| “Catcher Gordon “Mickey” Cochrane (April 6, 1903 – June 28, 1962) and Pitcher Robert “Lefty” Grove (March 6, 1900 – May 22, 1975) Philadelphia Athletics players, display their oversized souvenir gloves gifted by Japanese baseball fans. The image of crossed American and Japanese flags are painted on them. The 1931 Tour was sponsored by the Yomuri Shimbun and the Tokyo University Baseball League. College teams frequently visited each other during the 1930s, but this was the 1st Major League tour. A week after the end of the 1931 Word Series, which the Philadelphia Athletics lost 4 games to 3, Cochrane, Grove, and 12 other major leaguers, including Henry “Lou” Gehrig (June 19, 1903 – June 2, 1941) and their wives and sportswriters, boarded the Nippon Yusen Kaisha (NYK) Japanese liner Tatsuta Maru in San Francisco for a 2-week voyage to Japan. Resplendent in their jackets emblazoned with “US” across the front, the Americans were treated as dignitaries in Japan! Thousands greeted them at the Yokohama pier upon their arrival, and during the 1st 4 days of the tour there was 1 welcome after another. There were many receptions, including 1 at the United States Embassy and another with the Japanese prime minister Reijiro Wakatauki, who spent an hour and a half with the players and their wives in an informal meeting where he exhibited knowledge of the game and several of the players present, including Cochrane. While baseball was very popular at home, the Americans were not prepared to see just how popular a game it was in Japan. 1 Sunday morning on an 18-mile shoreline drive to see the Buddha at Nora, the route ran through hundreds of diamonds on the sandy shore, with overlapping fields. There were hundreds of young men on bicycles in baseball uniforms; as teams would finish 1 game, 2 more would be ready to go. Another time, the train pulled into Tokyo station at 0600 Hours as ball games were in full swing among young men before they reported to work that day. While the trip was a cultural success, the American squad generally dispatched its Japanese opponents on the baseball diamond with ease. The Americans won all 17 exhibitions, many by wide margins, over college and high school level squads. The Japanese fans filled the stadiums to capacity; the games drew almost half a 1,000,000 spectators. In several newspaper comments that Cochrane made in 1932, it appeared that he had swallowed the Japanese war propaganda. “The people don’t want war. All they want to do is protect their interests in Manchuria,” Cochrane said. “We saw troops marching away at some of the seaports, but that was the only evidence we saw of the war. They seemed to say ‘We shouldn’t worry about the war. Play ball.’” Cochrane gained 15 pounds on the trip to Japan. The attack on Pearl Harbor inspired both men to attempt to serve in the military. Cochrane was accepted into the United States Navy as a Lieutenant, under Lieutenant Commander Gene Tunney (May 25, 1897 – November 7, 1978), a former Marine World War I veteran and famous boxer who headed the Navy’s physical fitness program during World War II. Cochrane was in charge of the baseball program at the Great Lakes Naval Training Center about 40 miles north of Chicago near the Wisconsin border. He coached sailors in baseball and organized different teams. Cochrane’s son, United States Army Private 1st Class Gordon Cochrane, Jr. (October 11, 1924 – February 25, 1945) was killed in action in the Netherlands. He was buried with his grandmother in the family plot in Mount Prospect Cemetery back in Bridgewater, Massachusetts. Grove announced his retirement on December 7, 1941, but it was overshadowed by the attack on Pearl Harbor. Furious about the war, Grove took a knife and scratched the Japanese flag off the souvenir glove in a moment of anger. At 42 years old, Grove’s volunteer application was denied. His son, United States Army Private 1st Class Robert G. Grove (November 23, 1921 – September 27, 1972), served as a radio operator in Company B, 814th Tank Destroyer Battalion, seeing combat in the European Theater of Operations. On January 19, 1943, Tatsuta Maru was assigned to carry 1,180 Allied prisoners of war, mostly Canadians, from Hong Kong to Nagasaki. The prisoners were so overcrowded that there was no room to lay down. Tatsuta Maru is known as a “hell ship” because of this voyage. On February 8, 1943, Tatsuta Maru departed Yokosuka Naval District for Truk accompanied by the Imperial Japanese Navy destroyer Yamagumo. After being hit by up to 4 torpedoes, Tatsuta Maru sank with a loss of 1,223 soldiers and passengers and 198 crewmen. As the sinking occurred at night during a gale, Yamagumo was unable to find any survivors. “Father” of Professional Japanese Baseball Sotaro Suzuki (1890 – May 11, 1982), at the time a reporter for the Yomouiri Shimbun, later said that the “Great American team of 1931 and the [subsequent] team in 1934 [with Babe Ruth] made such an impression on our people that it paved the way for professional baseball in Japan. It showed the Japanese people how baseball was played at the highest level and filled our players with desire to give the Americans equal competition.” | |
| Image Filename | wwii1756.jpg |
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| Image Dimensions | 1408 x 2015 |
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| Caption Author | Written or Adapted by Jason McDonald |
| Date Photographed | November 1, 1931 |
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| Country | Japan |
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| Status | Caption ©2026 MFA Productions LLC Please Do Not Duplicate or Distribute Without Permission; Image in the Public Domain |
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