Clearing The Bases - Issue 064

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Hello and welcome to Issue 064 of Clearing The Bases, an email newsletter in conjunction with the My Baseball History podcast hosted by Dan Wallach.

On Wednesday, June 10^th, our latest episode with ROBERT K. FITTS went live.

No, your eyes are not deceiving you, and your memory isn’t playing tricks on you. This is Part Two of the first-ever two-part episode of My Baseball History! So, if you read that previous line and thought “wait, didn’t I already read an email announcing an episode with Rob??” … you’re not wrong. But what Rob and I talk about in this new episode, which just came out on June 10^th, is completely different than what we discussed in the other episode, which came out on Wednesday, May 13^th.

To refresh your memory, Rob is an award-winning American researcher and author who has spent decades learning about and telling the history of baseball in Japan. He is the author of eleven books on Japanese baseball and Japanese baseball cards. In 2025, Rob was the recipient of SABR’s Henry Chadwick Award for “outstanding, long-term contributions to the study of the game.” He won the 2013 Seymour Medal, awarded to the author of the Best Baseball Book of 2012, which was his Banzai Babe Ruth.

Rob was the recipient of the 2019 and 2023 McFarland-SABR Baseball Research Awards, which honor the authors of the best articles on baseball history or biography completed or published during the preceding calendar year, as well as many other awards from SABR for his writing, research, and presentations at the annual SABR convention over the years. If you want to read (or re-read) what I wrote about Rob in Issue 063 of Clearing The Bases, click HERE.

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This new episode with Rob is the finale of Season 5 of My Baseball History, so it’s fitting to cap things off with something unlike anything we’ve ever done in the history of the show. As I explained in the last issue of the newsletter, and in Part One of the podcast, I just felt like we couldn’t possibly be well-informed enough to have the discussion Rob and I had during Part Two, to understand the nuance of it all, unless we first learned the history of baseball in Japan so we can truly understand how the Japanese game has evolved to where it is today, both on the field, and in the Japanese ballpark, whether you’re a fan, a concessionaire, an umpire, or anyone else in attendance at a game today.

Naturally, the first part – which is already available for you to listen to HERE or wherever you listen to podcasts – covered the history of baseball in Japan, stretching as far back as the 1860s, believe it or not, and leaving off at about 1964. The second part, which you can listen to once you get done reading this email, will cover the modern game… everything from 1964 to today, with a particular focus on the in-game experience in the Japanese ballpark. If you haven’t listened to Part One yet, I highly recommend going back and starting there so you can GET CAUGHT UP to speed. It will significantly increase your knowledge and help you understand many of the references Rob and I will make during Part Two.

Because, as much as we talked about in Part One, in this episode, we cover LOTS of ground.

Rob tells us just how different the in-stadium experience is at a baseball game in Japan today compared to what he saw at the first game he attended in Japan in 1993.

We find out how the American game influenced the Japanese game on the field over the past 60 years, and how it continues to do so.

We learn what the average fan will eat at a Japanese baseball game, and why Rob thinks concessions in Japan blow American concessions away.

And we hear the history of the organized cheering which makes the fans in Japan so famous, and makes the experience in the Japanese ballpark so different than anything that’s happening in American ballparks.

I don’t want to give too much away, but the episode is out now, so you can listen to it as soon as you get done reading this email and re-listen whenever you want after that. Don’t forget to CLICK HERE to follow along with the liner notes as you listen.

The liner notes have more than 175 specifically curated photos and videos which directly and chronologically follow the conversation Rob and I had. In the caption for each, I also included extra links so you can do a deeper dive into any particular person or story which piques your interest as you listen.

As you know, we do giveaways associated with each episode, and the winner of the trivia contest from this episode with Robert K. Fitts will win a copy of Rob’s 2025 book, In The Japanese Ballpark. In the book, Rob speaks with participants in the games such as players, managers, and an umpire; he speaks with support staff, including an interpreter, a trainer, and a data analyst; he interviews front office personnel such as an owner, general and assistant managers, marketing directors, and even a league commissioner; he sits down with ballpark workers, including cheerleaders, a mascot, a beer vendor, and an usher; and he gets the perspective of professionals who surround the sport, such as baseball writers, a player agent, and a sports card dealer. Through their personal experiences, these individuals reveal the inner workings of the Japanese game and explain the cultural aspects which make Nippon Professional Baseball different from Major League Baseball.

You can enter for your chance to win by following @shoelesspodcast on Twitter or Bluesky and reposting the pinned post at the top of our profile, which mentions the latest episode with Robert K. Fitts. That post asks a trivia question which is answered during the episode. Answer that trivia question correctly with your repost, and you’re automatically entered into the contest. We’ll pick a winner before the next episode of the podcast goes live. All you have to do to be considered is follow us on Twitter or Bluesky, and quote that pinned post before then, but feel free to tag a friend in the comments or write why you think you should win. It may help your chances of winning…

In Episode 6 of Season 5, we spoke with ADAM DAROWSKI of Baseball Reference about the integration of Negro League statistics into the official Major League Baseball record books. During our discussion, Adam mentioned how there would be a statistical update coming to Baseball-Reference.com which would change some of the players atop the all-time and/or single-season leaderboards for some statistics. On May 28, 2026, THAT UPDATE took place. Let’s just say, Adam wasn’t kidding when he said there would be some changes.

Thanks to their partnership with the Seamheads Negro League database, Baseball Reference was able to expand fielding stats, refine standings and team records, add new biographical research, and, like I mentioned, make some notable leaderboard changes. Hall of Famer Turkey Stearnes was the biggest winner out of the update, as his WAR increased by 5.5, the largest increase of all players. However, Willie Wells gained 5.4 WAR (as well as 8 home runs), Josh Gibson gained 2.8 WAR, and Satchel Paige gained 2.1 WAR (as well as 8 more career wins). Bullet Rogan, one of several players from the early 1920s who had some games removed through data quality efforts, would have much preferred this update not have happened: he lost 3.5 WAR from his career total, the largest decrease of all players.

During my conversation with Adam in that episode, we specifically mentioned Robert Keyes, who – at the time of our interview – was the single-season ERA record holder with a 0.64 ERA during his 1944 season with the Memphis Red Sox of the Negro American League. However, much of the team’s statistics from that 1944 season were missing, which raised a conceptual question about the validity of the worthiness of some of the record holders, if their statistical information was not complete. Well, after the discovery of some additional innings pitched for Keyes during that 1944 season, his ERA ballooned all the way up to… 1.50. Still an incredible ERA for an entire season, but no longer the best ever. That distinction now belongs, once again, to Tim Keefe, who had an ERA of 0.86 in 1880 for the Troy Trojans of the National League.

Another thing Adam and I spoke about during our conversation was the barnstorming nature of many of those Black teams. While they may have played upwards of 190 games in a calendar year sometimes, only a fraction of them were considered to be officially sanctioned games in their respective Negro Leagues, which would be the only games counted toward individual statistical records. That’s how we get things like Josh Gibson only being credited in the official record books with 176 career home runs (as of this writing), when his Hall of Fame plaque mentions that he “hit almost 800 home runs.”

While this new Baseball Reference update doesn’t update individual player statistics for non-League games, BR has changed the presentation of team records in various places. While Baseball Reference previously listed one record for each team, they now present three unique numbers. The league record is representative of official “league” games played by the team, thanks to painstaking research by BR’s friends at Seamheads. The overall record that follows it is the club’s record in all games against other teams in the Seamheads database. Finally, the record in games Baseball Reference has stats for is exactly that.

This update from Baseball Reference is significant, and only serves to make us all better, more informed fans and researchers. While updates like this don’t happen often (the last update to BR’s Negro Leagues dataset was in April of 2023), there is always something happening at Baseball Reference, or at one of the other sites under the Sports Reference umbrella. If you would like to sign up for the BR newsletter and/or to one of the newsletters from the other Sports Reference sites, you can do that by clicking HERE.

I have some exciting news which was just finalized yesterday morning, which I would love to share with you all, but this issue is getting long as it is, so I’ll save it for two weeks from now. I’ll tease it a bit by saying, if you aren’t registered yet to go to the SABR Convention in Cleveland from July 29th through August 2nd this summer, now would be a perfect time to FIX THAT.

Don’t forget, it’s a huge help when you Rate and Review the podcast on whatever platform you choose to listen. 5-Star ratings help our podcast get shown on more people’s suggested podcast pages, which means more people will hear our show. It just takes a couple seconds of your time, but it really helps us a lot. And of course, liking us on social media, interacting with our posts, and sharing things with your friends is great, too. Feel free to forward this email to anyone in your life who loves baseball, and hopefully they’ll enjoy the podcast and learn a thing or two. But no matter how you choose to support us, even if it’s just by listening, we appreciate you being here.

Until next time, I’m Dan Wallach, and this is My Baseball History.