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Show Baseball in the Far East Japan Has Taken Wholeheartedly to the American National Game Since Its Introduction Into That Country in 1889. EEXET CHAUNCET, In the Literary Digest. Babe Ruth and a team of major league stars visited Japan, slamming slam-ming out home runs and fanning the best batters in the Far East. The invading Americans naturally won their games, but they were playing teams that were eager to learn every new trick of the trade. It Is a characteristic char-acteristic of the Japanese that they pick up something new, master It, and then improve upon it. America can one day expect that the problem of parity will involve baseball as well as battleships. The Japanese not only play baseball base-ball and play It well, but they eat, drink, and sleep it. It is their main source of recreation. Even though the Japanese are enthusiastic about all forms of athletics from their own judo (ju-jutsu) and kendo (fencing) to such western sports as basketball, skiiing and rowing, baseball outranks out-ranks all other games put together In the interest of Japanese. In every ev-ery public park, one finds games being be-ing played from early morning (I have seen boys walking to the park all dressed up in their uniforms at six o'clock In the morning), until dark Ail who can play baseball, and those who are too old or too busy to play, follow the school and college col-lege games closely. The interscholas-tic interscholas-tic tournaments, which are held In the big cities, and all of the games of the Tokyo University league are broadcast from the two biggest radio stations in Japan. Millions of people listen in. Stores, where there are radios, are crowded. Baseball ln Japan Is now several generations old. It was first Introduced Intro-duced Into the country ln 1SS9 by an American engineer who was working on the government railways. In his spare time he taught some of the laborers to play baseball, and organized organ-ized games between the different gangs. American visiting professors did likewise for their pupils, and It was not long before most of the colleges col-leges had teams. Games frequently were played against the crews of American ships docked In Japanese ports, and against teams made up of American residents. Then, in 1005, the Waseda university univer-sity team made a trip to the west coast, playing against Stanford and other of the coast colleges. Incidentally, Inci-dentally, It was the first time that Japanese players used spikes. When they arrived in Palo Alto, It was discovered dis-covered that the spikes had all been put on backward. Every cobbler ln the town had to be rounded up to make the necessary changes before the game the following day. From 1905 on, trips back and forth between be-tween American and Japanese col leges have been frequent Some ,of the other American college teams that have visited Japan are: Stanford, Stan-ford, California, Washington, Wisconsin, Wis-consin, Michigan, and Illinois. A group of big league and coast league players went to Japan In 190S, playing games against Keio, Waseda and an all-star team. Though the professionals won all their games, many of them were close. Five years later McGraw and Comiskey brought their all-star National and American league teams to the Orient. Their games were watched with eager eyes by the Japanese, who are ever anxious anx-ious to learn all there is to know about the game. Perhaps even more important ln the development of baseball in Japan Ja-pan was Keio's hiring, In 1911, two young players of the New York Giants, Arthur Joseph Schaefer and Fuller W. Thompson, to coach them for a month in a winter training camp at Kobe. It was then, for the first time, that Japanese teams learned to play baseball base-ball scientifically. Since the university univer-sity players coach the middle schools (corresponding to our high schools) during the summer, the knowledge thus acquired was quickly and widely wide-ly disseminated. As far back as twenty-three years ago, therefore, the Japanese knew how to play baseball, and played with reasonable success against American colleges. In the summer of the same year, 1911, Keio toured the United States, playing against forty college and professional teams, winning 60 per cent of their games. The Japanese take baseball very seriously, even more so than Americans Ameri-cans take football. The players live together in a dormitory adjacent to the baseball field where they can talk baseball fifteen hours a day and practice three hours. All in all, the members of these Japanese college teams are either playing or coaching baseball eight months out of the year. In the Kobe-Osaka district It is possible to play all the year round. |
