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.