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 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 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.