For A Young Girl, the Trip of Her Life in 1925, Edith Houghton Journeyed to Japan To Play Baseball Against Men.

COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. - On the night of October 7, 1925, on the first-class deck of the President Jefferson, an ocean liner bound for Japan, a pale and seasick Edith Houghton hung over the railing and wondered how in the world she had ended up there.

Three years earlier, she had been a 10-year old North Philadelphia tomboy who never expected to visit any place more exotic than Fishtown. She had spent her days playing baseball in the neighborhood park near 25th and Diamond Streets. Friends called her "The Kid" because of her precocious hitting and fielding skills.

One day in 1922, she had read in a newspaper that the Philadelphia Bobbies, a new professional women's baseball team, would be holding tryouts. She had walked to Fairmont Park and made the team as a shortstop.

After that, she and the barnstorming Bobbies - named for the popular "bob" hairstyle of the 1920s - held their own and made a few dollars playing men's teams across America.

Now here she was, sailing halfway around the world for a series of games against Japanese men. Even if she was vomiting constantly, it was pretty heady stuff for a girl who wasn't yet 14.

"For young women in 1925, to be playing baseball and to be going to Japan - well that was pretty exciting," said Houghton, now 90 and living in Sarasota, Fla.

There would be more excitement ahead. Houghton would play for a number of other women's pro teams, and in 1946, she would become the first female scout in baseball history when Phillies owner Bob Carpenter hired her. But that journey to Japan, arranged by a Philadelphia promoter named Paul Barth, remains special - even if most of the details have been forgotten in the intervening 76 years. Houghton believes she is the last survivor of the Bobbies, so there are no teammates to call on for help.

"I wish I could remember more about it," Houghton said, "but I was so young then."

But deep in the archives of the library of the National Baseball Hall of Fame, there is a document that would refresh her memory. A journal of the Bobbies' trip, kept by one of Houghton's teammates, a Philadelphia orphan named Nettie Gans - later Nettie Spangler - lay buried beneath hundreds of old newspaper clippings. Houghton said the writer contacted her about 15 years ago and mentioned that she would be sending the journal to Cooperstown.

"I know Nettie said she was trying to get the girls together, but it was difficult because some had died and so many of them had married and changed their names," Houghton said.

Gans recollections deal little with the baseball the Bobbies played in Japan. (Using two male Philadelphians to pitch and catch, they won 60 percent of their games against Japanese men.) But they do provide a richly detailed glimpse of urban Japan as well as the kind of life led by a barnstorming women's baseball team.

Women's professional baseball dated to at least 1867, and there were dozens of barnstorming female clubs before the Bobbies. But few undertook an adventure so exotic as a trip to Japan.

The Bobbies existed for little more than a decade. And while the players - all but two of whom were from Philadelphia - got rich, few other Americans in 1925 got the opportunity to experience what they did that autumn.

From the time they left Broad Street Station at 11:25 a.m. on Sept. 23 until they returned to crowds and photographers on Dec. 6, the Bobbies saw unimaginable sights, viewed dozens of silent movies, endured terrible seasickness, survived an earthquake in Osaka, shopped in Tokyo department stores, got into some shipboard trouble, met actors, journalists and even an English earl, taught their competitors how to dance the Charleston, and of course, played lots of baseball.

"We played the Seattle Team today," wrote Gans, a leftfielder, of the final game before the departure of the ocean liner from that Washington city on Oct. 6. "I was spiked, kicked in the mouth, and [got] two bruised fingers."

Gans, who was raised in Philadelphia's Odd Fellows Orphanage and later lived in Orefield, Pa., apparently was one of the younger women on the Bobbies. In all, 14 of them, ages 13 through 23, made the trip along with various chaperones, the promoter and their male pitcher and catcher - Earl Hamilton and Eddie Ainsmith.

"all of the girls were older than I was," Houghton said. "So when they wanted to smoke and drink, they didn't do it front of me."

En route to their port of departure, the Bobbies stopped in places like Fargo, N.D., and Great Falls, Mont., for games.

"If 'Beauty is a joy forever' than the scenery here is such," Gans wrote of the Rockies surrounding Whitefish, Mont. "In the evening we went to a Barn dance. They danced very odd."

On the 13 day voyage to Japan, Houghton, Gans and many of their teammates were consumed by seasickness.

"Still sick," wrote Gans, two days out of Seattle. "Tried to get up tonight to see the movies. The picture was about a man on a ship who was getting dizzy and consequently Edith Houghton, Slim and I made a wild dash to the deck."

They dragged themselves through the rest of the cruise and arrived in Yokohama on Oct. 19. They were greeted by Japanese women in wooden shoes and kimonos. ("Combs galore in women's hair.") They rode in rickshaws to their hotel and, the next day, lunched with Viscount Soto, described by Gans as fourth in line to the emperor.

The Bobbies lost their first game in Japan 6-0, but Gans was more concerned with that night's party, hosted by an American newspaperman she referred to as "Mr. Russell." Throughout the 12-page journal, the young women focused on the dances, parties and outings. Baseball games often were noted simply with "Played ball."

Playing baseball set the Bobbies apart in America. They were not the 1920s housewife set, so the male-dominated Japanese culture upset them. They were particularly bothered when they learned that two little girls who had performed for them had been sold by their father to raise money for his son's education.

"Men always come first in Japan, " Gans wrote. "How silly!"

In Osaka, the team experienced a minor earthquake and encountered a Japanese man who had attended the University of Pennsylvania. Gans identified him as Moto Haishi, and he took the Bobbies to a Douglas Fairbanks movie, Don Q, during which a man stood onstage and translated for the audience.

The last recorded game of the trip took place on Nov. 16 in Kobe. Five days later, on Nov. 21, the Bobbies set sail for Vancouver, British Columbia. This time, the seas were smoother.

"No one has been seasick so far, except Fereba [Garnett Pattison, the third baseman]," Gans wrote.

After a raucous Thanksgiving celebration on Nov. 26, the Bobbies got into a little mischief. Passengers typically left their shoes outside their cabins at night to be polished. That night, the Bobbies rearranged them all.

"YES WE DID!!!" Gans proclaimed in her journal. "We changed them all around. We can't always be little angels."

The next night there was an on board masquerade party. The Bobbies resisted the urge to wear their baseball uniforms, baggier versions of male outfits. Houghton dressed as a ship's officer and Gans "like one of the NY Doods!"

From Vancouver, the Bobbies took a train through the Canadian Rockies, stopping in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan. As they neared the United States, customs inspectors boarded the train, looking, in that era of Prohibition, for contraband liquor.

"I don't know if they over fund any or not," Houghton said.

Finally, on the afternoon of Dec. 6, the Bobbies arrived in Philadelphia. Crowds of relative, friends and curious onlookers met them there, as did several newspaper photographers.

"PHILADELPHIA AT LAST!" Gans proclaimed. "I don't know how we stood still [for the pictures], we were so excited."

Then, with hug and tears, the women said goodbye to one another. Gans returned home to the orphanage, were she was met with numerous questions.

"It was difficult to answer all the question while eating, but I survived," she wrote. "All told, I finished my dinner and thanked the good Lord for bringing us home safe and for the great time I had playing ball with the PHILADELPHIA BOBBIES in Japan.