The Japanese bore the losses with dignity.  Although they played their hearts out, they had not really expected to win.  Instead, they viewed the series as a learning experience and the Major Leaguers as teachers.   Nonetheless, before Saturday’s game at Meiji, Ichioka suggested that they mix the squads in Sunday’s match.

Another sell-out crowd watched Bing Miller’s stars take on the Ruth Team on the afternoon of November 11.  Six Americans and three Japanese played on each side with the Ruth Team (Warstler, Hisanori Karita, Ruth, Foxx, Averill, Kumeyasu Yajima, Berg, pitcher Clint Brown, and Haruyasu Nakajima) batting first.  Joe Cascarella took the mound for Miller’s team (McNair, Isamu Fuma, Miller, Gehrig, Gehringer, Fujio Nagasawa, Jimmy Horio, Hayes, and Cascarella).  Despite the inter-squad teams, fans still watched a lopsided game as Ruth’s team crushed Cascarella with 23 hits and 13 runs.  

The All Americans returned to Tokyo on the 6 AM Saturday train bursting with enthusiasm for Japan.  Cars met them at Ueno station and after a brief stop at the hotel, drove the team to the JOAK radio station for a live broadcast to the United States and Japan.  Connie Mack began the speeches.  “Hello Philadelphia, Los Angeles.  I never expected to have the pleasure of talking to the baseball fans of America from Japan.”  Each of the players said a few words as Sotaro Suzuki translated for the Japanese listeners.  The Japan Times summed up the prevailing message, “their reception by the public in Japan has been almost unbelievable in its enthusiasm and that their present trip is the grandest event of their baseball careers.”

        




Tired from the long, overnight train ride, the players trudged back to the Imperial Hotel to change for the 2 PM game at Meiji Jingu Stadium.  Lefty Gomez would pitch to the All Americans.  Facing him was a 17-year-old kid named Eiji Sawamura.

Just three months earlier Sawamura had been pitching against high school boys.  Now he was facing grown men, who just happened to be the greatest players in the world.  Born Ujiyamada, now known as Ise City, Eiji had been a thin, sickly child.  Doctors urged his parents to give him more exercise.  Baseball was the natural choice.  His father, Kenji, had been a ball player just as baseball became Japan’s national sport in the early years of the twentieth century.  After school, Kenji was supposed to push the vegetable chart through town as his uncle peddled the produce, but the boy would run off to abandon lots or fallow fields to other wayward boys in pickup games.  His uncle scolded him but when Kenji made the school team, the uncle would watch from behind the fence, secretly cheering for his nephew.  A dozen years later, Kenji taught his sickly son how to throw and catch.

Eiji grew stronger, but collapsed from exhaustion after pitching his first game in elementary school.   Bedridden with fever, he wept, afraid that he would never pitch again.  As soon as the fever broke, he returned to the diamond, determined to work harder.  In the sixth grade, Eiji led Meirin elementary to the prefectural championship and pitched a no hitter in the first game of the national championship tournament in Kyoto.  Later, he would lead Kyoto Commerce Middle School into both the spring and summer National Middle School Baseball Tournaments at Koshien.  He pitched well, but Kyoto’s lackluster offense provided little support and the teams made a quick exist each time.

Just after the summer tournament, Tadao Ichioka, the head of the Yomiuri Shimbun’s sports department, approached Eiji’s grandfather.  Ichioka explained that the newspaper was sponsoring a team of Major League stars, including Babe Ruth, to play in Japan that fall.  There were no professional teams in Japan so Yomiuri was bringing together Japan’s best to challenge the Americans.  Ichioka wanted the 17-year-old pitcher on the staff.  The newspaper would pay 120 yen ($36) per month, more than most skilled artisans made.  The Sawamura family needed the extra income to support Eiji’s siblings, but the invitation carried a price.  The Ministry of Education had just past an edict forbidding both high school and college students from playing on the same field as professionals.  If Sawamura joined the All Nippon team, he would be expelled from high school and would forfeit his chance to attend Keio University the following semester.  But to pitch against Major Leaguers!  To pitch against Babe Ruth!  The boy accepted.

                        

His first outing against the Major Leaguers was no “dream come true.”  The All Americans belted out 11 hits, including home runs by Ruth, Averill and Warstler, to score ten runs off the young pitcher.  Nonetheless, The Japan Times noted “the score hardly does justice to the credible pitching by a youngster named Sawamura, who possessed a fast ball and a sharp breaking hook.  He pitched courageously to the murderers’ row of the visiting ball squad.  He struck out the Bambino, Lou Gehrig, this year’s home run king, McNair and Warstler.”

On the other side of the diamond, Lefty Gomez had a no-hitter growing into the eighth.  He ended up surrendering just two singles and striking out 18 in the 10-0 American romp.

 

The All Americans spent the morning of November 9 wandering about town and lunching with some of the city’s 60 American residents before heading to Yagiyama Ball Field.  Compared to the tiny park at Hakodate, Yagiyama Ball Field seemed cavernous with outfield walls over 400 feet from home plate.  Despite the size of the park, fans in the centerfield bleachers, remembering what happened during the 1931 tour, brought their gloves.

When the all stars arrived three years earlier on November 10, gale-force winds blew steadily all day.  Nevertheless, game went on as scheduled.  Fred Lieb noted in Baseball As I Knew It, “In all my years of attending ball games I have never seen a game attempted under such conditions.”  The Americans jumped all over the All Meiji pitcher and led 8-0 when catcher Mickey Cochrane came to the plate in the third inning.  Cochrane pounded a line drive upper the middle that kept going until it rocketed into the centerfield stands.  According to Lieb, “ordinarily it would take a canon to hit a home run into this bleacher, an estimated 450 feet away, and a monstrous swat against a gale.  Since I could follow the flight of the ball all the way, I would think any bleacherite could have done so also and ducked or scrambled aside when he saw the ball headed in his direction.  But this unwary fan was hit right in the mouth his lips were bloodied and three teeth were knocked out.”  After a brief pause, the game continued.  Twenty minutes later, a small ambulance drove on to the field, parking behind home plate.  A doctor and two nurses emerged, and seemingly unconcerned that they were interrupting a ballgame, “marched single file across the entire field from home plate to pitcher’s box, second base, and out to the distant bleacher,” only to find that the injured fans had already been removed to the stadium office and had received treatment.  “The man who tried to catch the ball with his mouth received 100 yen ($3 but nearly three months’ wages) from the management and apparently felt that he had put in a good day.”

                    
            


The fans also needed their mitts in 1934 as Babe Ruth went deep twice and Lou Gehrig, Jimmy Foxx, and Bing Miller each hit one in a 7-0 American victory.

Thursday, November 8, was the first day of winter and true to form the temperature had plummeted to just below freezing when the All Americans awoke.  They breakfasted on beer, sake, oatmeal, ham, eggs, toast, rice, goat milk, coffee, tea and cocoa before reading themselves for the 1PM game.   Despite the cold, all 8,000 seats of tiny Yunokawa stadium were full when the players arrived for practice.  Snow dotted the outfield and both fans and players alike needed to pound their feet to keep the blood flowing to their frozen toes.  Soon officials set up charcoal burners in the dugouts to help warm the players. 

The All Americans took control of the game minutes after the first pitch.  With two out, Ruth on third, Gehrig on second and Foxx on first, Earl Averill hit a grand slam over the right field bleachers to give the visitors a 4-0 lead.  Just as it looked as if the Major Leaguers would rout the Japanese, pitcher Kenichi Aoshiba settled down and held the Americans to just one more run for the remained of the game.  But the five runs were more than enough for the Americans to win the game.  Lefty Gomez, coming off his best season in 1934, dazzled the fans and opponents with his both his speed and control.  He would have held the All Nippon scoreless had not Ruth, playing first base, blown an easy double play with a wild throw to second.  Up 5-1, manager Ruth brought in third baseman Jimmie Foxx to close out the game.  The burly third baseman preserved the victory by allowing just one run in the final three innings.

The game took an hour and 25 minutes giving the players enough time to return to the hotel, change, and catch the 5:30 ferry back to the main island of Honshu.  After another rough crossing and a special dinner for those with weak stomachs, the players arrived in Sendai, a city of 190,000 on Honshu’s east coast.  They spent the night at the Sakaiya Ryokan, a two-story traditional wooden house, tightly wedged between the neighboring homes.

    

Arriving at Aomori at 6:30 A.M., the players transferred from the train to a ferry to cross the Tsugaru Strait on their way to Hakodate, a city on the southern tip of the island of Hokkaido.  The straight was part of Japan’s fortified zone and when players boarded the ferry, officials handed each a pamphlet announcing that “Photographing, sketching, surveying, recording, flying over the fortified zone, without the authorization of the commandeering officer of this fortress are strictly prohibited by order.”  But that didn’t stop Moe Berg, who whipped out his camera and filmed the area.

The All Americans woke up by 8 A.M., breakfasted at the Imperial Hotel, and left at ten for the Matsuya department store in Ginza, where they greeted fans and were fed a second breakfast.   An hour later, they piled into their cars and were whisked down the block to the Takashimaya department store, where they greeted more fans and were force fed a third meal.  There was little time to digest, however, as the team needed to report to Meiji Jingu stadium at 1 PM to play the first game against All Nippon. 

It was the first time in history that true all-star teams representing the two countries would clash.  Prior to the 1930s, visiting American professional teams were a mishmash of stars, journey men, and minor league players, but in 1931 a legitimate Major League all star team visited Japan.  That team, however, played only Japanese collegiate and company squads.  The All Nippon lineup featured six future Hall of Famers—Naataka Makino, Hisanori Karita, Osamu Mihara, Minoru Yamashita, Jiro Kuji, and pitcher Masao Date.
            

    Although Date pitched “courageously,” and limited the All Americans to five runs, the game’s outcome seemed inevitable.  Jimmie Foxx, Lou Gehrig and Earl Averill homered with Averill going out twice.  On the other side of the scorecard, American pitcher Joe Cascarella dominated the Japanese, giving up just three hits and walking only two.

            


    Satisfied with four home runs, most of the Japanese fans left the stadium happy.  Few expected their team to win so the loss caused little heartache.  Indeed, most were probably thrilled that their countrymen kept the score so close.  They would have liked to have seen Ruth homer, but he had amused them with his usual clowning and two long fly balls.

The first game of the tour, scheduled for November 4 at Meiji Jingu Stadium had been sold out for weeks.   Fans with standing-room-only tickets began arriving 18 hours before the first pitch and spent the night camped outside the stadium’s entrance.  The gates opened at 9:30 AM and the unreserved seats filled almost immediately.  By noon all the seats were filled and 60,000 fans waited for Babe Ruth and the All Americans to arrive.

At 12:20 a Japanese naval band struck up the tune Pacific Ocean and Sotaro Suzuki, dressed in a light three-piece suit and his usual fedora, led the All Americans through the tunnel behind home plate and on to the field.  Behind Suzuki strode Connie Mack wearing his elegant dark three-piece suit and high collar.  Next to Mack sauntered Ruth, hand stuck in the pockets of his red woolen All American team jacket.  According to Yakyukai writer Fujio Naoki, in contrast to the tall, stately Mack, the Babe “looked like an elephant.”  No matter.  The crowd thundered away when the recognized the god of baseball.  Ruth’s solemn face broke into a wide grin as he pulled his hands free to wave and doff his cap.  The rest of the All Americans marched behind in double file, each looking splendid in the red jacket, light grey uniform pants with blue striped socks and navy blue caps.  After the Americans came the Japanese, “looking like children” by comparison.

     

Nearly all of the 60,000 seemed to focus on Ruth.  Naoki told the readers of Yakyukai, “the fans went crazy each time Ruth did anything—smiled, sneezed, or dropped a ball.”  One old man brought a pair of high-powered binoculars, amusing himself and neighboring fans by focusing on the Bambino’s famous broad nose, making his nostrils fill the lens.  The Babe relished the attention and transformed into a comedian.  During batting practice, he purposely missed some pitches—twisting himself around like a pretzel before falling over.  Later, he began a game of shadow ball—hitting an imaginary grounder to Rabbit McNair at short stop, who fielded it convincingly and started a double play, timed with perfect realism.  The antics, according to Ambassador Joseph Grew, brought “roars of laughter from the grandstands.”

The game itself was less interesting than Ruth’s antics.  It pitted the All Americans against the Tokyo Club, a team of recently graduated players from the Tokyo area, not the Japanese all star team known as All Nippon.  It took just a few minutes for the fans, and players, to realize the difference in skill level between the two teams—the ball even sounded louder when coming off the American bats.  The Americans seemed to score at will, pilling up 17 runs to Tokyo’s 1.  To the crowd’s disappointment, none of the Americans hit a home run.  Afterwards, the Babe apologized for not going deep, telling reporters, “I was a little tired today, but tomorrow I will do my best to hit a home run.”

        

Babe Ruth and the All Americans woke up early and breakfasted on oatmeal and hammocks at the Imperial Hotel.  A bit blurry-eyed from their welcoming party at the Maple Club the night before, the players were chauffeured to Meiji Shrine to pay their respects on the 82nd anniversary of the departed Emperor Meiji’s birthday.  It seemed like an innocent enough act at the time, but it would be a contributing motive for attempted murder.



        
Babe and Claire Ruth and the All Americans visit the Meiji Shrine

After a lavish garden party at the home of the Marquis Okuma, the Major League squad boarded a private train to Chiba, where they would hold their first practice on dry land in eight days.  Thousands of fans came to the stadium to watch the All Americans practice.  In their enthusiasm to get closer to the players, they pushed against the flimsy wall separating the field from the bleachers, splintering it with a “wood-rendering crash.”

                

Moe Berg (far left) enjoys the garden party as Sotaro Suzuki (far right) looks on.

Seventy-five years ago today, nearly 500,000 Japanese had lined the streets of Ginza to welcome Babe Ruth and the All American ballplayers to Tokyo.  Rows of fans, often ten to twenty deep, crowded into the road to catch a glimpse of Ruth and his teammates.  The pressing crowd reduced the broad streets to narrow paths just wide enough for the limousines to pass.  Babe Ruth rode in the first open limousine.  At 39, he had grown rotund and just weeks before had agreed to part ways with the New York Yankees.  His future in professional baseball was in doubt but his god-like charisma remained intact.  To the Japanese he still represented the pinnacle of the baseball world.  Millions followed his exploits in baseball magazines such as Yakyukai and Asahi Sports.  Sharing the car was his former teammate Lou Gehrig—The Iron Horse—now the world’s greatest player.



The rest of the entourage, distributed 3 or 4 per car, followed: Connie Mack, the venerated 71-year old manager of the Philadelphia Athletics;  Jimmie Foxx, the Athletics burly third baseman known as “The Beast;” Earl Averill, the Snohomish, Washington native who had been the first American Leaguer to homer in his debut at bat—sportswriters tagged him the Earl of Snohomish when he played well and Big Ears on his off days; the slick fielding, power hitting second baseman Charlie Gehringerof the Detroit Tigers; Yankees goofy ace Lefty Gomez, who claimed to have invented a rotating goldfish bowl to ease the pain of tired fish, and his Broadway actress wife June O’Dea; former batting champion Lefty O’Doul, who had fallen in love with Japan during a 1931 tour; and a gaggle of lesser-known stars.  

Only one player didn’t seem to belong—a journeyman catcher with a .238 career batting average named Moe Berg.  Although he was not an all-star caliber player, his off-the-field skills would explain his inclusion on the team.  Berg was a Princeton and Columbia Law School graduate with a gift for languages (causing a teammate to quip that Berg could speak a dozen languages but couldn’t hit in any of them) who had already visited Japan in 1932.  Berg would eventually become an operative for the OSS, the forerunner of the CIA, and many believe that his tour of Japan was his first mission as a spy.

Confetti and streamers fluttered down from well-wishers leaning out of windows and over the wrought- iron balconies of the avenues’ multi-storied office buildings.  Thousands waived Japanese and American flags and cheered wildly.  Cries of “Banzai!  Banzai, Babe Ruth!” echoed through the neighborhood.  Reveling in the attention, the Bambino plucked flags from the crowd and stood in the back of the car waiving a Japanese flag in his left hand and an American in his right.  Finally, the crowd couldn’t contain itself and rushed into the street to be closer to the Babe.  Downtown traffic stood still for hours as Ruth shook hands with the multitude.

Ruth and his teammates stayed in Japan for a month, playing 18 exhibition games against Japanese opponents in 12 cities.  But there was more at stake than sport.  Japan and the United States were slipping towards war as the two nations vied for control over China and naval supremacy in the Pacific.  Politicians on both sides of the Pacific hoped that the goodwill generated by the tour and the two nations’ shared love of the game could help heal their growing political differences.  Many observers, therefore, considered the all stars’ joyous reception significant.  The New York Times, for example, wrote: “The Babe’s big bulk today blotted out such unimportant things as international squabbles over oil and navies.”  Connie Mack added that the tour was “one of the greatest peace measures in the history of nations.”  But the shared love for a sport would not be enough to overcome Japan’s growing nationalism and fanatics’ desire for war.