Clearing The Bases - Issue 063

Read Time:10 Minute, 7 Second

Hello and welcome to Issue 063 of Clearing The Bases, an email newsletter in conjunction with the My Baseball History podcast hosted by Dan Wallach.

On Wednesday, May 13^th, our latest episode with ROBERT K. FITTS went live.

Rob is an award-winning American researcher and author who has spent decades learning about and telling the history of baseball in Japan. A former archaeologist with a PhD from Brown University, Rob left academics behind to follow his passion: Japanese Baseball. While living in Tokyo in 1993 and 94, Rob began collecting Japanese Baseball cards. He is now recognized as one of the leading experts in the field and has created the eBusiness, Robs Japanese Cards LLC.

His articles have appeared in numerous magazines and websites, including Sports Collectors Digest, The Baseball Research Journal, National Pastime, Nine, and on MLB.com. Rob is also the founder of the Society for American Baseball Research’s Asian Baseball Committee, which routinely publishes articles and essays studying the history and culture of Asian baseball.

But Rob is no stranger to long-form publications. 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.” As you can imagine, for someone who wins what is essentially a lifetime achievement award, winning awards for his research and writing is nothing new to Rob.

He won the 2013 Seymour Medal, awarded to the author of the Best Baseball Book of 2012, which was his Banzai Babe Ruth. He 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.

Rob earned the 2012 Doug Pappas Award for best oral research presentation at the Annual SABR Convention for his presentation titled “Murderers, Spies, and Ballplayers: The Untold Story of the 1934 All American Tour of Asia.” He was the recipient of the 2006, 2021, 2023, and 2024 SABR Research Awards. He has been a two-time finalist for the Casey Award, given to the best baseball book of the year every year since 1983, and he is a two-time silver medalist at the Independent Publisher Book Awards.

A popular speaker on the history of Japanese baseball, Rob has spoken at many venues including the Library of Congress, the Japan Embassy in Washington DC, the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, the Japan Society of New York, the Asia Society of New York, the Nine Baseball Conference, the American Club, Tokyo, and the Society for American Baseball Research Annual Convention, which will be hosted this summer in Cleveland, Ohio from July 29^th through August 2^nd, 2026.

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This episode with Rob is unlike any we’ve ever done in the five-season history of the show. For those of you who have been around for a while, you know we are definitely not afraid to have long interviews. We’re no strangers to episodes which last 3+ hours. But this interview with Rob just couldn’t be contained in one episode, so we’ve broken it up into two distinct parts, which are almost exactly the same run time.

The part which went live on May 13^th covers the history of baseball in Japan, and the part which will air in the next episode will cover the modern game – everything from 1964 to today, with a focus on the in-game experience in the Japanese ballpark, if you were going to go there today. I just felt like we couldn’t possibly be well-informed enough to have that discussion, to understand the nuance of it all, unless we first learned what came before it, so we can truly understand how the Japanese game has evolved.

So, before we get to the modern day, we start at the beginning, which means, in this episode, we cover LOTS of ground.

Rob tells us about the history of baseball in Japan, which, I promise, is going to surprise you with how far back it goes.

We find out the significant number of American teams who have gone over to Japan, from amateur and professional teams, to barnstorming and All-Star teams, and how those teams fared all throughout the 20th century.

We learn how baseball cards got their start in Japan, and how the early Japanese cards differ from the early baseball cards in American history.

And we hear the names and stories of some of the great players and figures from Japan’s surprisingly storied baseball history.

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 150 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 2013 Seymour Medal award-winning book, Banzai Babe Ruth: Baseball, Espionage, and Assassination during the 1934 Tour of Japan. A tale of international intrigue, 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.

You can enter for your chance to win by following @shoelesspodcast on twitter or bluesky and re-posting 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 re-post, and you’re automatically entered into the contest. We’ll pick a winner before the next episode of the podcast goes live on Wednesday, June 10^th. 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…

By the end of part one of this episode with Rob, if you’re still craving more stories about Japanese baseball, stay tuned for the second part of our interview which will go live in a couple weeks. That second part will be the final episode of Season 5 of My Baseball History, and, like I said, will cover the modern game – everything from 1964 to today, with a focus on the in-game experience in the Japanese ballpark, if you were going to go there today. Like in many episodes of My Baseball History, we’ll talk about a bunch of players you already know well, and hopefully introduce you to the names and stories of a handful of people you’ve never heard of at all.

If those types of stories are ones you enjoy, I would love to reintroduce you to my friend TONY LEEBRICK, who has a YouTube channel where he creates videos about baseball history told through his incredible card collection. Tony’s collection is amazing, and includes some legitimate holy grail cards, like a 1915 Cracker Jack Shoeless Joe Jackson card, a 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle, and an autographed 1950 Bowman Jackie Robinson! I’ve been on Tony’s channel before, talking about Shoeless Joe Jackson (you can watch that video HERE), but when Tony was in town last month for the annual vintage card show in Strongsville, Ohio, he came to visit me at work, and I gave him a tour of Cleveland’s historic League Park.

As many of you know, I work for the City of Cleveland, which owns League Park, and have been on the grounds crew for over a year now. Chuck Carter has been the head groundskeeper there for years, and it’s been an honor to work with him and have him pass down some of his knowledge and wisdom to me. Working there has also inspired me to do as much research as I possibly can on the history of League Park, including compiling the first ever comprehensive list of all of the Hall of Famers who have either participated in a game or an official practice there.

While that research is ongoing, I will hopefully publish it by the end of the year. I can promise you, though, you are going to be SHOCKED by the number I’ve been able to confirm. During this visit with Tony, I spoke about a number of those Hall of Famers, as well as some of the history of the site, its strange dimensions, and why it remains such a special place to visit today. If you’d like to watch the tour I gave Tony, you can so that on his YouTube channel HERE.

One of the things which makes League Park unique, especially compared to the sites of the other ballparks from that era, is that it is still a functioning ballpark where games are held. Since the City of Cleveland owns it, all local CMSD high school teams have access to play their games there for free, but there are also games held on the field with local college teams, youth travel baseball teams, vintage base ball teams, adult league teams, seniors, and all sorts of other community-oriented activities. It’s a magical place to work, and earlier this month, there was another event which solidified my love for League Park.

About 30 Forest City Baseball Club players competed in an intrasquad scrimmage which combined teams from the 25-plus, 35-plus, and 40-plus divisions of the Men’s Senior Baseball League (MSBL) and Greater Cleveland Adult Baseball (GCAB). As we learned during our episode with Cleveland Guardians official historian Jeremy Feador, the Cleveland Forest Citys (yes, Citys, not Cities) was the first professional baseball team in Cleveland, getting its start all the way back in the 1860s. Jeremy was our guest for Episode 8 of Season 3, which you can listen to HERE, where we discuss the history of baseball in the city of Cleveland, and run through the chronology of many of the professional teams, and many of the great players in the city’s storied baseball past.

The original Forest Citys played their games at Case Commons, then moved to the National Association Grounds, but had disbanded before League park was built in 1891. However, the modern Forest Citys were thrilled to get a history lesson and walk in the shadows of legends. Reuben Kutash (whose photo is shown above) wrote about the day for FreshWater Cleveland, which you can read about HERE.

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.