In Memoriam: John Holway
By Peter Warren
Before John Holway, most scholarly baseball research focused on the professional game in America. Holway’s research over the course of nearly eight decades brought recognition and fame to forgotten players around the world.
“John Holway has been researching baseball since 1944,” John Thorn wrote in SABR’s Baseball Research Journal in 2011. “Few, if any, may boast longer or more noteworthy contributions to baseball research.”
Because of Holway, Thorn wrote, knowledge and understanding of the Negro Leagues grew exponentially. A pioneer in researching baseball in the Negro Leagues and Japan, which earned him acclaim as a recipient of SABR’s Henry Chadwick Award and Bob Davids Award, Holway died on December 5, 2024, at the age of 95 in Springfield, Virginia.
John Bartlett Holway was born on November 12, 1929, in Glen Ridge, New Jersey, to Edward and Frances Holway. The family later moved to Alexandria, Virginia, where John attended George Washington High School.
After graduating from the University of Iowa, Holway served as a first lieutenant in the US Army during the Korean War. He was wounded, which earned him a Purple Heart, and was sent to Japan for the duration of his service, retiring as a colonel. He remained in Tokyo after the conflict ended, where he met Motoko Mori; the two married in 1954. He also became a big fan of Japanese baseball while abroad. In 1954, he published the first book ever written in English on the sport in Japan: Japan Is Big League In Thrills.
Holway also wrote the first English-language book on sumo wrestling, Sumo, in 1955 before returning to the United States. While he wasn’t as in tune with baseball in Japan after he left the country, he still served as a guide for research and information for many years afterward.
Holway’s contributions to Negro Leagues research were also influential for generations of future scholars. His interest in Black baseball began in 1945, when as a teenager he attended a game between the Kansas City Monarchs and Homestead Grays at Griffith Stadium in Washington, DC, featuring two all-time greats, Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson.
“I went down to the edge of the stands to see Satchel warming up in front of his bullpen and Josh was across the field warming up his pitcher,” Holway recalled in a 2020 SABR Oral History interview. “I think Satchel only pitched two (or) three innings to draw a crowd and then a guy named Hilton Smith came in and relieved him.”
The experience prompted a lifetime of research and writing. Holway decided to write a story on the slugging catcher Gibson, which appeared in the Washington Post and other syndicated newspapers in 1970. Holway started making calls to people who knew Gibson, and soon he began traveling across the country to interview many then-living Negro League stars, including Paige, Buck Leonard, and Cool Papa Bell.
Those interviews formed the basis of his groundbreaking 1975 book, Voices From the Great Black Baseball Leagues, which brought the history and impact of the Negro Leagues to a wider audience.
“From what I had stumbled on by accident was a virtually unexplored continent,” he wrote in the book’s introduction. “The world of black baseball history was not a mere footnote to baseball history — it was fully half of baseball history.”
Holway’s research helped bring the stories of the Negro Leagues into the mainstream, and he continued writing articles and books on the subject for the rest of his life. His titles included The Complete Book of the Negro Leagues; Black Diamonds; Josh Gibson; and Josh and Satch. Holway received the 1988 CASEY Award for Blackball Stars: Negro League Pioneers.
Holway — who joined SABR as member No. 57 just two months after the organization’s founding in 1971 and served as the first chairman of SABR’s Negro Leagues Committee — was awarded the Bob Davids Award in 1990 for his contributions to the organization. He was later honored with the Henry Chadwick Award in 2011.
Holway’s other favorite research subject was Ted Williams. Holway first saw Williams play at Yankee Stadium in the early 1940s, and the Splendid Splinter soon became his favorite player. Holway wrote three books (including one unpublished manuscript) about Williams, including The Last .400 Hitter (1991), focusing on the 1941 season, and Ted the Kid (2006), on Williams’s early life.
He made important contributions to the Macmillan Baseball Encyclopedia’s Negro League section and collaborated with Yoichi Nagata on the Total Sports Baseball Encyclopedia’s Japanese baseball section.
Outside of baseball, Holway worked for the United States Information Agency in its Voice of America unit as an economic analyst. In addition to his baseball books, he also freelanced articles for the New York Times, Washington Post, Sports Illustrated, and many other publications, covering the Olympic Games in Mexico City (1968) and Los Angeles (1984) and a number of World Series between 1948 and 1986. He published an oral history of the Tuskegee Airmen in 1997, which was adapted into the film Red Tails, produced by George Lucas. He also authored Bloody Ground: Black Rifles in Korea, about the 24th Infantry Regiment in the Korean War, the US Army’s last all-Black regiment.
Holway and his first wife, Motoko, adopted four children — Jim, John Jr., Diane, and Mona — before divorcing in 1976. He remarried to Eileen Cooper, who died in 2008. In recent years, he was cared for by his live-in caregiver, Becky Mensah. He is survived by his four children, four grandchildren, and five great-grandchildren; his siblings, Jane and Jim; and a nephew.
In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations to the International Fund for Animal Welfare.
Holway’s legacy as a pioneer in both Japanese and Negro Leagues baseball research, a dedicated explorer of baseball history, and an influential writer over the course of nearly eight decades will not soon be forgotten.
Originally published: December 17, 2024. Last Updated: December 17, 2024.