by Olivia Young

A Riverdale resident since 2012, Robert Fitts was a New York City-based archaeologist when he attended his first baseball game in Japan in 1993 — a match that would become the catalyst for his now decades-long career as a baseball historian, as well as the release of his new book on the subject.

Japanese baseball has developed a presence in the United States., especially with the growing popularity of the Los Angeles Dodgers’ Shohei Ohtani. But back in the 1990s, Fitts couldn’t go to an American baseball card shop and ask for Japanese players without a laugh from the cashier, he said.

Fitts was working on his Ph.D. at Brown University and living on the Upper East Side when he moved to Tokyo to support his wife, an attorney who had been transferred to the city. The first night they arrived, his wife’s company surprised Fitts with tickets to a game at Meiji Jingu Baseball Stadium to see the Yakult Swallows versus the Hanshin Tigers.

“I went there completely jet lagged, probably a little hallucinatory, and I witnessed the greatest baseball game I had ever seen,” Fitts said.

A normal Japanese baseball game is like a college basketball championship game, Fitts said — bands constantly playing, fans singing and chanting at every batter, energy that lasts through all nine innings.

His enthusiasm grew from there, with a particular interest in baseball cards. There was a sports card shop a mile from his place in Tokyo, which he visited weekly, but for the older cards, he had to scour antique shops and flea markets, peeking into corners with the hope a worker might have tucked one away. 

It was a hobby that continued when he returned to New York in late 1994, but it was harder to foster his interest in the U.S. The public was just starting to use the newly invented World Wide Web, and American news outlets weren’t covering Japanese baseball, Fitts said. Despite speaking little of the language, he ended up subscribing to a Japanese magazine sold by Kinokuniya, a bookstore in Midtown, and would flip through its pages to get an idea of who the top hitters were.

He created an eBay account around this time, and by 2001, when Japanese baseball player Ichiro Suzuki came to the U.S. to play for the majors, his card-dealing hobby-turned-business venture had gotten so popular he quit his job as an archaeologist.

But later that year, the World Trade Center was struck in the Sept. 11 attacks, and interest in baseball cards plummeted as Americans tried to cope with the tragedy.

Still, Fitts had just decided collecting and selling was going to be his full-time gig, and he couldn’t go back on it now. He turned his efforts toward writing articles and bios about Japanese players who hadn’t been on the field in decades, in hopes it would convince American fans to buy baseball cards. He had a knack for it, and in 2003, decided he favored it over dealing.

His first book, “Remembering Japanese Baseball: An Oral History of the Game” was released in 2005, the culmination of two years’ worth of interviews with Japanese players who were active from 1950 to the mid-1990s. The book went on to win the Society for American Baseball Research & The Sporting News Award for Best Baseball Research.

Bolstered by his training as a historical archaeologist, Fitts had a renewed sense of confidence he could research and write full-time.

His nine books after the first led to Fitts becoming an award-winning speaker and author, with accolades like the Society for American Baseball Research’s 2025 Henry Chadwick Award for “outstanding, long-term contributions to the study of the game” and the 2023 Seymour Medal for Best Baseball Book of 2012. The latter was for “Banzai Babe Ruth: Baseball, Espionage, & Assassination During the 1934 Tour of Japan,” which tells the true story of baseball legends such as Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig on a monthlong tour of the country in hopes of easing growing political tension between it and the U.S.

In 2023, Fitts was close to abandoning the niche, as he felt he had written all he could about Japanese baseball without being able to read the language. He decided to do a guided tour of 12 baseball stadiums in Japan, hoping it would either rekindle his bond with the sport, or prove he had grown out of it.

At Yokohama Stadium, the heat was scorching, Fitts recalled. He waved down a uriko, a beer vendor unique to Japanese baseball. Urikos are young women in bright, yellow uniforms, who sprint up and down the stadium steps with beer kegs strapped to their backs.

Fresh, chilled beer in hand, Fitts enjoyed the rest of the game — fans chanting, drums beating, banners waving — the same way he had since the 1990s. But unlike before, he wondered about the logistics of a uriko’s role — How much did the keg weigh? How much did she get paid for such a physically demanding job?

“I realized that even though I’d been studying Japanese baseball for some 20 years, I didn’t know pretty much anything about what happens behind the scenes at the ballpark,” Fitts said. “I just know the history of what happens on the diamond.”

The idea for his 11th and most recent release, “In the Japanese Ballpark: Behind the Scenes of Nippon Professional Baseball,” began to form.

He ended up compiling 26 interviews, with figures ranging from players to general and assistant managers, cheerleaders, a mascot, an usher, baseball writers and a sports card dealer. All of this to answer the question, “What’s the inside story that makes the game in Japan different from the game in the United States, and also so much fun?” Fitts said.

The book was released last November, and recently, on Sept. 10, the subject of a local author book talk and signing at Kingsbridge Historical Society. He recently hosted another talk Sept. 19 at the Priscilla Gardner Main Library in Jersey City.

Keywords

Robert Fitts,

Riverdale,

Japanese baseball,

Japanese baseball history,

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Nippon Professional Baseball,

In the Japanese Ballpark,

Behind the Scenes of Nippon Professional Baseball,

Kingsbridge Historical Society,

baseball books,

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baseball cards,

Shohei Ohtani,

Ichiro Suzuki,

Babe Ruth,

Lou Gehrig,

Yakult Swallows,

Hanshin Tigers,

Meiji Jingu Baseball Stadium,

Japan baseball,

Society for American Baseball Research,

Henry Chadwick Award,

Seymour Medal,

Remembering Japanese Baseball,

Banzai Babe Ruth,

baseball archaeology,

New York City author,

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baseball book signing,

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