George “Babe” Ruth headed a star-studded lineup of major league baseball players to play an exhibition game at now long-gone Athletic Park as part of a barnstorming expedition that took them through Vancouver on their way to an historic 17-game tour of Japan.
A lineup that accompanied Lou Gehrig, Lefty Gomez, Charlie Gehringer and Lefty O’Doul, who later managed the Vancouver Mounties team when the Pacific Coast League made its local debut in 1956, played in the pouring rain to a nine-inning 2-2 tie before boarding the Empress of Japan, a Glasgow-built liner that made regular trans-Pacific sailings between Vancouver, Hong Kong and Japan, the following day.
