These MLB legends were trailblazers in Japan

In 1962, Newcombe was no longer pitching but, rather, running a liquor store and cocktail lounge in Newark, N.J. One day, the three visitors cited above visited to gauge his interest in playing in Japan … primarily as a first baseman, not a pitcher.

The 1956 NL champion Dodgers team that included Newcombe had visited Japan after the World Series. So he was familiar with the country. And though the Dragons unsuccessfully tried to recruit the likes of Robin Roberts and Billy Martin, Newcombe accepted their offer.

“When I agreed to go,” Newcombe once told Doby biographer Joseph Thomas Moore, “and when the publicity came out about it, I got a call from Pierre Salinger.”

As in, the future U.S. Senator and ABC News correspondent and then-press secretary for President John F. Kennedy. Newcombe and Salinger had golfed together in the past.

Just 17 years after the United States dropped atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the U.S. was in the process of establishing positive relations with the newly democratic nation.

Baseball was a shared love, a crucial common ground.

“[Salinger] asked me to come to the White House for an interview,” Newcombe continued. “When I got to the White House, Salinger told me that, in effect, I would be representing President Kennedy and the United States. He said we had established pretty good relationships with the Japanese people, and through baseball, we could establish further relationships and even open up the possibility of other American players going to Japan.”