Near the now closed Negishi military housing community just north of Fleet Activities Yokosuka some 120 years ago, Japanese baseball transcended from an afterthought to the most popular sport in Japan. The storied Ichiko Nine from First Higher School of Tokyo, a team of students playing for the prestigious Imperial University, defeated the Americans from the Yokohama Cricket and Athletic Club (YCAC), a powerhouse in late 19th Century Japan, in a stunning upset that became front page news throughout the country.

Headlines roared from Tokyo to Kobe and Sapporo to Kumamoto – all hot beds of Japanese baseball at the time – each exaggerating the next iteration and making the Ichiko Nine almost mythological. Shiki Masaoka, widely considered the preeminent poet of his era and a prominent reporter, wrote that America’s love of baseball was similar to bullfighting in Spain and sumo among his own countrymen. He opined that the victory “wounded national pride” in America.

YCAC would once again reestablish itself as the team to beat shortly after and maintain that title for several more years, but the 1896 victory would have an emotional impact on the country in a way that no “foreigner could hope to understand.”

Robert Whiting, among the world’s most respected scholars on Japanese baseball, once wrote that the defeat would help a Japan, “struggling toward modernization after centuries of isolation, overcome a tremendous inferiority complex it felt toward the more industrially advanced West. The idea was, ‘if we could defeat the Americans at their own game, then surely we could surpass them in other fields.’”

The game would also open doors to form an unlikely relationship with the U.S. Navy.

30 years prior to the victory

Baseball was just beginning to gain respect in Japan by the 1870s. Tensions between Japanese and foreign missionaries just ten years earlier were beginning to calm; there were no more “Imbrie Incidents,” for example, or other baseball playing missionaries being assaulted during games.

In Sayuri Gutherie-Shimuzu’s book Transpacific: Field of Dreams, she implies that the game was considered a rugged alternative to cricket brought over by teachers from the United States who settled in the southern island of Kyushu. These “muscular Christians” – a term she loosely translated for the athletic foreigners – introduced baseball among other sports to wealthy Japanese as a way to build friendships.

Though the British brought cricket to the island nation several decades before, the sport had never truly caught on with much of local community. Much of that was due to the Englishmen’s insistence on maintaining the game’s formality that required a huge time commitment that many weren’t willing to invest. The academic feel of the sport also didn’t resonate with a culture more impressed by powerful men with calloused hands than powerful men with libraries. More importantly, the British navy rarely made stops in either Yokohama or Kobe, the two largest ports in Japan at the time, for coal and cricket. Instead, it was the U.S. Navy’s more frequent visits for coaling that gave baseball the avenue for Japan’s well-to-do jocks to create inroads with the Americans and their “language of the future.”

The Japanese teams were often made up of a hodgepodge of young men from Tokugawa-era samurai families still adjusting to life in a post-feudal Japan and thrust into a suddenly rapidly expanding global economy. The idea of exerting oneself physically for recreation was still a foreign concept to older generations, but the interesting and relatable one-on-one battles found throughout the field translated well to the once proud warriors – an important realization considering wealthy, older men were needed to fund the activity and provide the real estate needed for the sport.

The technique of putting a bat on a fastball was intriguing and relatable to the discipline required to study martial arts and swordsmanship. Fielding a ball, then filled with lead pellets wrapped in shoe string and covered in leather, with a sliding runner impaling ankles proved a young man’s toughness. The catcher, decked out in a kendo ___ despite Japan’s humid summers, was considered the manliest of men to willingly stand in front of the lead-filled ball while dodging a swinging bat as if sacrificing himself for the greater rewards victory brings his team.

Japanese teams would often play each other, local athletic clubs for foreigners and the occasional visiting Navy when smaller ships would anchor off the coast for a port of call. While the games would gain popularity throughout the late 1800s, they were mostly played in the luxurious obscurity of universities populated by once aristocratic families and foreign settlements placed off limits to local residents making it very difficult to expand the game’s footprint for several years.

Mr. Spalding and Mr. Hiraoka

As affluent families began to decide their future was with English-speaking traders, they in turn sent their sons to schools to study English and sport. Baseball, whether by design or consequence, became a way for the young men to practice English in a non-academic environment and continue to practice the high levels of discipline that their fathers were accustomed to seeing.

Other pioneers of the Japanese game included young men who were all but exiled by their families after being sent to San Francisco for study, like Hiroshi Hiraoka, according to Ms. Gutherie-Shimuzu. While in America, Mr. Hiraoka became enamored with the railroads and moved himself to Boston to study engineering and learned how to play baseball. There Mr. Hiraoka would end up meeting a former pitching ace turned sports equipment mogul by the name of Albert G. Spalding.

Through the last quarter of the 19th Century, Mr. Spalding was at the forefront of expanding baseball’s reach to stretch beyond the United States. His name was the definition of baseball at the time and even acquired the rights to publish the official baseball guide and standardize the weight of bats and balls used in officiated National League of Base Ball Clubs, or better known today as the NL, games. Mr. Spalding’s efforts were largely selfish to grow his own wealth and influence, but his work also played an unintentional role increasing America’s influence in Japan including making the equipment and rulebook accessible to the middle class. Much of that work folded into his friendship with Mr. Hiraoka.

Mr. Hiraoka was the first Japanese citizen to earn a U.S. college degree after completing an engineering degree from Amherst in Massachusetts. He brought his expertise back to Tokyo to work on the railroads and, later, to help build the steel-reinforced Port of Yokohama. The port was the first of its kind in Japan and allowed large commercial ships to pull into the harbor delivering everything from exotic foods to U.S. steel and his friend’s, Mr. Spalding’s, baseball equipment. Mr. Hiraoka would introduce Mr. Spalding to the local expatriates and university teachers heavily invested in the game who would in turn introduce the sport to more students who needed to purchase Mr. Spalding’s equipment to participate.

The steel piers would also allow the largest ships-of-war from the U.S. Navy fleet to pull into Yokohama for ports of call. Yokohama’s modern ports would permit the most competitive and athletic teams from the largest Naval crews to have ready access to the most competitive and athletic Japanese teams looking for a challenge. The port would also set off a revolution for the sport.

The Navy becomes an accidental ambassador of the game

Sailors playing baseball in Japan was neither an irregular nor uncommon event. The first documented games date as far back to 1871 with the USS Colorado playing both university students and expatriates from local athletic clubs while anchored out of Yokohama. These early games were rarely competitive. One December 1876 game was forfeited in the seventh inning because the Navy team needed to get back aboard before liberty expired. Japan Weekly Mail, a bilingual newspaper for the foreign settlers, read the Navy nine called the game despite leading 35-11 with two on and no men out that day.

The late 19th Century also brought new technology to the Navy. Steam-powered ships had all but fully replaced sailing ships. Training grounds once used to teach recruits how to maintain the large canvas sails and line handling were converted to athletic fields for physical training and recreation. Each ship’s Captain was authorized to field his own teams with the ship’s crest embroidered on the chest and encouraged to compete against his colleagues in what is now called Captain’s Cup. The Navy even went as far as to direct ships in 1903 to keep baseball equipment aboard for the crew’s morale while on shore leave.

Advances in technology made it easier for Sailors to find more time to relax. It also made it necessary for a Captain wanting to pull pierside to find a modern port in order to safely moor, which ironically, made it more difficult for Sailors to find locations where they can stop to relax.

In the 1870s, the United States became much more interested in making political gains in Korea to open up trade with the hermit kingdom. The long transit from California to Korea meant Sailors would often need to stop in Japan for supplies; and they would often choose between Yokohama and Kobe. As the Japanese-U.S. Navy relationship developed, the more baseball was played. As the U.S. ships became more modern, it was the piers of Yokohama instead of Kobe that grew with them. The Navy’s already well-founded familiarity with continued to grow.

YCAC baseballers would invite the Navy Sailors regularly to their field to compete throughout the late 19th Century. The visiting Navy men were a refreshing challenge for the country’s elite foreign players complete with competitive games that could go either way any day.

Ichiko had tried for nearly 10 years to negotiate a game with the elite YCAC team, but were consistently turned down because of their diminutive appearance. Ichiko was already considered a juggernaut in Japan’s fledgling intercollegiate baseball association and had seemingly outgrown its competition, but the foreign-born club teams never considered the squad on their level.

Until May of 1896 when YCAC accepted what they considered to be an upstart Ichiko Nine’s challenge.

On the 23rd day that month, Ichiko walked onto the normally off limits fields of YCAC with 400 of its most devoted fans. The Japanese squad then promptly routed YCAC 29-4. Though technically an upset, it’s impossible to consider such a decisive victory as anything similar and the legend began.

The sport immediately became the talk of the country. A rematch was set up for June 5. YCAC reinforced their roster with Sailors who were already accustomed to playing – and losing – to the university team. The cruisers USS Charleston and USS Detroit were anchored off the coast and sent in their top players to help the expatriates regain their status. Ichiko won again on the YCAC field, 32-9, in front of about 2,000 people. And again the headlines boasted of the easy win.

A third match was set for June 23 and again, YCAC boosted their roster with the crew of USS Detroit. Ichiko, playing in front of 10,000 at the Yokohama ballpark, walked out victorious 22-6.

YCAC and Ichiko once again agreed to play July 4 and, for the fourth time, the university students would travel to Yokohama. The crowd again swelled with a Navy band providing entertainment. U.S. ships in the harbor went to full dress and a Navy detail gave the teams a 21-gun salute after the introductions. The flagship cruiser, USS Olympia, pulled into port for shore leave to join the Charleston and Detroit Sailor athletes replacing many of the YCAC players.

The Olympia’s arrival would provide both the biggest controversy of the series and the biggest boon for the sport in Japan. The Japan Weekly Mail reported that a seaman by the name of Hiram “Pop” Church would be the game’s star. Described as a hulking African-American “from the major leagues,” Church’s presence was both obvious to the crowd and miscommunicated to them. Church could not have been from the major leagues as Jackie Robinson wouldn’t have broken the race barrier in the league for another 40 years.

Instead, Church played for Baltimore in the Negro League’s American Association for two years before joining the Navy. Noted for his powerful swing, the left fielder was never able to make consistent contact against the best pitchers and found himself left off the roster in his third season and on to the Olympia muster report. But Church was able to tee off on amateur pitchers as well as shut down an entire side of the outfield from the Ichiko batters.

“The game commenced at 3 o’clock, instead of 10 a.m., owing to the heavy rain of the early morning making the ground too swampy for play,” Japan Weekly Mail reported.

“Yokohama went first to bat and made five runs; the Tokyo Higher School failed to score in their inning, but in the next drew level. In the third innings, Yokohama made two runs and Tokyo only one. A change came over the play in the next innings, the Tokyo lads, by excellent fielding, putting out the home side for one run. Then they went in and tallied five, the game thus standing, Yokohama 8, Tokyo 11. From then the game grew more and more exciting, neither team letting a chance go by. Abel made some pretty catches in the right field, while Church, a naval player, relieving Eckhardt as pitcher, made things more lively for the visitors, whose propensity for stealing bases he greatly checked. At the close of the sixth innings, Yokohama had made 10 runs and were two behind the Tokyo score.”

“… Excitement became intense when Yokohama went out to begin the ninth and last innings. They had to make three runs to win, and when two men were caught out without scoring it looked all over but the cheering. Then Dame Fortune went boldly over to their side, and with the assistance of an error or two by the Japanese fielders they managed to get four runs, thus passing their opponents’ score by two runs. Still the Japanese had another innings to play and the possibility of a tie was very imminent. But the home team, pulling themselves into better combination than before, prevented the visitors from scoring another run: the game thus ending in a victory for Yokohama by two runs.”

Japanese reporters were furious. One opinion article, according to Gutherie-Shimuzu, complained the Americans had an unfair advantage by having a professional athlete on the roster and “breached sportsmanship.”

While many of the follow-on reports would continue to deride YCAC’s decision to bring in Navy ringers, their readers were picking up on the fact that their university students were competitive with an American roster boasting a professional baseball player, continuing to boost confidence in the sport and in the athletes.

Japanese baseball grows

Ichiko would remain the powerhouse for decades after bursting on the national scene. The Navy would continue to play local teams well into the early 20th Century and the Japanese would bring the game to Korea after colonizing the one-time kingdom. University players would soon have the chance to become professional players themselves while facing an American team including Babe Ruth, Jimmie Foxx and Lou Gehrig in 1934. That team then went to the U.S. to play minor league teams going 93-9 in the process and adopting the name Tokyo Giants – today’s Yomiuri Giants – using the same color scheme and a logo inspired by their Major League counterpart.

As Imperial Japan’s expansionist philosophies began to take hold, the U.S. Navy visits ceased. There were no more Hiram Churches holding base runners in check or Babe Ruths signing autographs. The game itself nearly died during the war before being resuscitated largely in part to the Soldiers of Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s occupation and rebuilding.

Today, the game Seaman Hiram Church made so controversial is the most popular sport in Japan. The Yomiuri Giants alone generated more than $215 million in 2012, good for what would have been the fourth highest revenue in MLB that year.

The headlines of games between today’s Sailors and their Japanese counterparts are now buried in local newsletters vice national newspapers and the crowds are a much more subdued audience of mostly friends and family members, but the game even 120 years later continues to bridge the two cultures and forge the relationships other sports simply haven’t had the same historical success doing.

Not bad for a rugged alternative sport to cricket.

NEWS INFO Date Taken: 06.01.2017 Date Posted: 12.20.2017 21:42 Story ID: 259759 Location: KANAGAWA, JP Web Views: 108 Downloads: 0 Podcast Hits: 0 PUBLIC DOMAIN This work, Two Men Were Caught Out, by PO1 James Kimber, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.