Reviewed by: Issei Baseball: The Story of the First Japanese American Baseball Players by Robert K. Fitts R. Zachary Sanzone Robert K. Fitts. Issei Baseball: The Story of the First Japanese American Baseball Players. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2020. 344 pp. $29.95. Not everyone knows that the Japanese love baseball. Next to the United States and Latin America, Japan’s love for baseball knows no bounds. While this tidbit wouldn’t surprise most avid baseball fans, few of them actually know the extent of Japanese baseball history. As a baseball writer and historian, I didn’t know nearly as much as I thought I did. I knew about Japanese pitcher Eiji Sawamura, who in 1934 at the age of seventeen struck out Babe Ruth, Jimmie Foxx, Charlie Gehringer, and Lou Gehrig. I also knew that General Douglas MacArthur wanted the Japanese to start playing baseball as soon as possible after their surrender in September of 1945 to create some semblance of normalcy again. But between those two facts, I knew nothing at all about Japanese baseball, which is why I was excited to read and review Issei Baseball: The Story of the First Japanese American Baseball Players. Written by Robert K. Fitts, who also authored Banzai Babe Ruth: Baseball, Espionage, and Assassination during the 1934 Tour of Japan, Issei Baseball is the story about Japanese immigrants who came to America at the turn of the twentieth century. They formed the first Japanese professional baseball club, playing teams throughout the American Midwest between 1906 and 1911. Before I picked up this book, I didn’t even know that there was a Japanese baseball team in America in the early twentieth century. But through Fitts’s engaging and well-researched book, readers not only learn about the young Issei (Japanese immigrants), and the bigotry they faced throughout their playing days but also learn about how these players helped create a positive outlook on the Japanese for Americans. Fitts’s introduction provides a brief but engaging overview of baseball and the Japanese, effectively setting up a strong context that readers will be able to understand and appreciate. We initially learn that baseball came to Japan along with Commodore Matthew Perry in 1853. His arrival led to the breakdown of Japan’s efforts to remain isolated, which led to a modern Japan. Wanting their children to be able to adapt more easily to Western culture as the twentieth century approached, Japanese families sent their kids to private schools where they learned to play the game of baseball. Nisei—Japanese people born outside Japan—used baseball as a way to bring people in their neighborhood together to discuss business and local issues. During World War II they played in the internment camps as a way to maintain morale in the face of oppression. While the book itself focuses on the pioneers of Japanese American base-ball, [End Page 212] all this knowledge about baseball’s role in Japanese history strongly compliments the narrative. I was particularly interested to learn more about the Japanese players’ American barnstorming tour in 1906. The tour, which lasted over half a year, saw American entrepreneur Guy Green’s Japanese Base Ball Club cover 2,500 miles and play around 170 games. What makes this chapter, and the book itself, so engaging is the brief historical references that Fitts makes throughout the book that give more meaning to the places where the team played. For example, the team played in Irving, Kansas where an 1879 tornado killed a girl named Dorothy Gale, which allegedly inspired L. Frank Baum to write The Wizard of Oz. Something else I found particularly interesting was how people in Topeka, Kansas were obsessed with Japanese culture. Ads for Japanese goods ran in local newspapers while local women dressed in traditional Japanese clothing for tea parties. Fitts’s ability to briefly but clearly reference these pieces of information breathes life into the book that many authors cannot effectively do. He’s able to balance the details of his narrative without going off on tangents or giving additional unnecessary information. Fitts’s use of quotes lifted from newspapers that covered the game is also very effective...