology of 神子 miko lit. ‘god-child’ is gender-neutral.

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by | 2 March 2011 · 1:53 pm

Remembering Wally Yonamine, 1925–2011

In remembrance of Wally Yonamine (24 June 1925–28 February 2011), here is a collection of links to excerpts I blogged a few years ago from a fascinating biography of him, Wally Yonamine: The Man Who Changed Japanese Baseball, by Robert K. Fitts (U. Nebraska Press, 2008).

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by | 1 June 2009 · 8:20 pm

All-Indian Baseball in 1930s America

The Spring 2009 issue of NINE: A Journal of Baseball and Culture has an article by Royse Parr on Ben Harjo’s All-Indian Baseball Club (Project MUSE subscriber link). Here are a few excerpts (footnotes omitted) from a fascinating glimpse at another era.

The story of Ben Harjo’s All-Indian Baseball Club has never been told. A full-blood Creek, Harjo was born on October 8, 1898, in Indian Territory near the city of Holdenville, now within the state of Oklahoma. In his teenage years, Harjo attended Haskell Institute, an Indian boarding school in Lawrence, Kansas, where he was the captain and a pitcher on the school’s Creek baseball team. Known as the “New Carlisle of the West,” Haskell Institute was proud of its baseball stars that included major leaguers Ike Kahdot (Potawatomi), Lee Daney (Choctaw), and Ben Tincup (Cherokee). Jim Thorpe (Sac and Fox, Potawatomi), a major league baseball player from Oklahoma, first attended Haskell. He then became athletically famous as an All-American football player and a track and field gold medal Olympian at Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania. Prior to leaving for Carlisle, Thorpe’s father said to him, “Son, you are an Indian. I want you to show other races what an Indian can do.” In their warrior tradition, Indian athletes were inspired to beat the whites at their own games. From these beginnings emerged Ben Harjo’s dream of forming a barnstorming All-Indian baseball team.

According to the 1930 United States census, Harjo had ten laborers of Negro or Indian extraction who lived on the farm with his wife Susey and their five children. He was scrambling to make a living as a farmer during the lean years of the Great Depression and the Oklahoma Dust Bowl. The local agent for the U.S. Indian Service regarded him as an exceptional young man whose farming methods were an example for other Indians.

Fortunately for Harjo and his baseball dreams, his full-blood Seminole Indian wife, Susey, was oil-rich from her land allotment in the Seminole oil fields. She had a trust fund controlled by the U.S. Indian Service that was in excess of three hundred thousand dollars. Susey was very generous with those less fortunate, especially for funeral bills, medical attention, and education, but she was only modestly educated. Susie paid for the building of a Presbyterian church, and she had a propensity for purchasing and discarding vehicles, which included a Ford sports coupe, two Dodge trucks, a Dodge sports coupe, a Pierce Arrow luxury sedan, and a Chevrolet team bus….

What is the historical significance of the Harjo club and its story? Earlier barnstorming Indian baseball teams were often subjected to racial taunts and harassment because of their skin color. No such incidents were reported in the press for the Harjos. Even when their teams were soundly defeated, local journalists were complimentary of the athletic talents of the barnstormers. The Harjo club’s play on the field, especially when they won the prestigious Denver Post Little World Series in 1932, proved that they were skilled professional athletes. In the New England states in 1933, it was heartwarming to read that the good-natured Thorpe was surrounded by hundreds of admiring youngsters.

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by | 4 March 2009 · 5:53 pm

How Doth Lotte Love Baseball?

In the Los Angeles Times, John M. Glionna profiles the unlikely manager of a once hapless Korean baseball team, the Lotte Giants of Busan: former LA Dodgers infielder Jerry Royster.

Reporting from Busan, South Korea — Jerry Royster isn’t sure whether to laugh or cry: The umps just don’t speak his language. Every time he races out of the dugout to argue a play, he has to bring along an interpreter.

Last year, the former Dodgers infielder took the helm of this city’s wildly popular Lotte Giants, becoming Korea’s first foreign manager….

In his first year, he took the cellar-dwelling Giants to the playoffs for the first time in nine years. Even with a shorter 126-game schedule, the Giants attracted more fans than many major league teams and doubled attendance from the year before.

Long-suffering loyalists dubbed their new manager “Hurricane Royster” and composed a rally song in his honor.

But Royster, now in his second season, said it’s not just fans who excite him: Koreans play good baseball.

Korean players’ ability is well-known — except in the U.S., where only a few, such as former Dodgers pitcher Chan Ho Park, are household names.

But that is changing. Korea won the gold medal in the 2008 Olympics without losing a game, and in the 2006 WBC lost only once — to archrival Japan in the final. Only Cuba was ranked ahead of Korea in the International Baseball Federation’s world rankings.

“We’re not a secret to most countries,” Royster said. “It’s only the Americans who are now starting to realize there’s good baseball being played here.” Royster didn’t know what to expect in late 2007 when old friend Bobby Valentine, manager of Japan’s Chiba Lotte Marines, called him.

Shin Dong-bin, owner of the Lotte teams in Japan and Korea, wanted to shake things up by putting a foreign manager in the southern city of Busan. Valentine recommended Royster, who’d just been fired as manager of the Las Vegas 51s, then the Dodgers’ triple-A team.

“I told him he was going to take over the Cubs of Asia,” said Valentine, a former Dodger who once managed the New York Mets. “They were a blue-collar team that never won but everybody loved anyway. The fans were dying for a competitive team and a leader.”

I doff my authentic Chiba Lotte Marines baseball cap to Mr. Shin—and also to Bobby Valentine, who showed the way. Now, if only Marty Brown can lead my old NPB Central League favorites, the Hiroshima Toyo (= Mazda) Carp, to win the Japan Series this year. And in Korea, Go Busan!

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by | 31 October 2008 · 6:23 pm

Why Oh’s Home Run Record Stands

In the third of a three-part series in the Japan Times on the remarkable baseball career of Sadaharu Oh, Robert Whiting reveals another reason why nobody in Japan has been able to break Oh’s record of 55 home runs in one season.

The one big black mark on Sadaharu Oh’s reputation was, of course, the unsportsmanlike behavior of the pitchers on his team whenever foreign batsmen threatened his single season home run record of 55.

The phenomenon had first surfaced in 1985, when American Randy Bass playing for the Hanshin Tigers, who went into the last game of the season — against the Oh-managed Giants at Korakuen Stadium — with 54 home runs.

Bass was walked intentionally four times on four straight pitches and would have been walked a fifth, had he not reached out and poked a pitch far outside the plate into the outfield.

Oh denied ordering his pitchers to walk Bass, but Keith Comstock, an American pitcher for Yomiuri reported afterward that a certain Giants coach imposed a fine of $1,000 for every strike Giants pitchers threw to Bass….

A replay of the Bass episode came during the 2001 season. American Tuffy Rhodes, playing for the Kintetsu Buffaloes, threatened Oh’s record.

With several games left in the season, Rhodes hit the 55 mark. But during a late season weekend series in Fukuoka, pitchers on the Hawks refused to throw strikes to Rhodes and catcher Kenji Johjima could be seen grinning during the walks.

Again Oh denied any involvement in their actions and Hawks battery coach Yoshiharu Wakana admitted the pitchers had acted on his orders.

“It would be distasteful to see a foreign player break Oh’s record,” he told reporters….

A second replay occurred in 2002, when Venezuelan Alex Cabrera also hit 55 home runs, tying Oh (and Rhodes) with five games left to play in the season. Oh commanded his pitchers not to repeat their behavior of the previous year, but, not surprisingly, most of them ignored him. There was more condemnation from the public, but, curiously, not from Oh, who simply shrugged and said, “If you’re going to break the record, you should do it by more than one. Do it by a lot.”

Such behavior led an ESPN critic to call Oh’s record “one of the phoniest in baseball.”

In Oh’s defense, there was probably nothing he could have done to prevent his pitchers from acting as they did. Feelings about “gaijin” aside, it was (and still is) common practice for teams to take such action to protect a teammate’s record or title….

Still, amid all the fuss about protectionism in baseball, it is noteworthy that no one in the Japanese game ever sees fit to mention the fact that Oh hit most of his home runs using rock hard, custom-made compressed bats.

A batter using a compressed bat, it was said, could propel a ball farther than he can with an ordinary bat. Compressed bats were illegal in the MLB when Oh was playing in Japan, and were outlawed by the NPB in 1982 after Oh retired, but well before Bass, Rhodes and Cabrera had Japan visas stamped into their passports.

One of the enduring ironies, of course, is that Oh was born a Japanese citizen in Taiwan in 1940, but became a citizen of the Republic of China after Japan lost the war in 1945. His name is variously rendered as 王貞治, Wang Chenchih, Wáng Zhēnzhì, or Ō Sadaharu.

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by | 18 October 2008 · 7:28 am

Ethnic Baseball in Hawai‘i, 1920s–40s

From: Wally Yonamine: The Man Who Changed Japanese Baseball, by Robert K. Fitts (U. Nebraska Press, 2008), pp. 48-49:

The Athletics, previously known as the Asahi, were the elite Japanese American team in the Hawaiian Islands. Founded in 1905 as a team for Japanese thirteen- and fourteen-year-olds, the Asahi soon dominated the AJA (Americans of Japanese Ancestry) Oahu Junior League. Finally, in 1920, league organizers decided that the team was too strong and moved the youths into the adult AJA Honolulu Baseball League. Three years later, the Asahi won the championship.

In 1924 the multiethnic Hawaii Baseball League was formed with six teams. Original members included the Portuguese Braves, the All-Chinese, the All-Hawaiians, the All-Filipinos, the Elks (made up of haoles) and the Asahi. With no age restrictions, Asahi recruited the best players from the AJA leagues throughout the islands. The Japanese team fared well, winning championships in 1925, ’26, ’29, ’30, and ’38. Japanese Hawaiians followed the Asahi’s triumphs closely, and Hawaii’s two Japanese-language newspapers, the Hawaii Times and Hawaii Hochi, covered the games and players in detail. The ballpark also became a meeting place for the community as thousands of ethnic Japanese came to Honolulu Stadium for each game.

With the outbreak of World War II, Japanese Hawaiians strove to show their loyalty to the United States. Many, including Asahi owner Dr. Katsumi Kometani, volunteered for the armed forces. With Kometani’s permission, the team downplayed its Japanese affiliation. John A. Burns, the future governor of Hawaii, ran the team in Kometani’s absence, while future Honolulu mayor Neal Blaisdell managed. The two haoles changed the team’s name to the Athletics and added several non-Japanese to the roster. The club did well and captured the 1942 championship. Kometani returned in 1945, reestablished the team’s all-Japanese American roster, and appointed Allen Nagata as manager. The team, however, remained the Athletics until it retook the Asahi name after the 1949 season.

Okinawans, like half-Okinawan Yonamine, were welcome to play on the AJA teams, but Wally and his wife-to-be got a lot of grief from both sides before they wed (in 1952) for not marrying within their respective Okinawan and Japanese communities.

According to this timeline, Wally went by his given name Kaname (要 ‘pivot, linchpin’) until 1943.

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by | 17 October 2008 · 6:30 am

Yomiuri Giant Nagashima as Manager, 1970s

From: Wally Yonamine: The Man Who Changed Japanese Baseball, by Robert K. Fitts (U. Nebraska Press, 2008), pp. 302-303:

As a manager, Nagashima could inspire his players. John Sipin, a former San Diego Padre who played with the Giants from 1978 to 1980 after five years with the Taiyo Whales, recalls, “Nagashima was a great leader. He was a legend and had extremely high energy. Unlike most managers, he would not go into the dugout and sit down. He was always on the field, hitting fly balls or ground balls.” Nagashima especially liked aggressive players who showed “fighting spirit” and rewarded them with compliments and playing time. His enthusiasm was infectious and most of his players trained and played hard for him.

Nagashima’s ability as a strategist, however, did not match his enthusiasm. He rarely played percentage baseball. Instead, he relied on a bizarre combination of traditional conservative Japanese baseball tactics and irrational hunches. After a lead-off hitter reached base, Nagashima routinely used the second batter to bunt the runner over, even when the Giants trailed by large margins. He rarely employed pinch runners, even when a slow catcher representing the tying run stood on second in the late innings. He bunched his like-handed hitters together in the lineup, instead of interspersing lefties with righties. Most importantly, he did not stick to a steady pitching rotation. He often started pitchers who were throwing well on short rest and continually used starters in relief. Nagashima was also intolerant of pitching mistakes and routinely pulled pitchers at the first sign of trouble.

He seems to have done better the second time around, during the 1990s.

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by | 15 October 2008 · 3:11 pm

American Influence on Japanese Baseball, 1953

From: Wally Yonamine: The Man Who Changed Japanese Baseball, by Robert K. Fitts (U. Nebraska Press, 2008), pp. 126, 140-141:

[Before 1953], a typical Japanese catcher would receive the ball from the pitcher, take two steps forward, crank his arm back, and throw it back to the mound. In the midst of that routine, [American Nisei Wally] Yonamine would sometimes steal second base, sliding in safely just as the pitcher caught the ball. [Nisei catcher Jyun] Hirota brought American receiving to Japan. He had a strong arm and used to return the ball to the pitcher while still in his crouch. The fans loved it as much as opposing base runners feared it. Soon, Japanese catchers began mimicking Hirota and their mechanics changed. The average number of stolen base attempts in the Central League dropped from nearly 3.0 per game in 1952 and 1953 to 2.6 per game after Hirota’s second season in Japan….

One of the most enduring questions of international baseball is how the quality of the Japanese leagues compares to the U.S. Major and Minor Leagues. Many baseball experts consider the Japanese leagues at the present time to be “4A”—that is, better than Triple A but not equal to the Majors. In 1953 the gap was even broader. The Giants were undoubtedly Japan’s best team, but they were unable to match Pacific Coast League teams, even during spring training. The game results suggest that the club was probably equivalent to class A competition. Some of the Giants, however, could have played at a higher level. Takehiko Bessho particularly impressed PCL managers; San Diego reportedly tried to buy his contract from Yomiuri. Lefty O’Doul also noted that Yonamine could move into the PCL if he was interested in returning to the United States.

Despite their poor record, the trip to Santa Maria was a resounding success. “We certainly learned a lot during our spring training,” proclaimed Harada, “and I can truthfully say that this is an entirely different ball club now. The Major League managers especially, briefed us thoroughly on how to play the national pastime properly. The many so-called inside hints that they offered us went a long way toward improving all of our players.” The managers helped the Giants with all aspects of their game. Kawakami learned to hit with more power by cocking his wrists. Chiba worked on fielding fundamentals and getting his body in front of the ball. “He doesn’t make those one-handed catches he used to make,” Harada commented approvingly. Mizuhara adopted Leo Durocher’s style of leaving the dugout and managing from the third base box. He also learned how to direct base runners and use signs like the American managers.

Perhaps most importantly, the Giants experienced the aggressiveness of American baseball firsthand. Early in the trip, Shigeru Chiba, attempting to turn a double play Japanese-style by standing on second base, was taken out with a hard slide and was spiked. He quickly learned how to move off the bag and avoid a slide while making a double play. The Japanese realized that Yonamine was not particularly rough or dirty, but just played hard-nosed American baseball. Some of the Giants began to adopt a more aggressive style and learned to slide hard with their spikes up.

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