The One Constant: The Literature of Nostalgia and Catharsis in Postwar Japanese Baseball Fiction

Chapter 4 describes the venerable tradition of baseball fiction in the latter half of the Shōwa period and in the early Heisei period (1989-), an era in which baseball emerged as a true sport of the masses and in which Japan’s economic success paralleled the emergence of professional baseball as Japan’s national pastime. This chapter explores the emergence of several important trends in baseball literature including the appearance of the first examples of baseball mystery literature and the continuation of juvenile fiction about baseball. This latter literary category developed from the body of writing aimed at young readers that had been initiated by Akai tori (Red Bird) and other magazines that made an appearance in the Taishō period (1912-1926), and as baseball was resuscitated and gained popularity in the postwar period, it again emerged as a natural topic for juvenile fiction. While the juvenile baseball fiction of the Occupation Era was cathartic and was intended to help young readers grapple with the harsh realities of the postwar era, the baseball fiction of the 1980s and 1990s, often set in the immediate postwar era, tended to be more nostalgic, portraying baseball as a refuge and source of hope in a time of uncertainty.

Archival Interventions: Black Baseball and Imaginative Literature

This chapter provides a brief account of black baseball history, while underscoring the disjuncture between the meticulous records of organized white baseball and the comparatively scant documentation of baseball behind the color line. This chapter also delineates the central questions that the monograph addresses: How do playwrights, novelists, poets, and filmmakers fill in the absences in the archives of the national pastime? In what ways do writers subvert the myths about baseball as an athletic manifestation of the American dream, and what are the sociopolitical implications of the countermythologies that black baseball literature propagates? Moreover, how do all of these authors (white and black, men and women) grapple with the androcentrism that is endemic to baseball narratives and the game itself? In pursuing these questions, this chapter maps out a model for a comparative, archival-focused analysis of literary accounts of marginalized experiences within and beyond the national pastime.

“I Was Born Too Quick”: Archival Contributions and Limitations in The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars and Motor Kings

This chapter argues that William Brashler’s novel The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars and Motor Kings (1973) and the 1976 filmic adaptation directed by John Badham subvert the image of the archetypal baseball hero as a WASP figure who raises himself up to become a national star. Instead, these works apotheosize black players, such as the slugger Josh Gibson and the pitching ace Satchel Paige. Yet, while black figures and experiences once absent from or pushed to the margins of baseball archives are brought to the fore, they remain shrouded by dominant cultural understandings of “otherness.” Moreover, Brashler’s and, in turn, Badham’s emphasis on male camaraderie and comic levity tend to undercut the trauma of de jure segregation for both the men and women who lived through it, revealing some of the limitations of this first wave of white-authored black baseball literature.

Educating the Next Generation: Black Baseball Children’s Books

Chapter 6 examines the ways in which Carole Boston Weatherford’s A Negro League Scrapbook (2005), James Sturm and Rich Tommaso’s Satchel Paige: Striking Out Jim Crow (2007), and Kadir Nelson’s We Are the Ship: The Story of Negro League Baseball (2008) invite young readers to excavate the black baseball archive, engaging a millennial audience statistically disinterested in the national pastime. The visual components of these children’s books are especially crucial, as they animate the images of black players and communities from a bygone era for young readers, who will ultimately be responsible for keeping the memory of black baseball alive. Further, while all of the contemporary authors in this third wave of black baseball literature are deeply committed to accuracy, they make it clear that theirs is a, not the, historical representation, suggesting congruence with Jacques Derrida’s critique of the instability of archival truths.

Black Baseball’s Archive of Cultural Nationalist Feeling

This chapter and the subsequent one examine the second, African American-authored wave of black baseball literature, illuminating both the pain of social exclusion and the pleasure of communal solidarity. In chapter 3, August Wilson’s play Fences (1985) and Gloria Naylor’s novel Bailey’s Café (1992) evince the residual trauma of being systematically denied the opportunity to compete on a national stage, while firmly rejecting the racial progress that Jackie Robinson signifies for many Americans. Suggesting a homology between black baseball and the blues, Wilson and Naylor particularly evince the affective residue of segregation, sifting through what theorist Ann Cvetkovich terms an “archive of feelings.” Moreover, not unlike a jazz contrafact, these black baseball works riff on and revise standard narratives of baseball history, redirecting our attention to the African American players barred from the Major Leagues, as well as the complex feelings bound up in their relationship to the national pastime.