front cover of Nikkei Baseball
Nikkei Baseball
Japanese American Players from Immigration and Internment to the Major Leagues
Samuel Ragalado
University of Illinois Press, 2013
 
Nikkei Baseball examines baseball's evolving importance to the Japanese American community and the construction of Japanese American identity. Originally introduced in Japan in the late 1800s, baseball was played in the United States by Japanese immigrants first in Hawaii, then San Francisco and northern California, then in amateur leagues up and down the Pacific Coast. For Japanese American players, baseball was seen as a sport that encouraged healthy competition by imposing rules and standards of ethical behavior for both players and fans. The value of baseball as exercise and amusement quickly expanded into something even more important, a means for strengthening social ties within Japanese American communities and for linking their aspirations to America's pastimes and America's promise.
 
With World War II came internment and baseball and softball played behind barbed wire. After their release from the camps, Japanese Americans found their reentry to American society beset by anti-Japanese laws, policies, and vigilante violence, but they rebuilt their leagues and played in schools and colleges. Drawing from archival research, prior scholarship, and personal interviews, Samuel O. Regalado explores key historical factors such as Meji-era modernization policies in Japan, American anti-Asian sentiments, internment during World War II, the postwar transition, economic and educational opportunities in the 1960s, the developing concept of a distinct "Asian American" identity, and Japanese Americans' rise to the major leagues with star players including Lenn Sakata and Kurt Suzuki and even managers such as the Seattle Mariners' Don Wakamatsu.

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front cover of Spitting on Diamonds
Spitting on Diamonds
A Spitball Pitcher's Journey to the Major Leagues, 1911-1919
Clyde H. Hogg
University of Missouri Press, 2005
Spitball n., an illegal pitch in which a foreign substance (spit or Vaseline) is applied to the ball by the pitcher before it is thrown.
Dead ballera n., a time period during baseball, usually regarded as 1900–1919, when the game used a "dead" or almost soft ball during play. Usually, the same ball was used for the entire game.
In 1911, when Bradley Hogg began his major-league pitching career for the National League’s Boston Rustlers, baseball was a different game. Hogg played during a time known as the dead ball era, when a pitcher could spit on, shine up, or even roughen a ball to secure an advantage over a hitter. Although only seven World Series had been played at that point, the names of the best and most colorful players remain familiar today: Cy Young, Casey Stengel, Honus Wagner, Rogers Hornsby, and Christy Mathewson.
During his major and minor league career, Hogg played with or against twenty-seven Hall of Fame ballplayers and under the critical gaze of two Hall of Fame umpires and eleven Hall of Fame sportswriters. In Spitting on Diamonds, Clyde Hogg details the life of baseball’s everyman, including excerpts from newspapers throughout the country to bring to life the times in which Bradley Hogg played. The author shows how Hogg’s career is representative of the thousands of men who have played professional baseball since its inception more than 125 years ago, men who didn’t make it into the Hall of Fame or win awards but made it possible for millions of fans to enjoy the game. These players were the flannelled hosts of America’s favorite pastime and the ones who made the game what it was and is today.
The author uses Hogg’s career as a spitball pitcher in leagues from coast to coast to show the rapid change and growth of our nation between 1910 and 1920. With enough baseball statistics to satisfy even the most hard-core fan, this time capsule of early-twentieth-century America will appeal to sports enthusiasts and readers of general historical nonfiction alike. They will find in its pages an America now visible only in faded photographs, along with a version of the national pastime that no longer exists. Featuring multiple bunts, double steals, inside pitching, and the now outlawed “spitball,” as well as the skill it took to hit such deliveries, this game was hard, fast, and nonstop. Spitting on Diamonds lets the reader understand what it was like to live and play professional sports when America and its national pastime were coming of age.
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