Banzai Babe Ruth: Baseball, Espionage, and Assassination During the 1934 Tour of Japan by Robert K. Fitts (review)

Robert K. Fitts’s Banzai Babe Ruth is a remarkable study of the Major League Baseball tour of Japan in 1934. He skillfully and seamlessly places the baseball story within the context of Japanese cultural and political development in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, especially the growth of militant nationalism. Fitts parades a fascinating cast of characters through his pages, including the irrepressible Babe Ruth, the enigmatic Moe Berg, the ambitious Jimmy Horio, who never got the major-league contract he coveted, and the teenage phenom Eiji Sawamura, who later became the first star in Japan’s professional baseball league. These men battled each other on ball field to the roaring cheers of tens of thousands of Japanese baseball fans. But a mutual affection for baseball was insufficient to overcome the political, economic, and cultural tensions between the two nations that ultimately led to the catastrophe of World War II.

Fitts argues convincingly that the tour of American major-league baseball players in Japan in November 1934 was a diplomatic effort to reconcile differences and to maintain peace between the two nations. Relations between the two countries were amicable during the 1920s but soured after the stock market crashed in October 1929. As economic hardship spread in Japan, political unrest followed. Radical and right-wing extremist groups flourished, and the military became increasingly imperialistic. Anti-American feeling spread in Japan. Racist immigration laws in the United States, restricting the number of Japanese who could enter the country, exacerbated tensions between the two nations. Then on September 18, 1931, the Japanese army invaded Manchuria, and in early 1932, Japan attacked Shanghai. By the time the American tour departed for Japan, the two countries were fierce competitors for naval superiority in the Pacific and for control of trade in China. As the ship carrying the American All-Stars headed for Japan, naval talks among the United States, England, and Japan broke down. At the same time, Japan announced a new domestic policy, requiring all oil companies in the country to maintain a six-month supply of oil in stock, a supply that the military could easily confiscate in time of war. Japan, Fitts concludes, was preparing for a war with the United States.

At first, the baseball tour seemed to have succeeded in sowing goodwill and preserving the peace. Even though the difference in playing skill between the Americans and the Japanese was obvious from the beginning and the Americans won every game, mostly by lopsided scores, the Japanese didn’t care. The Japanese greeted the Americans with unrestrained exuberance wherever they traveled. The Japanese adored the American players, especially Babe Ruth, who on more than one occasion exhibited his characteristic boorishness. He fondled a geisha before the girl, with Moe Berg’s considerable linguistic help, told the Babe, “Fuku u Babe Rusu” (97). At a formal dinner, Ruth, upon seeing the long, bushy white beard of Japan’s master fish chef, bellowed out, “Hello, Santa Claus!” (103). Ruth could also be gracious. After the first game, won easily by the Americans 17–1, an old man knocked on the door of Ruth’s hotel suite. After bowing respectfully, the man produced a baseball for Ruth to sign. Ruth obliged. The man then proceeded to produce more than a dozen balls for the Babe to autograph. Ruth graciously signed them all. Ruth was the darling of the Japanese, and he loved the attention they lavished on him. American ambassador to Japan Joseph Grew thought Babe Ruth was a more effective diplomat than he was, and several American newspapers shared this opinion. The Sporting News proclaimed that the tour had certainly delayed and may prevent the outbreak of hostilities between the two countries. The most optimistic and enthusiastic evaluation of the tour’s diplomatic success came from Connie Mack. After returning home, Mack emphatically asserted that...