Are you looking for read ebook online? Search for your book and save it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Download Banzai Babe Ruth PDF full book. Access full book title Banzai Babe Ruth by Robert K. Fitts. Download full books in PDF and EPUB format.
Author: Robert K. Fitts Publisher: U of Nebraska Press ISBN: 149621000X Category : Sports & Recreation Languages : en Pages : 491
Book Description
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.
Author: Robert K. Fitts Publisher: U of Nebraska Press ISBN: 149621000X Category : Sports & Recreation Languages : en Pages : 491
Book Description
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.
Author: Robert K. Fitts Publisher: U of Nebraska Press ISBN: 0803229844 Category : Sports & Recreation Languages : en Pages : 365
Book Description
Presents a detailed account of the attempt to reconcile the United States and Japan through the 1934 All American baseball tour which included Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Jimmie Foxx, future secret agent Moe Berg, and Connie Mack.
Author: Robert K. Fitts Publisher: U of Nebraska Press ISBN: 0803240244 Category : Sports & Recreation Languages : en Pages : 366
Book Description
Presents a detailed account of the attempt to reconcile the United States and Japan through the 1934 All American baseball tour which included Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Jimmie Foxx, future secret agent Moe Berg, and Connie Mack.
Author: Robert K. Fitts Publisher: U of Nebraska Press ISBN: 1496220897 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 344
Book Description
Baseball has been called America’s true melting pot, a game that unites us as a people. Issei Baseball is the story of the pioneers of Japanese American baseball, Harry Saisho, Ken Kitsuse, Tom Uyeda, Tozan Masko, Kiichi Suzuki, and others—young men who came to the United States to start a new life but found bigotry and discrimination. In 1905 they formed a baseball club in Los Angeles and began playing local amateur teams. Inspired by the Waseda University baseball team’s 1905 visit to the West Coast, they became the first Japanese professional baseball club on either side of the Pacific and barnstormed across the American Midwest in 1906 and 1911. Tens of thousands came to see “how the minions of the Mikado played the national pastime.” As they played, the Japanese earned the respect of their opponents and fans, breaking down racial stereotypes. Baseball became a bridge between the two cultures, bringing Japanese and Americans together through the shared love of the game. Issei Baseball focuses on the small group of men who formed the first professional and semiprofessional Japanese baseball clubs. These players’ story tells the history of early Japanese American baseball, including the placement of Saisho, Kitsuse, and their families in relocation camps during World War II and the Japanese immigrant experience.
Author: Curt Smith Publisher: U of Nebraska Press ISBN: 1496207394 Category : Sports & Recreation Languages : en Pages : 472
Book Description
The Presidents and the Pastime draws on Curt Smith's extensive background as a former White House presidential speechwriter to chronicle the historic relationship between baseball, the "most American" sport, and the U.S. presidency. Smith, who USA TODAY calls "America's voice of authority on baseball broadcasting," starts before America's birth, when would‑be presidents played baseball antecedents. He charts how baseball cemented its reputation as America's pastime in the nineteenth century, such presidents as Lincoln and Johnson playing town ball or giving employees time off to watch. Smith tracks every U.S. president from Theodore Roosevelt to Donald Trump, each chapter filled with anecdotes: Wilson buoyed by baseball after suffering disability; a heroic FDR saving baseball in World War II; Carter, taught the game by his mother, Lillian; Reagan, airing baseball on radio that he never saw--by "re-creation." George H. W. Bush, for whom Smith wrote, explains, "Baseball has everything." Smith, having interviewed a majority of presidents since Richard Nixon, shares personal stories on each. Throughout, The Presidents and the Pastime provides a riveting narrative of how America's leaders have treated baseball. From Taft as the first president to throw the "first pitch" on Opening Day in 1910 to Obama's "Go Sox!" scrawled in the guest register at the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 2014, our presidents have deemed it the quintessentially American sport, enriching both their office and the nation.
Author: Aaron Pribble Publisher: U of Nebraska Press ISBN: 0803235496 Category : Sports & Recreation Languages : en Pages : 280
Book Description
It was the first (and last) season of professional baseball in Israel. Aaron Pribble, twenty-seven, had been out of Minor League Baseball for three years while he pursued a career in education when, at his coach's suggestion, he tried out for the newly formed Israel Baseball League (IBL). Of Jewish descent (not a requirement, but definitely a plus) and former pro, Pribble was the ideal candidate for the upstart league. In many ways the league resembled the ultimate baseball fantasy camp with its unforgettable cast of characters: the DJ/street artist third baseman from the Bronx, the wildman catcher from Australia, the journeymen Dominicans who were much older than they claimed to be, and, of course, seventy-one-year-old Sandy Koufax, drafted in a symbolic gesture as the last player. After falling in love with a beautiful Yemenite Jew, enduring an alleged terrorist attack on opening day, witnessing a career-ending brain injury caused by improper field equipment, participating in a strike, and venturing into the West Bank despite being strongly advised against it, Pribble must decide whether to forgo a teaching career in order to become the first player from the IBL to sign a pro contract in the United States. His is a story of coming of age spiritually and athletically in one short season in the throes of romance, Middle Eastern politics, and the dreams of America's pastime far, far afield from home.
Author: Robert K. Fitts Publisher: U of Nebraska Press ISBN: 0803213816 Category : Sports & Recreation Languages : en Pages : 365
Book Description
Wally Yonamine was both the first Japanese American to play for an NFL franchise and the first American to play professional baseball in Japan after World War II. This is the unlikely story of how a shy young man from the sugar plantations of Maui overcame prejudice to integrate two professional sports in two countries. ø In 1951 the Tokyo Yomiuri Giants chose Yonamine as the first American to play in Japan during the Allied occupation. He entered Japanese baseball when mistrust of Americans was high?and higher still for Japanese Americans whose parents had left the country a generation earlier. Without speaking the language, he helped introduce a hustling style of base running, shaking up the game for both Japanese players and fans. Along the way, Yonamine endured insults, dodged rocks thrown by fans, initiated riots, and was threatened by yakuza (the Japanese mafia). He also won batting titles, was named the 1957 MVP, coached and managed for twenty-five years, and was honored by the emperor of Japan. Overcoming bigotry and hardship on and off the field, Yonamine became a true national hero and a member of Japan?s Baseball Hall of Fame.
Author: David Pietrusza Publisher: Taylor Trade Publications ISBN: 1461662036 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 598
Book Description
Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis is most famous for his role as the first Commissioner ever to rule organized baseball. But before he came into his legendary position as baseball's final say, Landis already had built a reputation from his Chicago courtroom as the most popular and most controversial federal judge in World War I-era America. Judge and Jury is the first complete biography of the Squire, from the origins of his unusual name through his career as a federal judge and his clean-up after the infamous Black Sox scandal.
Author: Dennis Snelling Publisher: U of Nebraska Press ISBN: 1496201175 Category : Sports & Recreation Languages : en Pages : 391
Book Description
From San Francisco to the Ginza in Tokyo, Lefty O’Doul relates the untold story of one of baseball’s greatest hitters, most colorful characters, and the unofficial father of professional baseball in Japan. Lefty O’Doul (1897–1969) began his career on the sandlots of San Francisco and was drafted by the Yankees as a pitcher. Although an arm injury and his refusal to give up the mound clouded his first four years, he converted into an outfielder. After four Minor League seasons he returned to the Major Leagues to become one of the game’s most prolific power hitters, retiring with the fourth-highest lifetime batting average in Major League history. A self-taught “scientific” hitter, O’Doul then became the game’s preeminent hitting instructor, counting Joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams as his top disciples. In 1931 O’Doul traveled to Japan with an All-Star team and later convinced Babe Ruth to headline a 1934 tour. By helping to establish the professional game in Japan, he paved the way for Hideo Nomo, Ichiro Suzuki, and Hideki Matsui to play in the American Major Leagues. O’Doul’s finest moment came in 1949, when General Douglas MacArthur asked him to bring a baseball team to Japan, a tour that MacArthur later praised as one of the greatest diplomatic efforts in U.S. history. O’Doul became one of the most successful managers in the Pacific Coast League and was instrumental in spreading baseball’s growth and popularity in Japan. He is still beloved in Japan, where in 2002 he was inducted into the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame.
Author: Robert K. Fitts
Author: Robert K. Fitts
Author: Robert K. Fitts
Author: Robert K. Fitts
Author: Robert K. Fitts
Author: Fitts, Robert K.
Author: Curt Smith
Author: Aaron Pribble
Author: Robert K. Fitts
Author: David Pietrusza
Author: Dennis Snelling