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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   25086 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 16, 2023

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We had a big presence in Japan for a while after they opened up to us:

Horace Wilson, an American English teacher at the Kaisei Academy in Tokyo, first introduced baseball to Japan in 1872, and other American teachers and missionaries popularized the game throughout Japan in the 1870s and 1880s. Popularity among Japanese grew slowly and led to the establishment of Japan’s first organized baseball team, the Shimbashi Athletic Club, in 1878. The convincing victory of a team from Tokyo’s Ichikō High School in 1896 over a team of select foreigners from the Yokohama Country & Athletic Club drew wide coverage in the Japanese press and contributed greatly to the popularity of baseball as a school sport. The rapidly growing popularity of baseball led to the development of high school, college, and university teams throughout Japan in the early 1900s.

Ironically, while we already had pro teams, it sounds like the American org that became the MLB was only established in 1871, so our love of the sport really doesn't predate theirs by all that much.

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