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Playing Asahi baseball

By Len Corben, North Shore Outlook

Aug 23 2007

 

Despite the ugly episodes of Pearl Harbor, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the love of baseball has cemented a strong bond between Japan and North America.

 

Long before Babe Ruth and Lefty O’Doul led tours of big leaguers to Japan both before and after World War II – and long before Seattle fell in love with Ichiro and New York welcomed Hideki Matsui as Godzilla – the Asahi ball club of Vancouver made an historic journey to the Land of the Rising Sun.

 

It was on Aug. 25, 1921 – 86 years ago this weekend – that the Asahis left Vancouver on the Kashima-Maru (later torpedoed and sunk in 1943 during the War), for a three-month tour to play university and club teams in Japan.

 

The Japanese-Canadian Asahis were first organized in 1914 and became a feature of the flourishing senior baseball scene in Vancouver for years. That is until Pearl Harbor resulted in internment of virtually all persons of Japanese descent to the B.C. Interior in 1942.

 

However, the accomplishments of the Asahis still echoes through the ages and was climaxed by a tearfully happy enshrinement into the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame in St. Mary’s, Ont. on June 28, 2003.

 

But let’s go back to 1921.

 

 

For the full story, visit the above URL.

 

Rod Nelson