Banzai Babe Ruth: Baseball, Espionage, and Assassination during the 1934 Tour of Japan

Fitts, Robert K.

ISBN 10: 0803245815 / ISBN 13: 9780803245815

Published by University of Nebraska Press, 2013

About this Item

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Seller Inventory # Q-0803245815

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Banzai Babe Ruth: Baseball, Espionage, and Assassination during the 1934 Tour of Japan
• Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
• Publication Date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0803245815
• ISBN 13: 9780803245815
• Binding: paperback
• Condition: New
• Weight: 19 ounces

About this title

Synopsis

In November 1934 as the United States and Japan drifted toward war, a team of American League all-stars that included Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Jimmie Foxx, future secret agent Moe Berg, and Connie Mack barnstormed across the Land of the Rising Sun. Hundreds of thousands of fans, many waving Japanese and American flags, welcomed the team with shouts of “Banzai! Banzai, Babe Ruth!” The all-stars stayed for a month, playing 18 games, spawning professional baseball in Japan, and spreading goodwill.


Politicians on both sides of the Pacific hoped that the amity generated by the tour—and the two nations’ shared love of the game—could help heal their growing political differences. But the Babe and baseball could not overcome Japan’s growing nationalism, as a bloody coup d’état by young army officers and an assassination attempt by the ultranationalist War Gods Society jeopardized the tour’s success. A tale of international intrigue, espionage, attempted murder, and, of course, baseball, Banzai Babe Ruth is the first detailed account of the doomed attempt to reconcile the United States and Japan through the 1934 All American baseball tour. Robert K. Fitts provides a wonderful story about baseball, nationalism, and American and Japanese cultural history.

About the Author

Robert K. Fitts is a curatorial consultant for the National Baseball Hall of Fame and a baseball historian. He is the author of eleven books of Japanese baseball, including Issei Baseball: The Story of the First Japanese American Ballplayers (Nebraska, 2020), Banzai Babe Ruth: Baseball, Espionage, and Assassination during the 1934 Tour of Japan (Nebraska, 2013), and Mashi: The Unfulfilled Baseball Dreams of Masanori Murakami, the First Japanese Major Leaguer (Nebraska, 2015), and is the coeditor of Nichibei Yakyu: U.S. Tours of Japan, volumes I and II.