Transpacific Field of Dreams: How Baseball Linked the United States and Japan in Peace and War

CHAPTER 8. The Search for Postwar Order

In the early postwar seasons, the chaos that often accompanies a new business enterprise afflicted Japanese professional baseball, where codified business rules were almost nonexistent. Player raiding and contract jumping were rampant, just as they had been in American professional baseball until the National Agreement of 1903 etched the rules of enterprise in granite. By 1949, the self-­professed guardians of Japanese baseball in SCAP became seriouslyconcerned by the Japanese pro league’s unstable business environment and self-­ destructive internal strife. General Marquat and Cappy Harada firmly believed in the supremacy and universal relevance of the American model and pushed for its application to Japan. In the business of baseball, that meant a two-­ league structure stabilized by the player “reserve clause” and an independent commissioner to adjudicate disputes among clubs. It just so happened that their agenda perfectly dovetailed with the personal interests of the stalwart of prewar Japanese professional baseball , Shōriki Matsutarō, who was angling to reinsert himself into the professional baseball enterprise that had dared survive in the early postwar transition without him. On February 23, 1949, the Japanese Baseball Association , under Marquat’s instruction, created the office of baseball commissioner and appointed Shōriki, still the owner of the Tokyo Giants, to take up the position. Immediately afterward, however, Marquat encountered an angry protest from the director of SCAP’s Government Section, Courtney Whitney. A committed New Dealer and a force behind the drafting of Japan’s postwar pacifist constitution, Whitney had frequently locked horns with groups within SCAP that promoted or condoned the backsliding of American reform efforts in the “reverse course.” Whitney’s determined opposition to the appointment of Shōriki, a man still banned THE SEARCH ​ FOR POSTWAR ​ ORDER ​ 8 The Search for Postwar Order | 225 from public offices, was another episode in this internal ideological strife that afflicted SCAP throughout the Allied occupation.Within two months, Shōriki was pressured to resign as commissioner, and the position remained unfilled for almost two years. This zigzagging in American policy reflected something as inveterate as SCAP’s internal bureaucratic strife: many Japanese commercial enterprises, including media companies, had a checkered past of wartime collaborationism and war profiteering.1 The Rise of a Two-­ League Structure The establishment of a two-­ league system, or the supposedly “respectable ” and “stable” industrial structure the U.S. majors had achieved in the last half century, also suited the agenda of the resurgent Shōriki and the SCAP baseball fraternity, which was seeking to introduce “healthy and orderly competition” among Japanese pro teams. During his brief stint as commissioner, Shōriki announced the so-­ called Shōriki Plan. Along with the construction of a new ballpark in Tokyo and the invitation of a major-­ league team, the Shōriki Plan called for a two-­ league structure modeled after the American major leagues. The plan’s progenitor argued that competition between rival leagues would be critical to raising the caliber of Japanese professional baseball. The two-­ league system would also afford additional revenue generators—a midseason all-­ star game and a postseason “Japanese World Series” between the two league champions, another borrowing from the American model. After their teams had been utterly crushed by the Seals, Shōriki’s fellow club owners had to acknowledge the gap that still existed between American and Japanese levels of play. With varying degrees of alacrity, they went along with Shōriki’s plan of adding two teams to the existing ten-­ team league and splitting it into two separate circuits; if all went well, an expansion into six-­ team leagues would follow. As was the case during the prewar period, Shōriki exhibited a shrewd business sense by inviting Yomiuri’s chief rival newspaper, Mainichi, to start a new club. The company, having owned a short-­ lived pro team, the Daimai Club, in the interwar period, responded positively.The result was the founding of the Mainichi Orions in September 1950. Reflecting the postwar revamping of the Japanese economy, a range of corporations, including Taiyō Fisheries Company, rushed to enter the business of professional baseball during this period of league expansion.2 The Japanese Baseball Association, however, descended into an uncontrollable spiral of internal strife over the admission of new clubs and continual player raids 226 | The Search for Postwar Order as teams were being divided into two leagues. The acrimonious situation achieved a modicum of stability by the opening of...