Jimmy Bonner - Japan's First Black Ballplayer | NPB Player Profiles

The year is 1936, and the Dai Tokyo Baseball Club has a problem. They’re awful. The team, owned by the Kokumin Shimbun, a relatively small newspaper in the Tokyo media scene, had failed to launch. The team needed a jolt, they needed to be taken seriously, and they needed eyes on them. How do you do that? Simple. Hire a foreign player. But who could they hire? Who would willingly come to Japan to play pro baseball… and how much would they command? It was then that the Kokumin Shimbun stumbled across their answer, a two way player in the Berkley International League named James Bonner. Twitter: https://x.com/GaijinBaseball Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/gaijinbaseba... Patreon:   / gaijinbaseball