Diamond in the Rough

One of my favorite parts of The Celestials’ Last Game, Season One of this podcast, was the post-game press conference episode, where I got to address some listener questions and responses, continue developing my own perspective and ideas, and keep the conversation going in all the best ways. Y’all knew I couldn’t resist the chance to do so again!

The story didn’t end when the games did, and neither will ours. Japanese American baseball, activism, and community continued into the months, years, and decades after the incarceration camps closed—and through engaging with a few of those evolving stories, we can likewise continue to model what we can and must learn from these histories and their legacies alike for our own moment and ongoing work.

We’ve almost arrived at the conclusion of our game. But before we do, let’s take a literary excursion into talented authors and compelling works that remind us of the presence and power of stories and images in what and how we remember, and of what metaphorical meanings we can make of such shared stories from both the period of Japanese incarceration and our own fraught moment.

There are many ways to better remember compelling sports stories and crucial American histories like Japanese American baseball in the incarceration camps, and we’ve moved through a number of them already this season. But there’s nothing quite like the game itself—and engaging with a handful of iconic baseball games and their multilayered contexts and connections can also help us think and talk about the limits and possibilities of doing this work, and why the effort matters so much in our own moment in any case.

Baseball is very much a team sport, but iconic individual players still stand out—not only for what they can contribute on the field, but also and especially for the symbolic stories and compelling histories they can help us remember. That was potently and inspiringly the case for Japanese American players in incarceration camps, from three brothers to a father and his two sons to a trio of Major League prospects. And it’s certainly been true across American sports history overall as well.

Two of America’s most prominent early 20th century photographers visited Manzanar, on distinct and equally fraught missions that nonetheless produced a number of striking images, including of baseball at the camp. Another of the era’s most talented photographers was incarcerated there, using a smuggled and homemade camera to document the camp’s community and resist its worst realities. All legacies we can trace through the art, photography, and activist journalism of both their historical moment and our own.

In the most isolated and desolate settings, amidst inhumane and horrific conditions, baseball flourished. It did so thanks to the individual and collective efforts of all those who built, maintained, used, and shared the fields and stadiums, formed the teams and leagues, played and cheered on the games, that extended and deepened the legacy of Japanese American baseball. And in the process, baseball at Manzanar exemplified two of the most longstanding and inspiring social roles of sports, in direct contrast to a familiar and divisive third role.

As immediate assembly centers gave way to long-term incarceration camps, the genuine and horrific realities of the incarceration system became clearer still—but so did the ways in which the incarcerated communities would resist, challenge, and even change those conditions. An evolving and multilayered story that has been powerfully echoed and extended in our own fraught and fragile moment.

Proposals for the unlawful detention of entire American communities that use softened language yet cannot mask their extreme and prejudicial ideas. The painful and destructive systems of incarceration that these policies produce on the ground. And the impressive ways that communities and their allies resist and challenge those policies and realities alike. All stories from 1942 that sound eerily familiar to where we are in 2026.

From the late 19th century arrivals of baseball in Japan and Japanese immigrants in Hawaii, through the heyday of Japanese American teams and leagues in the 1920s and 30s, and right up to fraught moments and games as everything changed in 1941 and 42, the evolving stories of baseball and Japanese Americans were profoundly interconnected. And those links reflect just how fully the sport has throughout its history exemplified our national story at its worst and its best.