Lai Tin

An Ichiro on the Black Sox?

With the arrival of Ichiro the Asian influx that started with Nomo has reached full blossom. Now every team needs to have its eyes open and its ears to the ground when it comes to talent from the Far East. It's not as if Asians just started playing baseball in the past few year, it's that the Majors have left this source of talent untapped. Asians and Asian-Americans have embraced the National Pastime for generations. Take a look at the mysterious case of Lai Tin.

What do we know of this man? I first discovered him while reading a copy of the New York Times from 1914. The headline said: "Chinese for White Sox." According to the story. Jimmy Callahan, manager of the White Sox, had agreed to take Lai Tin [sometimes spelled Tan] of Honolulu's Chinese team to spring training and offer him a shot at making the White Sox. If Lai Tin made the cut he would "enjoy the unique honor of being the first Celestial to play on a National or American League team." Celestial was a racial term of the time, used to describe Chinese (members of the Celestial Kingdom) and often other Asians.

The article went on to mention that he played shortstop on the Hawaiian Chinese team that had toured the U.S. in 1912 and 1913. It also noted that he ran the 100 yard dash in 10.2 seconds and had bested 23 feet in the running broad jump, both Hawaiian records. As a shortstop, Lai Tin would have challenged White Sox incumbent Buck Weaver, who went into the history books as the honest member of the infamous Chicago "Black Sox."

The reference to Chinese tours in the early teens sent me to another banker's box full of clippings . This one covered Chicago amateur baseball for the time period in question. The 1912 Chicago Tribune described a pair of matches between the "Uncle Sams", a Chicago area semipro team, and the Chinese team. On September 22 the Chinese made a furious comeback in the ninth, but fell short 8-6. Lai Tin played third base and scored a run on no hits. He had two putouts with one assist and no errors. On the 23rd the two squads faced off at Comiskey Park. The Chinese walked 17 batters, but something not even mentioned in the game report had to have been the gem of the day. In the box score Lang Akana is credited with an unassisted triple play! "L. Tin" played third with a putout and an assist with no errors. He scored one run on a single and a double as the Uncles Sams won, 5-2.

A December 6, 1914, New York Times article describes the University of California's baseball adventures in Hawaii: "Their most successful opponents were the team of the Chinese Athletic Union, made up entirely of fullblooded Chinese." The piece tells of two games between the Hawaiians and the Berkeley students.

In the first match the Chinese won, 6-5, in front of 5.500 fans. This drew so much attention that 7,000 people came to see the rematch a week later. The game went into extra innings tied at five. In the top of the tenth, Cal pushed across a pair of runs for an apparent victory. In the bottom half the home team scored three runs to take the day.

The author had nothing but praise for Lai Tin. We are told of his nickname - "Speed Demon" - and of his prowess as captain: "Lai Tan, leader of the Chinese team, who plays at shortstop, worked his players so well that they seemed the strongest in both attack and defense."

Neither "Lai Tin" nor "Lai Tan" grace the baseball encyclopedia. A quick survey of newspaper reports from 1915 White Sox spring training show no mention of the infielder. Several weeks after finding Lai Tin, Harry Callahan was sacked as the manager of the White Sox and replaced by Pants Rowland, who would himself be fired after the 1918 season. It is easy to believe that when Callahan's ties to the White Sox were cut, Lai Tin's chances went down the drain. Callahan returned to a manager's position with the Pirates a few years later, but if he still had Lai Tin in mind he never brought him to Pittsburgh.

A sadder case is that of Lang Akana, the man who turned the unassisted triple play in Comiskey Park. He was signed by the Portland Beavers of the Pacific Coast League in late 1914, but manager Walter McCredie released Akana in January 1915 at the request of his players. In the January 16 Chicago Defender, McCredie said, "His skin is too dark. The Coast Leaguers who played in Honolulu on that recent barnstorming trip came back vowing boycott. I have received a couple of letters from players telling me Akana is as dark as Jack Johnson, so I guess I will have to give him a release."

Even though Lai Tin did not play for the White Sox in 1915, he played in Chicago that year. The University of Chicago faced the "Chinese University of Hawaii" on May 5. The Chinese could muster only two hits against Spike Schull and the Maroons won, 1 -0. The box score listed "Loi Tin" as the Chinese third baseman. He had a putout to go with a pair of assists. Akana was not mentioned and might not have been a member of the team. These Chinese players competed across the U.S., but never in the major leagues.

Progress would not be made for another generation. Yoichi Nagata's article in the 1992 Baseball Research Journal examines what is probably the first case of an Asian playing in the high minors. While "Hawaiians" had played in the PCL for years, when Kenso Nushida debuted with the Sacramento Senators in 1932 he became the first person to play in that league while being identified as an Asian.

Nushida had been born of Japanese ancestry in Hawaii. but moved to California while a young man. He pitched in 11 games and created Nomomania-like conditions in California's rich Asian baseball community. Towards the end of the season the Oakland Oaks signed Chinese-American pitcher Lee Gum Hong to face Nushida. Nagata claims that the Nushida-Lee matchup was designed to play off the intense feelings created by the Japanese invasion of China in the same year. Neither pitcher played in organized baseball after that year.

What if one of those players had gone to the bigs? Would he have advanced the cause of integration? Probably not. While organized baseball would not allow African Americans, it did feature players from just about every other minority group. It had Native Americans, Cubans, Irish, and on the dawn of World War I, many Germans. The addition of a player from another ethnic group would probably have done little or nothing to bring down the color barrier.

It would not have been a help to prejudice against Asians, either. When WWII rolled around. the fact that Japanese Americans had well developed baseball leagues convinced no one that they had adopted American culture. They got to play baseball behind barbed wire.

Some of the worst race riots in U.S. history took place on the south side of Chicago in 1919. I imagine that having Lai Tin in uniform for the White Sox would not have changed that one bit.

Was Lai Tin a great player who, because of location and ethnicity, never got a shot? Or was he just another player who crushed his fellow bush-leaguers but wasn't up to snuff as a major leaguer? We'll never know.

You have to love the internet... The day this was posted a reader sent a pointer to another article that fills in many gaps. William Tin "Buck" Lai played semi-pro and minor league baseball for many years, and had spring training tryouts with the Phillies and Giants. To read more, read this Asian Week article.

Also, his son, Buck Lai Jr., was the longtime basketball coach at LIU. He was a scout for the Dodgers and wrote a book on baseball. See this link for a photo of Buck Jr. with Jackie Robinson!