The 1934 Japan Tour was a 12-city barnstorming baseball tour of Japan that took place in November and December 1934. It featured American League baseball players that formed a special team called the All Americans. The baseball stars were both tourists and ambassadors of good will.[1]
This was not the first baseball tour of the country (there were tours in 1908, 1913, 1920, 1922 and 1931), but the Americans in those tours had played Japanese amateur or college ballclubs.[2]
Details[edit]
The tour included Earl Averill, Lou Gehrig, Charlie Gehringer, Lefty Gomez, Connie Mack, Jimmie Foxx, Babe Ruth, Moe Berg and other American League players, as the National League would not allow their players to participate. Ruth, “still the most popular and famous athlete of his day” was the face of American baseball at the time.[1]
500,000 Japanese filled the streets of Tokyo to welcome Ruth and 14 other all-star baseball players for the barnstorming tour. The Americans played 18 games against the All-Nippon team, featuring many of Japan’s top players, in front of tens of thousands of fans.[3] The games were played in Meiji-Jingu Stadium in Tokyo, Koshien Stadium in Kobe, Yagiyama Baseball Field in Sendai and others throughout the country. The Americans won all eighteen games.[2] Ruth would hit 13 home runs during the tour.[4]
Staying in the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, there was a knock on the door of Babe Ruth’s hotel room one night. The Babe answered to find a gentleman wearing a kimono, asking for Ruth’s autograph on a baseball. Ruth happily obliged; the man then proceeded to pull out another dozen or so balls from his kimono for Ruth to sign. Ruth’s wife and daughter witnessed the event. His daughter also recalled how popular Ruth was during the tour: fans would rise to their feet every time he came to bat and waved Japanese and American flags.[5]
After the Japanese games, the team played games in Shanghai and Manila. Most players then went home while Ruth and his family continued westward for four months.[5]
The Japanese portion of the tour was filmed by Jimmie Foxx and his wife using eight millimeter black-and-white film. A copy of the film has been digitized by the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum.[1] Moe Berg also brought a 16-mm Bell and Howell movie camera and made short films of important Japanese installations; this was thought to be one of Berg’s first missions as a spy. Many of the players were shadowed while on the street in Tokyo while their luggage was being searched back at their hotel.[3]
The couple boarded the train in Canton and traveled to Chicago, where they caught a train through the Rockies to British Columbia. On October 20, the Empress of Japan sailed from Vancouver. The players stopped in Honolulu for a game against a Hawaiian all-star team, winning 8-1. Then it was on to Yokohama, where they docked on November 2.
The team was known as the All Americans. The club included pitchers Lefty Gomez, Earl Whitehill, Jumbo Bown and Joe Cascarella. Behind the plate were Jackie Hayes and Moe Berg, but Mack used the trip as a way of training Foxx for possible catching duties in 1935. (Foxx would play 26 games behind the plate in 1935.) The infield featured Gehrig, Gehringer, Warstler and Eric McNair. Ruth was joined in the outfield by Earl Averill and Bing Miller. From November 4 to December 1 the team played 18 games throughout Japan.
The All-Americans won every game, with manager Ruth hitting .408 with 13 home runs. Earl Averill and Bing Miller were the next most prolific hitters. The best pitcher for Japan was an eighteen-year-old named Sawamura. On November 20 he lost to the All-Americans, 1-0. Earlier Sawamura had the misfortune to go up against Gomez on a day when Lefty struck out 19. Rabbits lone home run, on the 10th, hit the top of the wall and came back into play, but was ruled a round tripper. Grace wrote in her diary that night HR for Harold, what a drive.? Playing in late November the weather can be quite bad. The November 26 game was played in mud. Graces diary reports that Rabbit and Gehrig both wore boots on the field. The Spalding Guide said spectators knelt in the outfield with water up to their hips.? The team left Japan and played a game in bitter cold in Shanghai and then two more in Manila. After these games the tour broke up. Berg travelled to Russia, purportedly to search for ancestors, while others returned to the states aboard the Empress of Canada. The Warstlers joined Gehrig, Gomez, Ruth and others for a round-the-world cruise. They made stops in Java, Fiji, Singapore, Ceylon and eventually Marseilles. Ruth went on to Paris and the Warstlers went to England and caught a steamer for the states. They returned to North Canton on Jan. 31.
The Rabbit and Grace were able to do quite a bit of sightseeing. One highlight was an invitation to an evening with a businessmen named Kinosita who was a friend of Herb Hoover, the President of the Hoover Company in North Canton. A very special dinner was held Nov. 12 in their honor and they were both given kimonos and Kabuki dolls. Daughter Virginia remembers that both Rap and Grace were in awe of their trip.