A Seventeen-Year-Old Strikes Out Ruth, Gehrig, Foxx, and Gehringer

On November 20, 1934, seventeen-year-old Eiji Sawamura held a touring team of American League All-Stars to one hit and one run in Shizuoka, Japan. The lone hit was a solo home run by Lou Gehrig in the seventh inning, giving the Americans a 1-0 victory. Sawamura struck out nine batters, including four consecutive future Hall of Famers: Charlie Gehringer, Babe Ruth, Jimmie Foxx, and Gehrig.

The American team was stacked. Ruth, Gehrig, Foxx, and Gehringer were joined by Earl Averill, the Waner brothers, and other established major leaguers on a goodwill tour organized to spread baseball across the Pacific. They had been winning their exhibition games against Japanese all-star squads by wide margins. Nobody expected a high school pitcher to shut them down.

Sawamura threw a fastball with sharp late movement and a curveball that buckled professional hitters. He kept the Americans hitless into the fourth inning and scoreless into the seventh. When Gehrig connected for the only run of the game, the crowd at the Shizuoka ballpark watched a performance that would become the founding story of Japanese professional baseball.

The national sensation around Sawamura's outing helped accelerate the creation of Japan's first professional baseball league in 1936. Sawamura joined the Yomiuri Giants and pitched the first no-hitter in Japanese professional baseball history on September 25, 1936. He threw two more no-hitters before the end of 1940. In 1937, he went 33-10 with a 1.38 ERA and was named the league's Most Valuable Player.

Sawamura was drafted into the Japanese Imperial Army in 1939. He was killed on December 2, 1944, when his transport ship was sunk off the coast of Taiwan. He was 27 years old. Japan's annual award for the best pitcher in Nippon Professional Baseball, the Sawamura Award, carries his name.