There wasn’t much place in professional baseball — not in the 1930s — for a pair of Japanese American brothers who loved to play the game.
So Yosh and Nobe Kawano found another way to make themselves fixtures in the major leagues, spending the better part of five decades as clubhouse managers.
Season after season, they ordered shoes for the players and laid out food before games. They cleaned uniforms, sorted mail and swept the floors. Yosh tended to the Chicago Cubs; Nobe served the same role for the Dodgers.
Late last month, Yosh died at 97 after a long battle with Parkinson’s disease.