Yesterday, while looking for something else, I spotted this fine photograph at the Library of Congress site [https://goo.gl/E5uiiZ]/. While there was no identification of the subject, I was struck by the description of the image as “Baseball Girl in Japan.” The date — December 21, 1925 — was scratched into the glass plate by the photographer, who worked for the George Grantham Bain agency; it may have reflected the date the photo was taken, or the date it was filed with headquarters. The attractive young woman wore a “U.S.A.” jersey, threw lefthanded, and evidently played first base.

I did not know that a female baseball troupe had visited Japan that early, and poked around on the web a bit to see what I could see. I found that an outfit called the Philadelphia Bobbies — thus named because all its players bobbed their hair, as was the fashion of the day — had indeed gone to Japan, as part of a contingent headed by veteran major leaguers Eddie Ainsmith and Earl Hamilton. It was not long before I uncovered the identity of the mysterious girl depicted above: Leona Kearns.

The Bobbies in Japan: Leona Kearns top left; Edith Houghton seated at center

Just as I was preparing to pat myself on the back I lighted upon an outstanding, full article on the Bobbies’ ill-fated tour that had been written in 2013 by longtime friend and formidable expert Barbara Gregorich. It is linked below, and I recommend that you read it; this is quite a story that, now I realize I have been scooped, will run short.

Leona posed for the photo sometime before December 21, as the Bobbies’ tour, which had begun in October, wound down after having failed to produce the revenues required for the return trip home. Receiving a timely donation of some $6000, nine of the twelve Bobbies (including 13-year-old Edith Houghton, a future MLB scout) sailed for home in November and arrived in Philadelphia on December 6. Ainsmith and his wife waited for more money to be wired, but it proved not enough to secure everyone’s return. The couple departed on December 27, unconscionably leaving three of the Bobbies still stranded: Nellie Schank, Edith Ruth, and Leona Kearns.

Once Leona’s family learned of the girls’ predicament, they wired money from the States. The baseball girls boarded the Empress of Asia on January 18, 1926. Here, from Taking in a Game: A History of Baseball in Asia, by Joseph A. Reaves (Nebraska, 2002):

The trip home was as disastrous as the tour…. [W]hen the ship finally got under way, it was battered by winter storms. For nearly four days, the crew plowed through winds as high as seventy miles per hour (112 kilometers per hour) that churned waves eighty to ninety feet high (twenty-four to twenty-seven meters). The second-class passengers rode out the tempest below deck behind steel storm doors. When the doors finally were thrown open the afternoon of January 22, Kearns felt as if she had been released from prison. She ran wild up and down the deck, delirious at finally sensing the end of her exciting but troubled journey. A ship’s officer warned her it was dangerous to run around on deck since the ship was still rolling. So Kearns went to the salon to have tea. Her friend Nellie Schank had been feeling seasick and was out on deck getting some air. Kearns finished her tea and stepped out to join Schank just as a giant wave rose out of the sea. Kearns shouted a warning to Schank, leaped over a bench, and sprinted for a bulkhead door just as the towering wave crashed. Edith Ruth, the third of the stranded Philadelphia Bobbies, saw the horror unfold from the tea parlor. She ran to the door and was relieved to find Schank grasping a rail as the receding water swept almost everything from the deck to the sea. Kearns, however, was nowhere to be seen.

She had been swept overboard. Her body was never found.

Marshall Cemetery, Illinois

Read Barbara Gregorich’s splendid story for more about Leona Kearns: http://sabr.org/research/dropping-pitch-leona-kearns-eddie-ainsmith-and-philadelphia-bobbies.

For more about Edith Houghton, see: http://sabr.org/node/27239 and below.