Banzai Babe Ruth : Baseball, Espionage, & Assassination During the 1934 Tour of Japan

Fitts, Robert K.

ISBN 10: 0803229844 / ISBN 13: 9780803229846

Verlag: University of Nebraska Press, 2012

Beschreibung

Bestandsnummer des Verkäufers 15841323-n

Bibliografische Details

• Titel: Banzai Babe Ruth : Baseball, Espionage, & Assassination During the 1934 Tour of Japan
• Verlag: University of Nebraska Press
• Erscheinungsjahr: 2012
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN-10: 0803229844
• ISBN-13: 9780803229846
• Einband: Hardcover
• Zustand: New

Über diesen Titel

Inhaltsangabe

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.

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Robert K. Fitts graduated from the University of Pennsylvania and received a PhD from Brown University. Originally trained as an archeologist of colonial America, Fitts left that field to focus on his passion, Japanese baseball. He is also the author of Remembering Japanese Baseball: An Oral History of the Game and Wally Yonamine: The Man Who Changed Japanese Baseball (Nebraska, 2008).