To celebrate the 2018 Major League Baseball All-Star Game in Washington, D.C. and in conjunction with our new exhibition, A New League: Shared Pastimes and the Story of U.S.-Japan Baseball, the JICC is excited to present a special event to celebrate and learn about how the game of baseball has forged and fostered bonds between the U.S. and Japan.

The program will feature presentations on U.S.-Japan baseball history from historians and Japanese baseball experts and specialists as well as an exclusive screening of an in-production version of the upcoming documentary film on U.S.-Japan baseball history, Diamond Diplomacy. The program will conclude with a Q&A with the presenters.

Presenters include baseball historian, Robert Fitts (author of Banzai Babe Ruth and Mashi), filmmaker and director of Diamond Diplomacy, Yuriko Romer, and baseball specialist and JICC exhibition co-curator, Adam Berenbak. In addition, there will also be a special appearance by Masanori "Mashi" Murakami, the first Japanese professional baseball player to play in Major League Baseball in 1964.