With Gomez on the mound, the All Americans won easily 6-2.  The Major Leaguers took a 4-0 lead into the sixth when Gomez walked the pitcher Tanaka, allowed a double to Sugitaya, a single to Mihara, and a triple to Fuma.  All Nippon scored twice but it would have been more if Gehringer hadn’t turned an unusual double play.  With nobody out and Sugitaya on third and Mihara on first, Karita hit a sharp grounder to third.  Foxx fielded it, looked Sugitaya back to the bag and threw to second to force Mihara.  As Foxx threw, Sugitaya dashed home, but Gehringer fired a strike from second base to nip him at the plate.  The Americans added two more runs in the seventh to pull away and Gomez shut down the Japanese bats to win in just an hour and a half.   By dusk, the players had checked out of the hotel and were on the limited express to Osaka.

It was back to baseball on Thursday, November 22 as the teams clashed at Narumi Ballpark in Nagoya.  Joe Cascarella, who had been pounded for 23 hits and 13 runs in the intrasquad game 11 days before, took the mound for the Americans.  Inspired by Sawamura’s performance and the near victory in Shizuoka, the Japanese attacked Cascarella early.  Kumeyasu Yajima began the game with a triple down the right field foul line and scored moments later as Hisanori Karita singled up the middle.  Hot hitting catcher Toshiharu Inokawa singled for the third consecutive hit.  With runners at first and second and no outs, Miyake ordered his cleanup hitter, Minoru Yamashita, to sacrifice.   Yamashita dutifully laid down the bunt to advance the runners and Karita scored on the next play as Isamu Fuma grounded out to second.  Star second baseman, Shigeru Mizuhara, who was hitless in four games, struck out to end the inning, but for only the second time in 11 games, the Japanese led a ballgame.

The lead last for just five batters as nervousness, or lack of experience, caused the Japanese to commit two errors in the bottom half of the inning.  Three singles later, the All Americans led 3-2.  At that point, Masao Date settled down and shut out the mighty All Americans for the next six innings.  The Japanese batters, meanwhile, were hitting Cascarella hard.  Fourteen hits, including a triple by Date, two RBI hits by Fuma, and an RBI single by Karita put All Nippon on top 5-3 entering the bottom of the eighth. 

Earl Averill led off the eighth with a walk.  On the mound, Date was visibly tired.   Many waited in anticipation for Miyake to take the ball from Date and bring in Sawamura to finish the game, but the manager remained in the dugout.  Date next walked Bing Miller and surrendered a weak single to catcher Charlie Hayes that drove in Averill.  It was now 5-4 with runners on first and second and nobody out.  Miyake remained in the dugout and Date remained on the mound.  A sacrifice bunt and sacrifice fly scored Miller to tie the game.  With two outs, Charlie Gehringer drove the ball into right field to knock in the go ahead run, and ended up at third after Yajima bobbled the ball.  A last, an exhausted Date induced Ruth to ground to second for the third out.  The Japanese lead was gone.  They now trailed 6-5.

Ruth brought in Jimmy Foxx to pitch the ninth.  With one out, Fuma tripled into the right-center alley to put the tying run just 90 feet away.  Osamu Mihara, Waseda’s former star second baseman, was due up next.  Mihara had just one hit and five strikeouts in 14 at bats against the Americans, so Miyake decided to bring in the 5’ 1” pitcher Shinji Hamazaki to pinch hit.  Hamazaki was not inept with the bat.  When not pitching for Keio University, he played the outfield and had hit .308 during the 1927 Big Six season.  But still, it seems a strange choice.  The All Americans brought the infield in to defend against the squeeze and also prevent Fuma from scoring on a ground ball.  Hamazaki swung away and struck out.  Mamoru Sugitaya, the solid outfielder with seven hits against the Major Leaguers, popped out to second to end the game.

Both Lou Gehrig and the Japan Times criticized Miyake’s managerial decisions. Each felt that the Japanese might have won the game had Miyake brought in Sawamura in the eighth inning, or had tried a squeeze play to score Fuma in the ninth. 

The team arrived in Nagoya, Japan’s fourth largest city with 989,000 inhabitants, on November 21. No game was scheduled so they spent the day touring Nagoya Castle and a porcelain factory.

The All Americans left the Imperial Hotel early on the morning of November 20 for the northern suburb of Shizuoka.  At 1 P.M. Eiji Sawamura took the mound for All Nippon.  Only a few months before, Sawamura had been pitching for Kyoto Commercial High School.  The schoolboy star had been hit hard in his first start ten days earlier, giving up 12 hits and three home runs.  But at Shizuoka, the sun rose directly behind the pitcher’s mound, shining in the batters’ eyes and silhouetting the hurler.  Picking up any pitch under these circumstances would have been difficult, but Sawamura also had command of his pitches that afternoon, setting up the Major Leaguers with hard fastballs and finishing them off with a devastating curve.  





After Rabbit McNair flied to left to begin the game, Sawamura struck out Gehringer, Ruth, Gehrig and Foxx in succession.  The young Japanese shut down the mighty Americans for six full innings, striking out seven and allowing only two hits, before Gehrig homered with one out in the seventh.  It would be the Yanks only run but it was enough as Earl Whitehill held the Japanese to just three singles.  Immediately after the game, the Americans praised Sawamura and Mack invited the young pitcher to join the Philadelphia Athletics.  Sawamura, however, opted to remain in Japan.


  




As news of the game spread through Japan, Sawamura became a national hero.  Although the All Americans had dominated All Nippon so far, most Japanese felt that with dedication and practice their countrymen would surpass the Major Leaguers, just as they believed their military had surpassed the Western powers.  The game became a symbol of Japan’s struggles against the West.  True, the Japanese had not won, but they showed that they were capable to conquering their opponents.  As years past, the importance of the game grew and Sawamura’s statue increased as he became a symbol of Imperial Japan.

 

Another off day for the All Americans.  In the evening they attended a dinner held by the American Association of Tokyo at the Imperial Hotel.  They dined on fruit cocktail, cream of tomato soup, salmon steak with butter sauce, grilled chicken a l'Americaine, salad, biscuit Tortoni and coffee.

On Sunday afternoon, November 18, Officer Hakamada patrolled his route in downtown Yokohama.  Although it was just above freezing, thirty thousand people had come to watch the American baseball team play, so the area around the stadium needed extra attention.  He strode along the back of stadium towards the entrance.  Perhaps Hakamada heard the crack of the bat, but he must have heard the tumult as a ball flew over the outfield wall, bounced, and landed at his feet.  The policeman stooped and pocketed his souvenir, probably already thinking of the story he would tell when he returned to the station.  Hakamada soon discovered that the mighty clout had been hit by none other than the Babe himself. 

Hakamada’s souvenir wasn’t the only ball to leave the park that day.  For the second consecutive day, Ruth hit two homers and Gehrig, Foxx and Averill each tallied one.  The Japan Times noted “there was no letting up by the visiting American professional ball players” as they piled up 21 runs on 23 hits. 

            


    At long last, the Japanese also began to hit.  They had scored six on ten hits the day before and against a tough Lefty Gomez, they gathered another ten hits and four runs in Yokohama.  Hisanori Karita led the attack with three hits, including a double, but the highlight came with two outs in the ninth as fans filed out of the stadium when Toshiharu Inokawa smashed the first Japanese home run of the series into the left field bleachers. 

            
        
    After the game, the Americans congregated at the Yokohama Country and Athletic Club for dinner and dancing.  The organization dated back to 1868 when a handful of homesick British merchants decided to create a cricket team.  Later, the club became famous as the loser to the Ichiko baseball team in 1896.  After speeches by the club’s president, Mack, Ruth and Quinn, staff removed the dining tables and cleared the floor for dancing “which continued until a late hour.”

 

With the royal receptions and fan enthusiasm, the All Americans must have been surprised to learn that tickets remained for the game on Saturday, November 17 at Meiji Jingu Stadium.  To lure addition fans, Yomiuri announced that the All Americans would hold a home run contest prior to the game.  The contest would decide who was the greatest home run hitter—Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Jimmy Foxx, or Earl Averill.  Furthermore, burly slugger Jimmy Foxx would play all nine positions—one for each inning—during the course of the game, and Connie Mack would manage the All Nippon team.

The added events did little to boost attendance as just 32,000 showed up for Saturday’s game.  After batting and fielding practice, fans readied for the home run contest—some, sitting in the outfield bleachers, brandished fishing nets ready to capture the flying balls.  The rules were simple.  Joe Cascarella would pitch two rounds to each batter and prizes would be awarded to the player who hit the most and the longest home runs.  Fittingly, the aging all-time home run king retained his crown.  The Bambino blasted four over the outfield walls, including a 410 footer, to win both prizes.  Averill finished second with three, Foxx third with two, and Gehrig, who had an off day, failed to hit one out.

The contest merely warmed up the sluggers as Ruth, Gehrig, and Foxx all went deep during the 15-6 rout of the All Nippon team.  Much to everybody’s surprise, All Nippon took an early lead by scoring three in the second inning.  It was the first time they had scored first during the tour.  But tiny Shinji Hamazaki, the 5’2” former star hurler from Keio University, couldn’t contain the American lineup.  Gehrig homered to lead off the third inning and Foxx followed by hitting the longest home run in the history of Meiji Jingu Stadium.  The ball landed three-quarters up the high left field bleachers, bounced once and careened out of the stadium into the empty lot below.  The All Americans scored four more to take the lead and tacked on nine additional runs off poor Hamazaki, who was left on the mound to suffer for the entire game.

Although the final score suggested otherwise, the Major Leaguers did not take the game seriously.  Not only did Foxx play each position as advertised, but the other players (except for catcher Frankie Hayes and the pitchers Clint Brown and Joe Cascarella) also played a different position each inning.  Portly Ruth even took a turn at short stop. 

 

The players had November 14 off to sightsee around Tokyo.

    On Nevember 15, the All Americans congregated at 12:30 in the Imperial Hotel’s ballroom for a luncheon sponsored by the America-Japan Society.   Babe Ruth, Connie Mack, and Iyesato Tokugawa addressed the assembly.  

         

Tokugawa, who was the ninth generation direct descendant of Ieyasu Tokugawa (the shogun who united Japan in the early 17^th century),  concluded: “between two great peoples who can really understand and enjoy baseball, there can be no national differences or diplomatic complications which cannot be solved in the same spirit of sportsmanship and fair play.” 

With the exception of a tea party at the American Embassy, the players had November 16 off.

The teams woke up early and traveled to Toyama—a small town on the Japan’s western coast, just under 200 miles northwest of Tokyo.  Temperatures feel below freezing and a light snow fell, frosting the infield.  Just 75,000 people lived in Toyama but 18,000 of them came to the ballpark to watch one of the most popular players in Japan, former Keio star Shigeru Mizuhara, challenge the All Americans. 

Mizuhara’s debut against the Major Leaguers did not last long.  After giving up ten runs in four innings, manager Daisuke Miyake removed Mizuhara and let Eiji Sawamura finish the game.  The game ended with an 11-0 All American victory as Earl Whitehill have up just three hits.

But the fans went home happy.  The Osaka Mainichi summed it up best, “it is no longer a question of victory or defeat; the only concern of the baseball followers is how many home runs the renowned fence busters will make in the game.  In that light the Toyama fans were not disappointed.”

 
    

Monday, November 12, was free as would be Wednesday, the 14th.  During these days the All Americans split up to shop, lounge around the hotel, or sightsee.  Julia Ruth, for example, visited Nikko—said by many to me the most beautiful historic site in Japan.   Others went to the national museums at Ueno or local shrines.