1934 All American Tour 90th Anniversary - Nishinomiya

Since leaving Shizuoka on the 20th, the MLB All Stars and All Nippon team had played two games at Narumi Stadium in Nagoya.  The game on the 22nd was a tight, one run victory for the All Americans, their second in a row after the 1-0 win in Shizuoka.  The second game on the following day was an easier win for the Americans with them prevailing 6-2.  No home runs were hit by either team in the two games.  

Narumi Stadium was built in the late 1920's and closed in the late 1950's.  Parts of the ballpark are still standing and are the grounds for the Meitetstu driving school.

Following the second game, the teams boarded an express train for Osaka.  They would play two games over the weekend of November 24-25 at Koshien Stadium in Nishinomiya, just to the west of Osaka.  The stadium was 10 years old and had a seating capacity at the time of 70,000.  The ballpark's fences were a long way from home plate as it was 360 feet down the foul lines, 420 feet to the power alleys and 394 feet to straight away center.  The size of the park didn't present too many issues for the All Americans, though, as they won 15-3 over All Nippon, the first time they scored in double digits since the game in Yokohama six days earlier.  They did, however, fail to hit a home run for the third straight game.

The US and Japanese teams split into two mixed teams for the game on the 25th.  One team was managed by Babe Ruth and the other by Bing Miller.  Miller's team won the game 5-1.  The sole home run in the game was hit by Usaburo Shintomi, playing for Miller's team so the MLB All Stars homerless streak had reached four games.  

After the game, the teams would board a west-bound train and traveled overnight to the western tip of Honshu.  They dressed in uniforms at the hotel before taking a ferry across the Straits of Shimonoseki to play a game in Kokura in a downpour.  The All Americans won the muddy game 8-1 with Earl Averill and Ruth both homering.  Following the game, the teams were ferried back across the Straits and caught a train heading back east to Kyoto.  They'd play three more games in Japan with the All Americans winning each handily - 14-1 in Kyoto on the 28th, 23-5 in Omiya on the 29th and 14-5 in Utsunomiya on December 1st.  They had at least one home run in each game with Ruth hitting his final two home runs on Japanese soil in Omiya.  

The All Americans would depart Japan from Kobe on December 2nd and travel first to Shanghai before continuing on to the Philippines.  They would play four more games - one in Shanghai and the other three in Manilla - before the tour concluded.  It would be the last major tour of Japan by professional American baseball players until 1949.

Outside Koshien Stadium is a small square featuring several monuments.  There is a plaque for Tomoaki Kanemoto's consecutive innings played streak and a statue of a Tiger commemorating the Hanshin Tigers' 50th Anniversary in 1985.  The first monument placed there, however, was for Babe Ruth.  It was erected in 1949, the year after Ruth passed away.

A copy of this plaque resided in the Sports Legend Museum at Camden Yards in Baltimore, located outside Oriole Park and just a few blocks east of the Babe Ruth Birthplace & Museum:

Baltimore's version of the plaque was a gift from the Tigers and made from the original mold by the sculptor.  The museum also featured a display of items of Ruth's from the tour:

Sadly, the museum in Baltimore closed in 2015.  I don't know where the Ruth items are although it's likely that they're either on display or in storage at the Babe Ruth Birthplace & Museum.  These photos are ones that I took when I visited the Sports Legend Museum in November of 2013.

One last time - I used Rob Fitts' book Banzai Babe Ruth as the primary source for this post.  I highly recommend Rob's work.

1934 All American Tour 90th Anniversary - Shizuoka

2023 BBM Fusion #86

On November 20th, 1934 - 90 years ago today - the All American tour reached Kusanagi Baseball Stadium in Shizuoka.  The ballpark was just four years old, having opened in 1930.

17 year old Eiji Sawamura was the starting pitcher that day for All Nippon.  He was making his third appearance of the tour - the All Americans had hit him hard both times he had previously faced them and there was no reason to expect that this day's game would go any different.  The MLB All Stars were coming off of their most lopsided victory of the tour two days previously in Yokohama and had scored at least 14 runs in each of the previous three games.  And Babe Ruth had hit ten home runs in the previous six games.

But for whatever reason - maybe it was the afternoon sun over the right field stands that was glaring directly into the eyes of the batters - Sawamura pitched the best game that any All Nippon pitcher would throw on the tour.  He retired the first eleven batters including striking out future Hall Of Famers Charlie Gehringer, Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and Jimmy Foxx in succession in the first and second innings.

Unfortunately for Sawamura, his teammates were unable to generate any offense against All American starter Earl Whitehill.  The game remained scoreless into the bottom of the seventh inning when Gehrig hit a solo home run over the right field wall.  That would be the only run of the game and the All Americans would come away with a tight 1-0 victory.

Kusanagi Baseball Stadium still stands, although it went through some major renovations in the 1970's.  It has been used over the years for various high school, collegiate and corporate league baseball games as well as serving as a host for "countryside" games for several NPB teams as well as their farm teams.  This past year, the ballpark served as one of the home ballparks for the Kufu Hayate Ventures, the new independent farm team added to NPB's Western League.  It's usually left out when people list the ballparks that still exist that Babe Ruth once played in but it should be mentioned along with Fenway Park, Wrigley Field, Meiji Jingu Stadium and Koshien Stadium.

In 1991, statues of Sawamura and Ruth were erected in the plaza outside the park.  I've visited this park twice - I stopped by in 2019 just to see the statues and in 2024 to see Hayate play.  Here are pictures I took of the statues during both visits:

Once again I heavily relied upon Rob Fitts' Banzai Babe Ruth for the information in this post.

1934 All American Tour 90th Anniversary - Yokohama

After returning to Tokyo following their games in Hakodate and Sendai, the All Americans played two more games at Jingu Stadium before venturing north to Toyama on November 13th.  They returned to Tokyo to play their fifth and final game at Jingu on the 17th and on the 18th, they traveled to Yokohama to play at what was then called Yokohama Park Sports Field.

While Yokohama Park Sports Field was relatively new in 1934, the park the ballpark resided in, Yokohama Park (also known as Soga Park), had been around for a number of years.  It was here in 1896 in which "a team from Tokyo's Ichikō high school convincingly defeated a team of resident foreigners from the Yokohama Country & Athletic Club".  This was the first time a Japanese team had defeated a team of foreigners and it greatly contributed to the popularity of baseball in Japan.  There was a ballpark built in the park in the 1910's but it was damaged in the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923.  The new ballpark opened in 1929 so it was just five years old when the All Americans played here.

The ballpark did not present any obstacles to the All Americans as they defeated the All Nippon team 21-4, the most lopsided victory of the nine games on the tour so far.  The MLB stars hit five home runs with Babe Ruth hitting two and Lou Gehrig, Jimmie Foxx and Earl Averill each hitting one.  It was the sixth straight game that Ruth homered in - he'd hit ten over those six games.  The All Americans weren't the only home run hitters that day - Toshiharu Inokawa hit the All Nippon team's first home run of the tour in the ninth inning.  The two teams would next head west to Shizuoka.

Yokohama Park Sports Field would stand for another 40 years after the tour.  It was briefly used as a POW camp during the war and was renamed "Lou Gehrig Memorial Stadium" by the occupying Allied forces after the war.  It was the site of the first night game in NPB in August 17th, 1948 between the Giants and the Dragons.  After the Allied occupation ended in the early 1950's, the park's name was changed again to "Yokohama Park Peace Baseball Stadium" although it was generally referred to as "Heiwa Stadium".  While it would host NPB games on occasion, it was not the home park for any team.

By the 1970's, the park was in bad shape.  Concerns about the stability of the stands caused the capacity of the park to be restricted to less than 10,000, much too small to host an NPB team regularly.  Meanwhile, the Taiyo Whales were growing dissatisfied with their home ballpark in Kawasaki, just to the north of Yokohama.   They and Yokohama eventually entered into agreement for the Whales to move to Yokohama when Heiwa Stadium was either renovated or replaced.  The old ballpark was finally torn down in 1977 to make way for Yokohama Stadium.  The new ballpark opened in 1978 as the home for the newly renamed Yokohama Taiyo Whales.

There's a display on the concourse of Yokohama Stadium that details the history of the ballparks on the site.  I took pictures of it on my first visit to the Stadium in 2013 but I didn't really understand what I was looking at at the time:

At some point, there were plaques installed in the outfield corners for Ruth and Gehrig.  Ruth's was at the left field foul pole while Gehrig's was at the right field pole.  In recent years, the plaques have been moved to the afore-mentioned history section.  I suspect that this was due to the recent renovations that were done to the ballpark but I don't know that for sure.  I had not known about the plaques when I visited the ballpark the first time in 2013 and wasn't able to get to them when I returned in 2019.  But when I visited there six months ago, I was able to see both of them in their new resting place:

Once again, I drew on Banzai Babe Ruth by Rob Fitts for source material for this post.

1934 All American Tour 90th Anniversary - Sendai

After playing their first two games on the tour at Meiji Jingu Stadium in Tokyo, the All-American tour headed north.  They took an overnight train ride to Aomori at the northern tip of Honshu, then took a ferry across the Tsugaru Strait to the city of Hakodate on the island of Hokkaido.  The US team beat the Japanese team 5-2 there on November 8th with Earl Averill hitting his third home run of the tour.  After the game, the teams took the ferry back to Honshu and caught a train for Sendai where they would play a game the following day.

The ballpark that the Eagles now play in, Miyagi Baseball Stadium, would not open until 1950.  The ballpark in Sendai in 1934 was on the west side of the city (the current stadium is on the east side of the city) and was called Yagiyama Ball Field.  The US team once again beat their Japanese hosts soundly by a score of 7-0.  They would hit five home runs in the game including two from Babe Ruth, his first two home runs on Japanese soil.  After the game, the teams returned to Tokyo where they would play another game at Jingu Stadium the following day.

I'm not exactly sure when Yagiyama Ball Field was torn down.  Hyojogawara Stadium, located a few miles to the northeast of Yagiyama Ball Field, opened in 1937 so it's likely the field met its demise around that time.  The Yagiyama Zoo (officially the "Sendai City Yagiyama Zoological Park") opened on this site in 1965.  In 2002, the Zoo put up a statue of Babe Ruth to commemorate the MLB All Stars having played in Sendai.  The statue is located where Ruth's first home that day landed in the right field stands.

I visited the zoo during my 2019 trip to Japan and took some photos of the statue:

And of the plaque for it:

The statue is fairly easy to find if you visit the zoo as it appears on their map.  If you look on the left side of it over by the flamingo, you'll see the where the statue is:

My source for information for this post was drawn largely from Rob Fitts' excellent book Banzai Babe Ruth.

1934 All American Tour 90th Anniversary - Meiji Jingu Stadium

Today is the 90th Anniversary of the first game on the 1934 All American tour of Japan.  As Rob Fitts' book Banzai Babe Ruth describes, this tour of Japan by an MLB All Star team that included Hall of Famers Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Jimmie Foxx, Charlie Gehringer, Lefty Gomez and Earl Averill was instrumental in the birth of professional baseball in Japan.*  I thought it might be interesting to do a handful of posts about some of the places that the tour went (although I won't be doing every place).  I'll be using Rob Fitts' book as my primary source so I recommend picking it up if you want to learn more about the tour.

* If I'm remembering what Jim Allen has said on occasion, there were some professional baseball teams in Kansai (I think) in the 1920's but the team that is now the Yomiuri Giants started from the All Nippon team that played against the MLB stars on this tour

That first game was played in Meiji Jingu Stadium in Tokyo, one of three ballparks used on the tour that are still standing.  The All Americans would win this game 17-1.  This was the first of five games that the All Americans would play here.  They'd win 5-1 on November 4th behind home runs by Foxx, Gehrig and two by Averill; 10-0 on November 10th with home runs by Ruth, Averill and Harold Warstler; and 15-6 on November 17th with Ruth homering twice and Gehrig and Foxx both homering. 

For the game on November 11th, the US and Japanese teams split into two mixed teams, one team run by Ruth and the other by Bing Miller.  Ruth's team won 13-2 with the Babe hitting two home runs and his teammates Foxx and Averill also homering.

I've been to Jingu a number of times now to see the Swallows play as well as corporate league and Tokyo Big Six collegiate games.  As far as I can tell, there are no historic markers of any type commemorating Babe Ruth and the All American team playing here.  With the future of the stadium in doubt, it's probably unlikely that there ever will be one.