With tax day behind us, I’m crossing over a bit into unchartered waters. Check out this early 20th-century baseball glove described to have belonged to a gent named William Andrew Paton, a University of Michigan student, professor, and later, a pioneer in the fielding of accounting
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Michigan Baseball team Visits Japan (1932)
A unique, well-traveled piece of Michigan athletics memorabilia showed up on eBay this week. It’s described to be a ticket stub from a game between Michigan baseball and a university team from Tokyo, played in Japan in 1932. At first glance, I laughed thinking there was no way a college team traveled to Japan during the throes of the Great Depression to play baseball. And the auction description didn’t help sell it for me: 1932 Michigan University vs Meiji University tour ticket stub from game 1 played at Jingu Stadium in Tokyo. From an excellent summary published in Michigan Today in 1998, it all started with Japanese teams doing a college tour in the US years earlier, with many of the stops in Ann Arbor from 1911 to 1925. Then in 1929, Michigan coach Ray Fisher got an invite from the Meiji University inviting the maize and blue to visit Japan as “ambassadors of goodwill”. Fielding Yost and the board of athletics approved the trip and so they headed west, then more west, until they reached the Far East in 1929: After playing several games on the West Coast and one in Hawaii, the Wolverines arrived in Japan for a 30-day visit. Lodged at the Imperial Hotel, the 14 team members and Coach Fisher and his family were received lavishly…
