The Long Beach Independent, Monday 24th October 1949 (Page 14)

Baseball, Mat Rivals

    TOKYO, Japan (INS) - Here are two symptoms of the baseball fever gripping Japan as a result of the visit of the San Francisco Seals:
    Kanematsu Maedayama, champion in the sport of sumo (Japanese wrestling), resigned from the wrestling association under fire for skipping the autumn mat tournament in Osaka to watch the Seals play.
    Baseball is wrestling's big rival in Japan.
    And the Communist newspaper Akahata is boycotting the Seals visit except to quote school children as complaining that "bourgeois newspapers" are "uninteresting" because they "print only baseball news."