Not for another decade would Jackie Robinson be allowed to play an American Major League Baseball game, but in Tokyo, being black wasn't a strike against Bonner. Bonner had just been signed by a Japanese team called Dai Tokyo, which debuted the year before, lost nearly every game it played, and was desperate for new talent. An ace pitcher with a vicious submarine pitch, Bonner, according to Japanese newspapers breathlessly heralding his arrival, once threw 22 strikeouts in a single game back in the States. In the fall of 1936, a 24-year-old black baseball player from rural Louisiana stepped off a boat in Tokyo. ![]() Negro Leagues Baseball Museum/Courtesy of Bill Staples, Jr. Here, he's pictured with (from left) catcher O'Neal Pullen, pitcher Ajay Johnson and shortstop Biz Mackey. ![]() ![]() On the recommendation of Kenichi Zenimura, manager Lonnie Goodwin (far right) took his ballclub on a tour of Asia in April 1927.
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