About this item
Baseball has been called America's true melting pot, a game that unites us as a people. Issei Baseball is the story of the pioneers of Japanese American baseball, Harry Saisho, Ken Kitsuse, Tom Uyeda, Tozan Masko, Kiichi Suzuki, and others - young men who came to the United States to start a new life but found bigotry and discrimination. In 1905 they formed a baseball club in Los Angeles and began playing local amateur teams. Inspired by the Waseda University baseball team's 1905 visit to the West Coast, they became the first Japanese professional baseball club on either side of the Pacific and barnstormed across the American Midwest in 1906 and 1911. Tens of thousands came to see "how the minions of the Mikado played the national pastime." As they played, the Japanese earned the respect of their opponents and fans, breaking down racial stereotypes.
About the Author
Born in Philadelphia, Robert K. Fitts graduated from the University of Pennsylvania and earned a Ph.D. in Anthropology from Brown University. As an archaeologist, Fitts specialized in slavery in eighteen-century New England and in Victorian New York City, publishing eight academic papers in peer-reviewed journals.
In 2000, Fitts left archaeology to write about the history of Japanese Baseball. His articles have appeared in The National Pastime, Baseball Research Journal, Journal of American Culture, Tuff Stuff and on MLB.com. His first book, Remembering Japanese Baseball won the 2005 Society of American Baseball Research & The Sporting News Award for Best Baseball Research. His second book, Wally Yonamine: The Man who Changed Japanese Baseball, focuses on the extraordinarily life of Wally Yonamine, the first Japanese-American to play for an NFL franchise and the first American to join professional baseball in Japan after WW2. Look for his next book, Banzai Babe Ruth, the story of the 1934 tour of Japan, in early 2012.
For more information visit RobFitts.com
