ABSTRACT
In 1964, Masanori Murakami became the first Japanese player to play for a Major League Baseball team, the San Francisco Giants. His reluctance to return to the Giants for the 1965 season, however, revealed deep conflicts between American and Japanese baseball culture and threatened the two nations’ relations. This chapter will examine the controversy from a media perspective, showing how sports journalism at times reinforced American cultural values while also reflecting the demographic changes that caused newspapers, particularly on the West Coast, to be culturally sensitive in their coverage.
