The All Americans played their last game on Japanese soil in Utsunomiya, a small city 60 miles north of Tokyo.  In recognition of his untiring efforts throughout the tour, Ruth named Sotaro Suzuki as the game’s manager.  Suzuki was apprehensive as national hero Eiji Sawamura would start for All Nippon.  If the young hurler pitched well and the Americans relaxed and lost, everybody would blame him.  The day was cold so Suzuki set up a charcoal burner in the dugout for warmth.  His apprehension grew as fans passed the Americans sake bottles and the ballplayers, who had adapted well to Japanese drinking customs, heated the liquor over the burner.  Despite the alcohol, and a dropped fly ball by an inebriated Earl Averill, Suzuki had little to worry about.  The Americans pounded out nine runs in the first four innings.  After two home runs by Bing Miller and one each by Earl Averill and Charlie Gehringer, the All Americans went home 14-5 winners.  The players then returned to the Imperial Hotel, collected their luggage, and left for Tokyo Station to catch a train for the port of Kobe where they would board the Empress of Canada.  At the station, they said tearful goodbyes to Japanese fans and friends and the Babe promised to try to return.


        

By staying in Tokyo, Berg missed an opportunity to beef up his paltry .111 batting average.  The ballpark at Omiya was small, holding just 8,000 spectators, with short outfield fences.  Manager Daisuke Miyake started Kaichi Takeda for All Nippon.  The All Americans wasted little time as they aimed for the short fences and crashed home run after home run.  By the end of the first, they were up 10-0.  The Major Leaguers added one in third, fourth, and fifth innings, to build a 13-1 lead.  Up by such a large margin, All American pitcher Earl Whitehill lost his focus and gave up four in the sixth as Jimmy Horio finally came through with a three-run homer.  Down by nine, Miyake brought in little Shinji Hamazaki for Takeda, but Hamazaki fared no better, giving up eight runs in the bottom of the sixth and two in the seventh.  In the bottom of the eighth with the score 23-5, Miyake brought in a new pitcher, 18-year-old Victor Starffin. 

Standing about 6’ 3” with blonde hair and blue eyes, Starffin looked a bit out of place on the All Nippon team. Victor was the son of a Russian military officer who had served Czar Nicholas II.  During the Russian Revolution, the Starffins escaped by traveling in a freight train packed with typhoid patients and later hiding from the Red Army in a truck carrying corpses.  The family settled in the city of Asahikawa in Hokkaido, Japan.  Young Victor picked up baseball quickly and soon became a regional star.  He hoped to play college ball, but in 1933 his father was convicted of murdering a young Russian woman who worked in his cafe.  Through a combination of extortion and promises, Yomiuri representatives convinced the young man to forsake college and play for the All Nippon team.

                


The young Russian was wild at first, walking Lou Gehrig and later Earl Averill, but both his fastball and curve were working well and he struck out Jimmy Foxx between the two walks and induced Bing Miller to ground into a double play to end the inning.  In all, the All Americans hit ten home runs—three by Gehringer, two by Ruth and pitcher Earl Whitehill, and one each by Foxx, Gehrig, and Hayes.

November 30th was final free day in Japan.  They spent the day doing last minute shopping, saying goodbye to new friends, and preparing for the long journey home.

In 1934, the Japanese government was obsessed with the perceived problem of foreign spies.  The heads of urban police forces meet in December to discuss the problem and tourists complained about the rough treatment they received when visiting Japan including unauthorized searches of hotel rooms, and intensive questioning by police officers.  Even the All Americans were searched when their ferry passed through the Tsugaru Straights straights en route to Hokkaido.  In this context, the behavior of the All Americans’ backup catcher is particularly suspicious.

On November 29 as the team prepared to leave the Imperial Hotel for a game at nearby Omiya, Moe Berg announced that he felt ill and would remain behind.  Berg was an unusual Major Leaguer.  He had graduated from Princeton and Columbia Law, had attended the Sorbonne, spoke several languages fluently, a half dozen more (including Japanese) with some proficiency, and was one of the few Jews in the Majors.  As a result, Berg was not “one of the guys.”  He left his teammates directly after league games and in Japan often went sightseeing by himself.  The other players liked Berg but found him mysterious. 

Once his teammates left the hotel, Berg recovered, dressed in a kimono, put on geta (traditional wooden sandals), hid his 16mm movie camera under his clothes, purchased some flowers and announced that he would visit the American ambassador’s daughter Elsie Lyon, who was recovering from childbirth at St. Luke’s Hospital.  Inside the hospital, Berg walked past Lyon’s room and climbed the stairs to the roof.  The view was magnificent.  St. Luke’s was among the tallest buildings in Tokyo and commanded views of downtown and Tokyo Bay.  He pulled out his camera and took panoramic footage.  Later, Berg would smuggle the film through Japanese customs and guarded it as he traveled through Korea, China, and Russia after the tour.

    
        


For years, stories circulated that Berg photographed Tokyo under orders from the United States government and that the film was used to plan Col. Jimmy Doolittle’s 1942 air raid on Tokyo.  During World War II, Berg did become a spy—joining the OSS (the forerunner of the CIA) in 1943—and carried out missions to Italy and Switzerland.  He even partook in an undercover operation to assess Germany’s nuclear bomb program and was ordered to kill a leading German scientist if they were close to a breakthrough. 

In The Catcher Was A Spy, Nicholas Dawidoff concludes that Berg acted on his own during the trip to Japan and was not a government spy.  But the question endures, why did Berg go undercover to film Tokyo from the roof of St. Luke’s?  You’ll have to read Banzai Babe Ruth!  to judge the new evidence on this oft-debated question.

In Kyoto, the rain stopped and the morning of November 28 was clear but cold.  The game began on time at 2 P.M.  Eiji Sawamura took the mound for All Nippon amid “thunderous applause” by the 30,000 fans.   Alas, the young hurler could not repeat his stellar performance.  The All Americans jumped to a two-nothing lead in the bottom of the first, added five more in the third, and another three in the fourth.  Sawamura was wild, walking seven and throwing a wild pitch.  At Shizuoka, the Americans had been fooled by his curve and the late movement on his two-seam fastball, but in Kyoto the Major Leaguers refrained from chasing the curveball, letting most break harmlessly out of the strike zone for balls.  When they did swing, the All Americans hit Sawamura’s pitches hard.  On top of the seven walks, Sawamura surrendered eight hits before Ichioka removed him with one out in the bottom of the fourth.  It was almost as if the Americans knew what type of pitch Sawamura was about to throw.

Kenichi Aoshiba, also from the Kyoto area, finished the game for All Nippon.  He did only slightly better, giving up seven runs off seven hits in four and two-thirds innings, including a 100-yen winning home run to Bing Miller.  Once again, the Japanese defense did little to help their pitchers.  They booted the ball six times during the game. At the end of nine, the Americans had cruised to a 14-1 victory.

The rain continued to fall throughout the night and by the time the train pulled into Kyoto at 9:25 AM, the promoters’ had postponed the afternoon game until the following day, November 28.  The players spent the day visiting the ancient capital. 

It was pouring when the teams arrived in Shimonoseki at 7:40 AM and had been raining all night.  Most of the players expected the game to be canceled, but they were scheduled to play in Kyoto the next day, leaving no opportunity for a makeup game.  Ruth, therefore, acting as manager, agreed to play in the rain.

The players checked into the San-yo Hotel, ate, and changed into their uniforms.  Dressed to play, they boarded a ferry to cross the famed Straits of Shimonoseki (more properly known as the Kanmon Straits).  Cars met the players at the docks and brought them to the Itatsu Grounds in the town of Kokura.  The condition of the field was laughable.  Ankle deep mud covered the dirt infield and pond-like puddles dotted the outfield.  Normally, the game would have been called at this point, but between 20,000 and 30,000 fans had squeezed into the tiny stadium waiting to watch the great Americans stars.  Despite the driving rain, they had begun to arrive early in the morning and the seats were filled hours before game time.  The outfield contained no bleachers, just a glassy slope where spectators huddled together.  The rains had flooded the area and 11,000 squatted or knelt with water up to their hips.  Among the dedicated, wet fans sat a man with an ancient samurai sword.  He had walked 80 miles to attend the game and announced that he would present to sword as token of friendship to the first American to hit a home run. 

The game itself was a joke.  Ruth, Gehrig, Averill, and Rabbit McNair played in rubber boots and Ruth borrowing an umbrella from a fan, huddled under it while playing first base.  The score remained a zero for the first three innings before the Americans started to hit.  Three came across in the fourth and Averill won the sword by hitting a long fly into the soggy fans sitting beyond right field.  An inning later with the bases loaded, Ruth stepped to the plate and dug in with his big rubber boots.  The crowd laughed and began chanting, “Home Run!  Home run!”  According to Osamu Mihara, after the count went to 3-0, Ruth stepped out of the batter's box and gestured to the fans that he would hit a home run.  Shinji Hamazaki threw the next pitch down the middle and the Sultan of Swat connected with a mighty swing.  The ball rose in a majestic arc and sailed over the right field seating area and into the mist beyond.  Initially stunned by the blast, the wet and happy fans erupted with a “tremendous ovation” for the Bambino.  The All Americans ended with eleven hits and eight runs, but the Osaka Mainichi noted that “they can hit almost at will” and would have hit many more “had they cared to run out every hit.”  On the mound, Cascarella dominated the Japanese hitters with “baffling hooks and drops” as he scattered seven hits and gave up a single run for the victory.

Immediately after the final out, the drenched players hurried back to the ferry and to their hotel in Shimonoseki to change.  Several hours later, they were back on the train headed north to Kyoto.

The Japan Weekly Chronicle called Sunday’s game “a dull sort of affair.”  It was another split squad match with Ruth’s men (Warstler, Karita, Ruth, Foxx, Averill, Nidegawa, Nakajima, Berg and Aoshiba pitching) taking on Miller’s men (Mihara, Horio, Gehringer, Gehrig, McNair, Miller, Yajima, Hayes, and Brown on the mound).  To attract a crowd, the All Americans held rematch of the longest home run contest between Ruth, Gehrig, Averill, and Foxx.  This time, Foxx won with a 396 foot shot, but the contest failed to attract a large crowd.  Only 30,000 showed up and there were “sizable gaps” in the stands.

As the fourth game in as many days, the players looked tired.  They played mechanically, just going through the motions.  Ruth’s ankle had recovered enough for him to play but he fared poorly at the plate, gaining a single in three at bats and flying out with bases loaded in the sixth.  Once again, the All Americans failed to hit a home run—the last one had been Gehrig’s game winner off Sawamura in Shizuoka.  But to nearly everybody’s surprise, 19-year-old Usaburo Shintomi, who had joined the All Nippon straight from Kokura Kogyo High School and was playing third base for Miller’s team, whistled a line drive into the left field stands off Aoshiba.  It was only the second Japanese home run of the series.  To add spice to the listless game, the local promoters convinced Lefty Gomez to pitch the ninth inning for both teams.  He set both sides down easily.

After dinner, the players boarded a southbound sleeper train to Shimonoseki, a city at the southwestern tip of the main Japanese island of Honshu.