His first book, Remembering Japanese Baseball, involved interviews with more than 30 players who had once played in Japan. “By the time I had finished that book, I had found my calling,” says Fitts.

Since then he’s written another half-dozen books and scores of articles about Japanese baseball, and has spoken at America’s baseball hall of fame.

Baseballs first flew in Japan around 1872, after Horace Wilson introduced the game to a group of students in Tokyo. By 1896 Japanese high schoolers played a series of famous games in Tokyo, and within a decade baseball had become the national sport of Japan. High school baseball is still wildly popular—the championship every summer is the most popular sporting event in the country.

Fitts’s books have run the gamut. There’s a study of a barnstorming tour that a group of American League All Stars led by Babe Ruth made to Japan in the 1930s. He’s currently writing about the culture around the game in Japan, from the “keg girls” who deliver beer to thirsty patrons, to the Ōendan, the Japanese cheerleaders who lead the audience in chants.