By Ryan Whirty
ontributing Writer
The first decade of the 20th cen-
ury saw Japan’s development into
a potential world power and the
apanese into a cultural force.
.E.B. DuBois, perhaps the most
rogressive
African-American
ctivist of the day, knew that, at
east judging from the essay
xcerpt above, which he wrote fol-
lowing Japan’s stunning victory
over Russia in the Russo-Japanese
War in 1905.
DuBois viewed Asians and Asian
Americans as brothers in arms with
people of African decent around
the world. For the founder of the
NAACP, Asians were fellow parts
f the world’s non-white masses
ho were oppressed and subjected
o bigotry but also brimming with
conomic and political potential.
Along with these developments,
ore Japanese were immigrating
o the United States and blending
heir own culture into this coun-
ry’s “melting pot,” including the
urgeoning popularity of baseball,
oth within Japan but especially
mong Japanese immigrants to the
U.S. after the turn of the century.
“(DuBois) drew a line of kinship
between the two cultures,” said
baseball historian Bill Staples Jr.
“DuBois himself thought they
would call themselves brothers.”
Those trends almost intersected in
New Orleans in 1905, when a mys-
terious Japanese player named
Shumza Sugimoto announced he
was interested in coming to New
Orleans to play for an African-
American team called the Creole
Stars, which takes on extra impor-
tance this month, May, which is
Asian Pacific American Heritage
Month.
Reports surfaced in early 1905
that craggy New York Giants man-
ager John McGraw had welcomed
Sugimoto into the Giants’ training
camp in Hot Springs, Ark.
It’s doubtful that Sugimoto —
who in many press reports was
described as a highly athletic jujit-
su expert with a natural knack for
the American pastime — had much
of a chance to actually make the
Giants’ roster.
But Sugimoto himself implied
that there was a reason for that, as
outlined in a February 1905 issue
of
Sporting Life
magazine:
“Shumza Sugimoto, the Japanese
ball player, who is now at Hot
Springs, and may be taken South by
McGraw, does not like the drawing
of the color line in his case, and says
he will remain a semi-professional
with the Creole Stars of New
Orleans if his engagement by the
Giants will be resented by the play-
ers of other clubs.”
Logistically, the recent discovery
two years ago of the Sugimoto tale
has sent many, including this writer,
a-titter in the baseball research com-
munity, especially the Society for
American Baseball Research.
A team of researchers from the
Negro Leagues community and the
Asian-American baseball enclave
has spent months delving into his-
torical records trying to confirm
the Sugimoto story.
The process has produced many
theories regarding the Japanese
figure — that he was part of a
popular touring troupe of
Japanese acrobats; that he was a
member of a Japanese colony that
sprouted up in rural Louisiana fol-
lowing the 1904 World’s Fair in St.
Louis; that he had previous experi-
ence playing amongst African
Americans as a possible member
of the famed Cuban Giants; that
he played for the Crescent City
entry in the short-lived, NOLA-
based Colored Southern Baseball
Association; or that he was simply
a ghost, a figment of a hyperactive
sporting press’ imagination and
John McGraw’s masterful self-pro-
motion.
This writer was enlisted in the
cause because, almost by default,
I’m the leading expert on segrega-
tion-era African-American base-
ball in New Orleans. However, in
all of my research, I’ve never come
across a Black team specifically
named the Creole Stars; there were
the New Orleans Creoles and the
New Orleans Crescent Stars, for
example, but no team name match-
ing the one Sugimoto allegedly
gave in the 1905 press reports.
I’ve also failed to uncover confir-
mation that anyone named Shumza
Sugimoto was in New Orleans
specifically during what would have
been the 1905 baseball season.
Page 6
May 18 - May 24, 2015
THE LOUISIANA WEEKLY -
YOUR MULTICULTURAL MEDIUM
A look back in time: The Negro Baseball League takes on an Asian flair, maybe
“... where else in the modern
world is there a people so intelli-
gent, so disciplined, so clean and
punctual, so instinctively con-
scious of human good and ill, as
the Japanese? And where can the
world better look for leadership
eventually toward industry based
on well being and not on private
profit, and to a democracy which
includes the masses of people and
is conducted for their benefit?”
— W.E.B. DuBois,
“What Japan Has Done”
So we still have no idea if the
cross-cultural tale is true. The lack
of definitive information isn’t sur-
prising, said SABR member Rob
Fitts, perhaps the preeminent histo-
rian of Japanese-American baseball.
“Japanese immigrants are often
difficult to locate in mainstream
historical documents, such as cen-
sus and directories,” Fitts said.
“This is especially so for the many
Japanese who lived in the U.S. for
a time and then returned to Japan.
I’m not shocked that Sugimoto’s
existence has not been verified
outside of the baseball articles. So
I think it very likely that Sugimoto
was a real person. I believe that his
baseball prowess may have been
exaggerated in these articles but
the truth is that we just don’t
know.”
But on a higher philosophical
level, the Sugimoto mystery shows
that, at the least in baseball,
American segregation wasn’t just an
issue of Black and white, as W.E.B.
DuBois recognized and noted often.
Staples, in fact, asserts that
Sugimoto’s failure to catch on with
the Giants is one of the earliest
examples of any sort of color line
being so blatantly drawn in baseball.
The thorny subject of race in
America was then and remains
more complex than what many
believe. Sugimoto seems to have
been well aware there was a color
line keeping Asians out of organ-
ized baseball, a racial wall that was
in many ways similar to the one
that blocked African Americans
from the hardball promised land.
And thus, baseball had, and may
still have, the potential to unite
the nation’s non-white peoples
against the common enemy of
bigotry, an example of what
DuBois described just a few
months after Shumza Sugimoto
reportedly came to New Orleans
to play Negro League baseball.
Questions would remain, espe-
cially whether an African-
American team in a deep South
city in 1905 would accept a
Japanese player, but Staples, the
SABR member and baseball histo-
rian, said Japanese athletes still
could have been role models for
Black players, and vice versa.
Another pitfall, said Fiits, is
drawing too wide a conclusion
about the history and complexity of
race in America from the cloudy
story of one Japanese man who may
or may not be a quality case study.
“Honestly, I don’t think that it
says much of anything,” he said.
“There’s not enough evidence to
draw conclusions from two news-
paper articles. Many can compare
statements in these articles to the
common stereotypes of the times
to show how Japanese were often
viewed but without knowing more
about the man, it is difficult to
draw meaningful conclusions.”
But at the very least, Staples said
he thinks natives of Japan would
have aligned themselves more
closely with American Blacks than
whites, thereby fulfilling, in their
own way, the brotherhood DuBois
saw for the two ethnicities.
“A good place to start is the Jim
Crow mindset,” Staples said.
“Everybody thinks that it was just
white/colored, but it was more
complicated than that. When you
start dropping Japanese in the
South, they’re told to choose how
to identify themselves. I think
many of them would have chosen
colored bathrooms and water foun-
tains, because in mindset, they
thought they were in the same boat
as African Americans.”◊
Josh Gibson slides into home base at East-West All-Star Negro league
baseball game in Chicago, 1944.
Baseball icon Henry ‘Hank’ Aaron donates
$10,000 to Eddie G. Robinson Museum
By Angelita Faller
Contributing Writer
GRAMBLING, LOUISIANA –
A reception honoring baseball
great Henry “Hank” Aaron and for-
mer members of the Atlanta
Braves to raise money for the
Eddie G. Robinson Museum ended
with a surprise donation of
$10,000 from Aaron.
Due to the $1.6 billion deficit in
the state budget, funding for the
museum was cut forcing the muse-
um to only be open one day a week
beginning in April. The Friends of
the Eddie G. Robinson Museum
(EGRM) do not believe that is
nearly enough time for visitors to
experience the historic signifi-
cance of Coach Robinson’s impact
on college football.
“The museum is named after one
of American’s greatest, Eddie G.
Robinson, who coached at
Grambling for 57 years and is in
every Hall of Fame you can
name,” said Wilbert Ellis, presi-
dent of the Friends of EGRM.
“He’s touched the lives of so many
individuals, including myself. We
want young people to see this great
American and his contributions
and what he has done for
Grambling State University and
the whole country.”
Coach Robinson has the second-
highest wins in NCAA football
history with 408 wins. The Friends
of EGRM have pledged to keep the
museum open four days a week,
and are raising funds to cover the
cost of operating the museum the
additional three days a week no
longer covered by state funds.
“This museum does not need to
be open one day a week. It needs to
be open all the time so people trav-
eling on I-20 can appreciate what
Eddie Robinson meant to the
world of football, what he meant to
the state of Louisiana,” said Lt.
Gov. Jay Dardenne.
An auction was held featuring
autographed sports memorabilia,
including baseballs and bats signed
by Aaron and basketballs signed
by Willis Reed, a Grambling alum-
nus and former New York Knicks
player. One mysterious benefactor
anonymously matched the dona-
tions of the last Hank Aaron base-
ball and bat purchased during the
auction, which brought in a total of
$6,000 for the last bat auctioned at
the fundraiser.
Aaron played 21 seasons for the
Milwaukee/Atlanta Braves in the
National League and two seasons
for the Milwaukee Brewers in the
American League. When he retired
at the end of the 1976 season, he
held more Major League batting
records than any other player in the
game’s history. His most famous
home run came in Atlanta on April
8, 1974, when he hit his 715 home
run, breaking Babe Ruth’s seem-
ingly untouchable record.
Four former Atlanta Braves play-
ers, who are all Louisiana natives,
were honored at the reception:
Wayne Causey, Gary Eaves, Ralph
“Roadrunner” Garr and George
Stone.
Stone, a graduate of Ruston High
School and Louisiana Tech
University who was a pitcher for
the Atlanta Braves, described how
Aaron’s accomplishments inspired
African Americans.
“He’s the most respected baseball
player ever in the history of the
game. Not necessarily for what he
did on the field, but it’s how he did
it, with grace, with character, with
dignity, with integrity,” Stone said.
“I think one of the reasons he was
really focused, he was playing for
a whole race of people that desper-
ately needed something to cling to
at that particular time.”
“We are life-long Louisianians,
and this museum is more than a lit-
tle important to our way of life,”
said Mark Neal, an attorney from
Monroe who purchased an auto-
graphed baseball for his family for
$1,500. “I have been a fan of Hank
Aaron for many years. There is no
greater baseball player ever to
live.”
Aaron, who was awarded a
Doctor of Humane Letters degree
at Grambling’s 2015 Spring
Commencement earlier in the day,
surprised museum officials by
announcing a personal donation of
$10,000 from him and his wife,
Billye Aaron.
The total amount of money raised
from the fundraiser is still being
tabulated.◊
