Ball in Japan

The shrewdly susceptible Japanese long ago learned to like baseball when they watched teams from visiting U. S. battleships play it. Presently they began to play themselves, little pitchers with big ears who paid heed to all developments of baseball in the U. S. In 1914, the Chicago Cubs and the New York Giants played an exhibition series in Japan. By 1928, baseball was more popular in Japan than the antique national sport of wrestling. Nowadays Japanese newspapers must report the world's series from the U. S. play by play. Last week a syndicate, backed by Japanese tycoons and resident foreigners, announced plans to form the first Japanese professional league, with two teams in Tokyo, one each in Yokohama, Kobe, Kyoto, Osaka.

Enthusiastic, agile, courteous and inquisitive, Japanese ball players are not yet as good as U. S. minor leaguers, but could trounce many a U. S. college team. U. S. baseball missionaries are more welcome in Japan than any other kind. One of the most famed of these, a onetime big-leaguer named Herbert Hunter, announced last week that he had accepted a three-year contract as adviser to the new league.

Hunter first visited Japan in 1920, when he was invited by Professor Isoo Abe to coach at Waseda University. Wealthier Keio University offered him a job; he coached there in 1921. In 1928 he coached from college to college in Tokyo's Six University League with famed outfielder

Ty Cobb, other stars. Retarded by the 1923 earthquake, Japanese baseball has since progressed rapidly, boosted chiefly by Professor Abe, organizer of the Proletarian Party (Shakai Minshuto) and by the Osaka Mainichi Shimbun.* Next October Herbert Hunter will again tour Japan

*"Shimbun"--"newspapers"

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