TOURING JAPAN BEFORE WORLD WAR II.

TOURING JAPAN BEFORE WORLD WAR II. LEFTY tells the story of a 1934 tour of Japan by major league players who included Lefty Gomez, Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and their wives—and Moe Berg, a backup catcher. This was the sixth baseball tour of Japan; the Japanese love of baseball had already taken root. An estimated 500,000 people lined the streets of Tokyo when they arrived there. Babe Ruth was greeted with adulation. The book quotes a description by one of the players (Joe Cascarella) of a banquet the players attended at the royal palace: “Emperor Hirohito was the ‘Son of Heaven’, a god, and mere mortals like us were not supposed to case an eye on him…. And yet, here are the ballplayers and their wives in his presence, exchanging pleasantries through an interpreter…. Suddenly, we heard Moe Berg conversing with Hirohito in Japanese, and the Emperor was hanging on his every word. I don’t know what Moe said, but the Emperor’s face broke into a smile.”