Crossroads: The 1958 St. Louis Cardinals Tour of Japan

November 26, 1958 cover of Shukan Baseball depicting Stan Musial and Shigeo Nagashima (Robert Fitts Collection)

 

Game Seven of the 1958 Japan Series featured a winner-take-all finish to a classic contest between two storied franchises.

In the bottom of the ninth, with a six-run lead, 21-year-old Kazuhisa Inao stared down at Shigeo Nagashima, ready to wrap up one the most famous pitching feats in Japan Series history. He had earned the win in the previous three games for the Nishitetsu Lions and was prepared to win his fourth in a row, and with it the championship. With such a comfortable lead, Inao had little to worry about, even though he faced Nagashima, the star rookie of the Yomiuri Giants. The Rookie of the Year hit a high fly ball deep into Korakuen Stadium that the Lions center fielder couldn’t make a play on. Nagashima displayed his blazing speed and sailed around the bases for an inside-the-park home run. Inao then finished off the remaining Giants and took the crown.

Though Nagashima’s home run had little effect on the outcome of the game, the matchup represented the best of baseball in Japan and the future of the sport. At the same moment, roughly 680 miles (1,100 kilometers) away in Seoul, the St. Louis Cardinals were playing a Korean all-star team in preparation for a 16-game tour against Japan’s best. A few days later, they would face an all-star team built around Nagashima and Inao, assembled by tour sponsor Mainichi Shimbun and tour organizer Yetsuo Higa, to showcase the young talent that would be the future of Japanese baseball.1

THE TOUR STARTS

To quote Jim Brosnan, who was splitting duties by pitching for the Cardinals and covering the tour for the St. Louis Post Dispatch, “From one of the longest runways in the world, San Francisco, we took off on the longest trip of this or any other year. By sunrise on the tenth we gained four hours changing time zones and explaining to the stomach wha’ hoppen [sic] in our 28-hour day.”2 The tour began in earnest the next day in front of a mere 3,000 fans at the Maui County Fairgrounds in Kahului, on the island of Maui. They faced a team that featured Bob Turley, Lew Burdette, and Eddie Mathews bolstering a collection of local ballplayers that Higa put together.3

Two years before, Commissioner Ford Frick had helped arrange for the two major Japanese papers, Yomiuri Shimbun and Mainichi Shimbun, to host US tours, after each paper had tried to host teams in 1955. The solution was to alternate responsibility every other year, beginning with the 1956 Dodgers tour.4 Yomiuri had hosted first and it was no surprise that the Giants had played a big role. This time Higa, a Nisei businessman representing Mainichi, had arranged the tour to be unlike previous tours, pitting a Japanese all-star team against the Cardinals.5

Although formidable, St. Louis was a team in transition. The Cardinals in 1958 had finished fifth in the National League. The only real highlights of the season were Stan Musial’s 3,000th hit and the debut of Curt Flood, who eventually helped the team to three pennants. Most of the team’s regulars made the trip, including Musial, Don Blasingame, Ken Boyer, Vinegar Bend Mizell, Wally Moon, Hal Smith, and Gene Green.6 However, last-minute substitutions, even after the vaccination shots had been administered, gave rise to a team that much more resembled the 1959 Cardinals. Gene Freese, Billy Muffett, and Hobie Landrith had already received their shots and clearances when they received trade notices just days before the team left. The 1958 coaching staff was set to go, too, but they were let go at the end of the season, two weeks after manager Fred Hutchinson received his pink slip.7

Instead, newly minted Cardinals Alex Grammas, Bob Blaylock, and Ernie Broglio, along with brand- new manager Solly Hemus, made the trip. The pitching corps included Sam Jones, Mizell, Larry Jackson, and newcomers Blaylock and Broglio, the latter a promising rookie who was later (infamously) traded for Lou Brock.8 After tours by the San Francisco Seals in 1949 and all-star teams in 1951 and 1953, Japan had been visited by all three teams from New York. It was not shocking that the Cardinals were the third choice for 1958, behind the AL and NL pennant winners. Higa had made his play, but when major stars on both the Yanks and Braves decided against making the trip overseas, Higa was forced to reassess and offer the tour to St. Louis. His relationship with Cardinals, and the involvement of J.G. Taylor Spink, drove the decision, as well as an ability to exploit Musial’s stardom against an all-star team designed to showcase Japan’s youth.9

Also along on the tour was Cardinals broadcaster Joe Garagiola. He was at the mike to broadcast a select number of games aired via tape-delay over KMOX Radio in St. Louis. The Sporting News claimed it was the first time a domestic radio station had broadcast baseball from overseas.10

After the Kahului game, which the Cardinals took, 4 1, on Larry Jackson’s strong arm and his third-inning home run off Burdette, the two teams met twice in Honolulu.11 The Cardinals won the first game in a 9-1 rout, collecting six runs in five innings off Bob Turley, fresh off his historic Game Seven World Series win. St. Louis tacked on three more runs off Len Kasparovitch. The sole run for the Hawaiian All-Stars came when Ken Kimura drove in Wally Dupont, who had reached third when his base hit skipped past center fielder Bobby Gene Smith and rolled to the fence.12 In the final game, St. Louis edged the Hawaiian All-Stars, 5-4. Mathews tied the game, 4-4, with a home run off Broglio in the fourth, but two consecutive Hawaiian errors in the fifth allowed the Cardinals to regain the lead. The true star of the game was former Dartmouth pitcher Jimmy Doole, a schoolteacher who held the Cardinals to one hit during the final three innings.13 Strong seasonal rain forced the cancellation of a game in Guam, but otherwise the Cardinals soundly defeated the opposition in games at Manila and the Air Force Base in Kadena, Okinawa, before boarding the plane to Japan.14

JAPAN

The touring group arrived in Tokyo on October 20 to a 1,500-person welcome party at Tokyo International Airport. In 13 open-topped cars, the team then paraded through streets packed with fans before arriving at the Imperial Hotel.15 They caught Game Six of the Japan Series and then set out on a two-day trip to South Korea to play before 25,000 fans in Seoul, including President Syngman Rhee.16 After they returned to Japan, there was a workout in Tokyo attended by nearly as many fans, before the real contests against the Japan All-Stars began on October 24 in a sold-out Korakuen Stadium, where the 1,200-yen seats were going for 10,000 yen on the side.17

The Cardinals faced a formidable foe. The Mainichi newspaper distributed a supplement to advertise the tour that listed a Japanese roster that averaged just 24 years old—a whole generation of players coming into their own. Nankai Hawks ace Matsuo Minagawa was described as “specializing in terrific shoots,” an ode to his side-arm screwball, which, along with his slider, baffled hitters into the late 1960s. He was one of the 23 future Japanese Hall of Famers on the squad,joining several players not bom in Japan, like the Cuban Roberto “Chico” Barbon and Bill Nishida, a Nisei born in Hawaii. But it was Shigeo Nagashima who was the real sensation of Nippon Professional Baseball and would be “the most watched player in the coming series against the Cardinals.”18 He was already a “national hero,” even before joining the Giants due to his turning Rikkyo University into champions. Nagashima signed the largest contract for a rookie in Japanese history (to that date) and came through with a spectacular performance, leading the Central League in home runs and winning the Rookie of the Year Award.19 As the series got under way, Nagashima was praised by both Japanese and touring Cardinals as being a “major-league third baseman.”20 Besides Nagashima, the young All-Stars included Futoshi Nakanishi, Tatsuro Hirooka, and Katsuya Nomura, as well as aces Inao, Tadashi Sugiura, Takao Kajimoto, Motoshi Fujita, and 20-year-old Tetsuya Yoneda.21 Added to that core was one of the best pitchers in the history of the game, Japan’s only 400-game winner, Masaichi Kaneda, who was already well known to US fans as the man who had struck out Mickey Mantle three times in the second game of the Yankees’ 1955 tour.22 These players formed the core of Japanese baseball for the next decade as the sport moved into its own, with Nagashima at its center, epitomizing both youth and progress.

With the stadium full and the cameras broadcasting across Japan, the tour was underway. The Cardinals took the game, 5-2, but the star of the day was Nagashima, who hit a home run in a game that saw no homers from the Americans. Stan Musial went hitless. The two All-Star runs came on home runs by Nagashima and Chunichi Dragons sure-hitting second baseman Noboru Inoue. Mizell got the win thanks to Don Blasingame, who notched three hits off Tetsuya Yoneda and Masaaki Koyama.23

The next day’s game featured a start by Kazuhisa Inao, who did not pitch in the first game, possibly because he needed rest after his recent performance in the Japan Series. Inao, in his third full season, had attained a superhuman veneer after capturing all four of the Lions’ wins in the Japan Series. The press referred to him as the “Iron Man” and “Superman.”24 The sellout crowd, including Foreign Minister Aiichiro Fujiyama, who threw out the first pitch, appeared thin due to a steady rain that eventually led to the game’s premature end.25 Nonetheless, countless fans cheered on the All-Star team from home on television.

The rain started falling in the second inning, which saw Inao, along with Nishita and future Hall of Famer Takao Kajimoto, give up 13 hits over six innings to lose 8-2. The Cardinals broke out in the fourth, knocking in four runs, all off Inao, who gave up seven hits. Larry Jackson pitched six innings, giving up four hits—though one was a 390-foot homer off Nakanishi’s bat.26 The driving rain eventually forced the umpires to call the game at the end of six innings.27

About 185 miles (300 kilometers) away in Sendai on October 27, the All-Stars won their first game, as Kazuhisa Inao showed off his ironman stuff. Coming back on only two days’ rest, Inao pitched three innings in a relief to grab the win after southpaw Atsushi Aramaki had allowed the Cardinals to knot the game, 2-2, in the top of the seventh. In the bottom of the seventh, the Japanese surged ahead on “three walks, a wild pitch, a sacrifice bunt and two costly errors for four runs” to win, 6-3.28

The tour then moved to Sapporo, where on October 28, before 30,000 fans, the Cardinals won 9-1. Blaylock pitched a brilliant seven-inning stretch, giving up only an inside-the-park homer to Nagashima along with one other hit.29 Two days later, the Cardinals won another behind Bobby Smith’s two doubles, a single, and a homer, just barely missing the cycle. However, Smith didn’t leave the stadium without claiming one—he was awarded a motorcycle as MVP of the game, and then proceeded to drive around the infield as the crowd cheered him on.30 The Cardinals won again, 7-2, in Nagoya before another game scheduled for November 1 in Osaka was rained out. On November 2 the Cardinals faced Aramaki in Nishinomiya. Aramaki held the Americans to one run in five innings before being removed for a pinch-hitter. Inao came in but the Cardinals scored three in the seventh and won handily 6-1.31

According to The Sporting News, the “Cardinals were in formal dress more than baseball flannels” as they moved from party to party, highlighted by an audience with Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi and Ambassador Douglas MacArthur II (the general’s nephew).32

The tour’s largest crowd showed up at Koshien Stadium on November 3.33 Each August, Koshien is home to the National High School Championship, which, along with the spring invitational, showcases the future of Japanese baseball. The 1957 tournament had featured a legendary performance by Sadaharu Oh, and the August 1958 tournament had seen the first team from Okinawa to participate—a great step forward in the relationship between the occupied island and mainland Japan.34 Before the game, a home run contest was held. Shigeo Nagashima paced the All-Stars with seven home runs, matched only by Musial. In the end, the All-Stars eked out a 15-14 victory, though the crowd cheered each and every dinger, proving the old adage “you can’t boo a home run.”35 Before roughly 50,000 energized fans at Koshien, Masaaki Koyama pitched brilliantly over eight innings holding the Cardinals to two runs. Ken Boyer proved to be the heavy hitter, tying the game in the ninth with a home run and then winning it in the 10th by driving in Blasingame.36

Sitting in the crowd that day was Haruki Murakami. The future award-winning writer recalled:

When I was nine, in the fall, the St. Louis Cardinals played a goodwill game against an All-Star Japanese team. The great Stan Musial was at his peak then, and he faced two top Japanese pitchers, Kazuhisa Inao and Tadashi Sugiura, in an amazing showdown. My father and I went to Koshien Stadium to see the game. We were in the infield seats along first base, near the front. Before the game began, the Cardinals’ players made a circuit of the whole stadium, tossing signed soft rubber tennis balls to the crowd. People leapt to their feet, shouting, vying to grab the balls. But I just sat in my seat, vacantly watching all of this happen. I figured that a little kid like me had no chance of getting one of those signed balls. The next instant, however, I suddenly found one of them in my lap. By total chance, it just happened to land there. Plop—like some divine revelation.

“Good for you,” my father told me. He sounded half shocked, half admiring. Come to think of it, when I became a novelist at age thirty, he said almost the same thing to me. Half shock, half admiration. That was probably the greatest, most memorable thing that happened to me when I was a boy. Maybe the most blessed event I ever experienced. Could it be that my love for baseball stadiums sprang from this incident? I took that treasured white ball back home, of course, but that’s all I remember about it. What ever happened to that ball? Where could it have possibly gone?37

The second game in Osaka saw half the crowd but provided twice the thrill as the Japanese All-Stars punished the Cardinals for their second win of the series. Futoshi Nakanishi, whom the Cardinals nicknamed “Big Buffalo,” hit a grand slam after Blaylock loaded the bases in the fourth inning, and added a two-run double in the sixth off Brosnan, driving in six of the All-Stars’ nine runs. “Too much Buffalo,” quipped Cardinals manager Solly Hemus after the game.38 Tadashi Sugiura allowed two runs over nine innings to earn the victory.39

The home-run derby wasn’t the only exhibition that Mainichi had planned for the tour’s stop in Osaka. At their broadcast studio, the paper arranged for four members of each team, including Nakanishi and Brosnan, to participate in a singing contest live on- air.40 Joe Garagiola taped the contest for future broadcast and referred to it as “the highlight of the whole tour.”41 Brosnan noted that the real entertainment was the lack of musical talent among professional ballplayers, and there was a general sense of teasing and self-deprecation.42

While the broadcast ended up a fun goodwill gesture, in the vein of so many vaudeville appearances by pro ballplayers dating back nearly a century, an undercurrent of racial insensitivity by poking fun at cross-cultural differences persisted in other aspects of the tour. The American press often contained racially insensitive terms, images, and innuendos. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch mocked stereotypical Japanese English with the headline “So-Sorry Cards Make Sad Sam at Home in Japan, Boot Game.”43 The Sporting News ran cartoons featuring buck-toothed and squinty- eyed Japanese fans—a style now called yellowface that was commonly used in American propaganda during World War II.44 Even Garagiola at times expressed a giddy fondness for poking fun at cultural differences, such as insensitive quips about how bowing was just a way for businessmen to check the size of your bankroll.45

National League Secretary-Treasurer Fred Fleig proclaimed that the Japanese All-Stars were the equivalent of Triple-A players and that they lacked “quick judgment and alertness for unexpected situations.”46 He praised Koshien Stadium as ranking with Yankee Stadium and Municipal Stadium. His comments reflected the patronizing and racially insensitive viewpoints of many in the US traveling party and press in postwar Japan. These evolving racial and national identities exemplify both countries at a crossroads, as the prejudices of the Second World War era evolved into the coming challenges of the 1960s. Though toned down from the racist rhetoric of previous times, it was still problematic. This in turn was juxtaposed with the team’s solemn visit to Hiroshima.

On November 6 the teams went to Hiroshima and were greeted by Mayor Tadao Watanabe and a flower-throwing crowd in front of the Hotel New Hiroshima. Before the game, Musial and Hemus held a baseball clinic at the American Cultural Center for 250 Japanese players and fans.47 Before 20,000 excited fans, Atsushi Aramaki faced Ernie Broglio, who pitched a complete game despite two first-inning wild pitches that led to a run. The Cardinals hit Aramaki hard, going ahead 6-1 in the top of the sixth inning. Once again it was the rookie Nagashima who provided the punch for the All-Stars. After Kenjiro Tamiya reached base in the bottom of the ninth, Nagashima patiently waited for his pitch before hitting a 3-and-2 meatball over the left-field stands. However, it wasn’t enough, and the All-Stars fell, 6-3.48

Earlier in the day, the American visitors had visited the Memorial Monument for Hiroshima and placed floral bouquets at the base of the arch. Then the club physician, Dr. L.C. Middleman, trainer Bob Bauman, coach Johnny Keane, and players Don Blasingame and Alex Grammas visited the 72 patients at the Hiroshima Atomic-Bomb Survivors Hospital signing autographs and offering kind words.49 Solly Hemus kept a video diary of the trip to Hiroshima, but his camera was stolen from the dugout during pregame ceremonies. Before he returned home, local fan Tsutomu Hayashi presented Hemus with a gift of over 150 feet of footage taken in Hiroshima, “in the interest of better US-Japan relations.”50

The next day an earthquake hit while the team was waiting for a train to Fukuoka, but the players did not feel the tremors. At Heiwadai Stadium on November 8, Bishop Seiemon Fukahori of the Fukuoka Catholic Church, presented the Cardinals with a silk pennant embroidered with the team’s logo. This was a thank-you from leprosy patients at the Biwasaki Leprosarium, who were expressing their gratitude for Christmas gifts the Cardinals sent to the hospital in 1941.51 Attendance up to this point was 338,000 in addition to the millions who tuned in at home.52 Stan Musial had knocked out 12 hits for a .324 average—however, he had yet to smack a home run. (Some of the Cardinals players complained that the Japanese balls used during the tour were dead.)53 Meanwhile Nagashima had three, in addition to his seven from the home-run contest. Fukuoka fans came out to Heiwadai Stadium 30,000 strong on November 8, cheering Cardinals starter Phil Paine, who had pitched for the Nishitetsu Lions for a few games in 1953 while he served with the US Fifth Infantry Division stationed at Camp Drake in Fukuoka. The crowd saw him pitch out of a jam in the first by striking out Nakanishi, and then witnessed Musial finally slam his first home run, as the Cardinals won 5-1.54

After a 7-1 St. Louis victory in Shimonoseki, Broglio then nearly no-hit the All-Stars the next game, played three days later in Shizuoka. Supported by home runs from Wally Moon and Gene Green and 15 hits off Sugiura, Zenjiro Tadokoro, and Hiroomi Oyane, Broglio held the All-Stars hitless for 6⅔ innings. With two outs in the seventh, Kenjiro Tamiya eked out a single for Japan’s only hit of the afternoon. Sam Jones finished it off with two hitless innings to hand the All-Stars their only shutout of the tour.55

HOME

The last game before heading back to Tokyo was played in Mito on November 13. Masayuki Dobashi started for All-Japan but was relieved in the fifth by Bill Nishita, the Nisei who had played on and off in Japan since joining Yomiuri in 1952. Nishita pitched in the International League, the American Association, and the Pacific Coast League, as well as in the Central and Pacific Leagues in Japan, and with UC Berkeley—a true journeyman. The Cardinals won 5-1, thanks to Blasingame, who repeated his four-hit day from November 9, and also Gene Green, who homered twice.56 Green’s good fortune continued into the trip home and December, when he married St. Louis model Mari-Frances Rosenthal, a match The Sporting News dubbed a “wedding of blond and blond.”57

It was back to Tokyo on the next to last day of the tour, in front of 20,000 shivering fans at Korakuen Stadium. Though they were treated to a 400-foot, two-run homer off the bat of Nakanishi, the Cardinals eventually walked away with the game, 9-2, as they racked up 16 hits. Blasingame nearly hit for the cycle: After hitting a single and triple, he homered to deep center off Tetsuya Yoneda.58

November 16 marked the final day of the tour. A doubleheader at Korakuen Stadium attracted 80,000 fans. In the morning Takashi Suzuki faced off against Sam Jones. A pair of solo home runs by Green highlighted the 8-2 victory for the Cardinals.59 In the second game Japan was up 2-0 in the sixth when Boyer homered off Inao to cut the lead in half. The Cardinals took the lead in the seventh behind Lee Tate’s two-run double and another Boyer RBI.60 This brought the tour to a close with 14 wins for the Cardinals against only two wins for the Japan All-Stars, bucking the prediction by “Japanese baseball experts” that the Cardinals would match the 1956 Dodgers and lose four or five games.61 Yet each game was a display of the young talent in the Japanese game, and an affirmation that the Japanese were becoming strong enough to complete with talent from the major leagues. Nagashima lived up to the hype and was awarded the trophy as MVP of the Japanese team, which was donated by J.G. Taylor Spink.62 In the eyes of many Giants fans, Nagashima would be the heart of a Yomiuri team that announced during the tour that it would no longer sign foreign players, stating, “Japanese baseball should be played by Japanese players.”63

Stan Musial hung on for a few more seasons, but it was a new generation of players who would take St. Louis to heights in the 1960s. And despite Yomiuri’s announcement that it would no longer recruit foreign players, other teams leapt at the chance. During the trip, three Cardinals pitchers—Phil Paine, Bill Wight, and Jim Brosnan—were even offered contracts to pitch in Japan during the 1959 season.64 All three declined, though only Brosnan was still officially a Cardinal after Wight was released and Paine demoted in the middle of the tour.65 Don Blasingame’s performance over the course of the tour cemented his visage in the minds of Japanese fans, and was the start of a long-lasting relationship between him and Japan.66 He would spend a decade and a half playing, coaching, and managing in Japan after a long major-league career.

Though the Cardinals seemed to represent the end of an era, the young talent represented in the Japanese All-Star team signaled a new beginning. The 1958 tour was at the crossroads of postwar bridge-building, straddling the end of the American occupation with the 1960s and beyond. Wally Yonamine made way for Sadaharu Oh, who joined the Giants in 1959, creating the “Oh-Nagashima Cannon” that drove the golden era of baseball in Japan. Sugiura, another rookie in 1958, won both Pacific League MVP and Japan Series MVP honors in 1959 on his way to a Hall of Fame career. And though Inao would not win another MVP after his back-to-back awards in 1957 and 1958, he won 30 games in 1959 and continued to dominate batters in Japan for the next decade. The tours of Japan that followed continued to strengthen the relationship between the two countries and their baseball leagues. When Ichiro is inducted into Cooperstown, he will have players like Nagashima and Blasingame in his baseball DNA, as well as the strong bonds engendered by 1958’s new direction.67

ADAM BERENBAK is an archivist with the National Archives Center for Legislative Archives in Washington, DC. He has been a member of SABR for over a decade and his research focuses on the history of baseball in Japan. He has published articles on Japanese baseball in the SABR Baseball Research Journal and on the blog Our Game, curated an exhibition with the Japanese Embassy’s Cultural Center in DC, and contributed to a number of articles and books. He has also published several essays on other baseball topics in the Baseball Research Journal, Prologue, and Zisk, and he curated an exhibition on tobacco cards in conjunction with the Museum of Durham History and the Durham Bulls Athletic Park. Besides this book, his work was featured in a SABR book on Jackie Robinson.

 

 

NOTES

1 Oscar Kahan, “Spink Trophy to Go to Japanese Player Selected by Cards,” The Sporting News, October 1, 1958: 30.

2 Jim Brosnan, “’Eastward Ho!’ With Brosnan, Or, Getting Way Up with the Birds,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 13, 1958: 4C.

3 Kahan, “Spink Trophy to go to Japanese Player Selected by Cards.”

4 “Frick Suggests Nipponese Copy U.S. Organized Ball,” The Sporting News, November 9, 1955: 9.

5 “Cardinals Get Japan Trip,” Washington Post and Times Herald, July 31, 1958: C1.

6 Oscar Kahan, “‘Cardinals Going to Japan to Win,’ Devine’s Promise,” The Sporting News, October 15, 1958: 5.

7 “Two More Who Took Shots Kayoed on Bird List for Trip,” The Sporting News, October 15, 1958: 5.

8 Kahan, “‘Cardinals Going to Japan to Win,’ Devine’s Promise.”

9 Harry Mitauer, “Cards Getting Set for Trip to Japan,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, July 30, 1958: 15.

10 Oscar Kahan, “Radio First—KMOX to Carry Games on Tour,” The Sporting News, October 15, 1958: 5.

11 Red McQueen, “Cardinals Pound Burdette and Turley Before Small Crowds in Hawaii Game,” The Sporting News, October 22, 1958: 7.

12 Kenny Haina, “Cards Shell Turley for 9-1 Victory,” Honolulu Advertiser, October 13, 1958: 8.

13 Monte Ito, “Cards Edge Hawaii All-Stars, 5-4,” Honolulu Advertiser, October 14, 1958: 9.

14 McQueen, “Cardinals Pound Burdette and Turley Before Small Crowds in Hawaii Game.”

15 “Cardinals Will Be Contenders, Hemus Informs Japanese,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 20, 1958: 4C.

16 Lee Kavetski, “Redbirds Cop Six in Row Prior to ‘Invasion’ of Japan,” The Sporting News, October 29, 1958: 10.

17 Associated Press, “20,000 Watch Cards Work Out in Tokyo, Solly Suspects Spies,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 23, 1958, 1E; “Japanese Scalpers Ask $27 for Seats Priced at $3.34,” The Sporting , October 22, 1958: 7.

18 “Japanese Baseball’s Finest,” Mainichi—Supplement, October 1958: 21.

19 Robert K. Fitts, Wally Yonamine: The Man Who Changed Japanese Baseball (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2012), 226.

20 Lee Kavetski, “Bonus Baby Nagashima in Lead for Spink Trophy as Japan’s MVP,” The Sporting News, November 12, 1958: 5.

21 “Japanese Baseball’s Finest.”

22 Fitts, Wally Yonamine, 96.

23 “Birds Win; 2 Homers by Japan,” St. Louis Post Dispatch, October 24, 1958: 5C.

24 “20,000 Watch Cards Work Out in Tokyo, Solly Suspects Spies,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 23, 1958, 6E.

25 Lee Kavetski, “Japanese Pitching Curbs Cardinals Homers: Musial Has Bad Day, Then Three Safe Blows in Game,” The Sporting News, November 5, 1958: 9.

26 United Press International, “Musial Gets 3 Hits as Cards Win, 8-2,” St. Lernis Post-Dispatch, October 26, 1958: 2E.

27 “Cards Top Stars in Tokyo,” New York , October 26, 1958: S10.

28 United Press International, “So-Sorry Cards Make Sad Sam at Home in Japan, Boot Game,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 27, 1958: 5C; “Japanese Deal Cards 6-3 Defeat in Sendai,” Pacific Stars and Stripes, October 28, 1958: 24.

29 “Cardinals Get the Long Ball and Big Inning in 9-1 Win,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 28, 1958: 4B.

30 Kavetski, “Japanese Pitching Curbs Cardinals’ Homers: Musial Has Bad Day, Then Three Safe Blows in Game,” 10.

31 Lee Kavetski, “Cards’ Japan Tour Real Good-Will Jaunt,” The Sporting News, November 12, 1958: 5.

32 Lee Kavetski, “It’s Party, Party After Party for Redbirds in Japan,” The Sporting News, November 5, 1958: 9.

33 Kavetski, “Cards’ Japan Tour Real Good-Will Jaunt.”

34 Sadaharu Oh and David Falkner, Sadaharu Oh: A Zen Way of Baseball (New York: Times Books, 1984), 46; Satoshi Shimizu, “The Significance of Koshien in Postwar Okinawa: A Representation of Okinawa,” International Journal of the History of Sport Volume 29, Issue 17, November 2012.

35 “Musial, Nagashima Hit 7 as Cards Lose Homer Contest,” The Sporting News, November 12, 1958: 5.

36 “Boyer Most Honorable Batter as Cards Beat Japanese in 10th,” St. Louis Post Dispatch, November 3, 1958: 5B.

37 “The Yakult Swallows Poetry Collection,” in Haruki Murakami, First Person Singular (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2020), 214-15.

38 “Nakanishi Ruined Us—Hemus,” Pacific Stars and Stripes, November 5, 1958: 24.

39 “Grand Slam Homer Hit Off Blaylock as Cards Lose, 9-2,” St. Louis Post Dispatch, November 4, 1958: 4B.

40 Jim Brosnan, “East Meets West in Harmony; Cards a Vaudeville Hit,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, November 7, 1958: 6C.

41 Brosnan, “East Meets West in Harmony; Cards a Vaudeville Hit.”

42 Brosnan, “East Meets West in Harmony; Cards a Vaudeville Hit.”

43 “So-Sorry Cards Make Sad Sam at Home in Japan, Boot Game.”

44 “Having Swell Time, Wish You Were Here,” The Sporting News, November 12, 1958: 5; “Japan Hails Cards as ‘Most Spirited’ Team,” The Sporting News, November 19, 1958: 5.

45 Jim Brosnan, “Cardinals Wowed ’em in Japan,” St. Louis Post Dispatch, November 30, 1958: 1G.

46 “‘Japanese Are Good, but Need Experience in Minors’—Fleig,” The Sporting News, November 12, 1958: 10.

47 Lee Kavetski, “Hiroshima Visit Touching Highlight of Redbird Trip,” The Sporting News, November 19, 1958: 6.

48 “Cards Kayo 17-Game Winner in Hiroshima Victory,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, November 6, 1958: 6E.

49 Kavetski, “Hiroshima Visit Touching Highlight of Redbird Trip.”

50 Lee Kavetski, “Redbirds Attract 430,000 in Rolling to 14-2 record,” The Sporting News, November 26, 1958: 8.

51 Kavetski, “Hiroshima Visit Touching Highlight of Redbird Trip.”

52 Lee Kavetski, “All-Out Hustle Displayed by Redbirds Makes Big Hit with Nipponese Crowds,” The Sporting , November 19, 1958: 5.

53 Kavetski, “Japanese Pitching Curbs Cardinals Homers.”

54 United Press International, “Birds Win; Musial, Paine Star,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, November 9, 1958: 6G.

55 Associated Press, “Cardinals Clobber Japan Stars 8-0 With Fifteen Hits,” Japan Times, November 13, 1958: 5; Kavetski, “All-Out Hustle Displayed by Redbirds Makes Big Hit with Nipponese Crowds.”

56 “Moon and Green Hit Homers in 5-1 Cardinal Victory,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, November 13, 1958: 1E.

57 Oscar Kahan, “Brosnan Big Chief of Cards’ Fireman Brigade—1.67 ERA,” The Sporting News, November 19, 1958: 8.

58 “Birds Get 16 Hits, Win, 9-2,” St. Louis Post Dispatch, November 15, 1958: 6A.

59 “Cardinals Have Fun, Hits, 8-2,” St. Louis Post Dispatch, November 16, 1958: 2F.

60 Kavetski, “Redbirds Attract 430,000 in Rolling to 14-2 record.”

61 Lee Kavetski, “Cards to Face 50 of Japan’s Best on Jaunt,” The Sporting News, October 15, 1958: 5.

62 Lee Kavetski, “Cardinals Vote Nagashima Top Nippon Player,” The Sporting News, November 26, 1958: 7.

63 “Yomiuri Giants Won’t Sign Foreign Players, Prexy Says,” The Sporting News, November 19, 1958: 6.

64 Peter Golenbock, The Spirit of St. Louis: A History of the St. Louis Cardinals and Browns (New York: Harper Entertainment, 2000), 428.

65 Tom Hopkins, “Sportraitures,” Honolulu Star-Bulletin, October 27, 1958: 22.

66 Robert K. Fitts, Remember Japanese Baseball: An Oral History of the Game (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2005), 109.

67 Ichiro will be on the Hall of Fame ballot for the first time in December 2024.

68 Listed Japanese players have a minimum of 5 at-bats. Yoshikazu Matsubayashi, Baseball Game History: Japan vs. U.S.A. (Tokyo: Baseball Magazine, 2004), 93; Nippon Professional Baseball Records, https://www.2689web.com/nb.html.