I can't speak about Baseball Baptisms in Japan, But I did arrive in the Tokyo North Mission in the months after the Tokyo South Mission's fraudulent Baptisms were revealed.
The Area Rep arrived and shut down how the Missionaries in ALL of the 9 Japanese Missions contacted people. We were specifically forbidden from contacting people at the train/subway stations, which had been the most popular and effective way to meet people. We were now commanded to go door to door telling whomever answered the door that "we were Messengers from God, who have come with a blessing. May we now enter your home to give it a blessing?"
It was a nightmare. All baptisms plummeted. One month I had 2 baptisms, and that was half of ALL baptisms for our Mission that month. Just a year earlier Tokyo South Mission was "baptizing" over a thousand a month, every month.
The Missions tried very hard to keep the Missionaries from finding out exactly what had happened in the Tokyo South Mission, but stories were leaked. What I heard most of all was that lots of young Japanese kids thought that they had joined an "American Club", with this strange initiation that included wearing white and being dunked in water.
It's clear that fraud was used to get the desired numbers. While Japan Tokyo South Mission was reporting numbers of over 1000 Baptisms a month, Japan Tokyo North Mission was reporting numbers that were 1/10th of their neighboring Mission. A later LSD census in Japan found that a majority of "members" had no idea that they had joined the Mormon Church.
never had a single yes to that question. was an enormous waste of time, especially since we FIRST had to ask...
Go shujin-san wa irashaii masu ka?
Which of course was ALWAYS answered in the negative, since "the Master of the House" never got home from work in Tokyo until the Missionaries had gone to bed.
I wasn't there when it happened, I was in England several years later but saw the results.
American missionaries would teach the British boys how to play American baseball. Apparently it was quite popular. The missionaires would play a while and then give a discussion or lesson and then herd the kids off to the chapel to be baptized.
The ward rosters were full of names of people who had been baptized through this program. All were totally and completely inactive. We would visit these inactive people on our list and those who would speak to us would let us know their total contempt they had for the church for taking advantage of these young boys and using baseball as a means to get them to join.
One woman related her son's experience. He had been going to the lessons and playing baseball with the missionaries and enjoyed it but when he was pressured to get baptized and didn't feel comfortable with it the elders told him he could no longer play with them. This woman told of the heartbreak she felt when her son came home in tears because the Mormons wouldn't let her son play baseball with them unless he would join their church.
I'm sure some big mucky mucky at that time thought this was just the greatest inspired program since mincemeat. Fact is, the baseball for baptisms program did nothing but create large numbers of names on the ward rolls of inactives and A LOT of ill-will towards the church from those who were exposed to it.
So what you are saying, is it was a total success.
I have a BIL who was a ball player, who comes from a family of TBM ballplayers. I could totally see them thinking this was a good idea, and doing it. They are also cold hearted enough to send the kids away, after they refuse baptism.
He served in Ireland in the 1960s under Stephen R. Covey. My home teacher raved about the baseball baptisms program and said they baptized over a thousand people and then went back and got 40 or so of their parents. I found that hard to believe when he told me about it, because when I served in Ireland in the 1980s we had about 20 baptisms a month as a mission. One July we had 44 baptisms, and it was our proudest hour.
I was in England in the early 70's, and ran into a number of "baseball baptizees."...... all inactive. Most did not even know that they were on the Church's records as members.
During my time there, we had our own wild program...... all of the 14 year old girls in England were in love with the Osmond Brothers. They would send letters to the various mission homes asking to join (not learn about, JOIN) the mormon church.
Our mission president finally put the reins on, and made it policy that the girls had to attend church for 6 months, and have parental permission, before they could be baptised. One of his better decisions.
I'm surprised that since the church just cares about the number of members, that they would give a rats arse if they joined just because of the Osmonds. A number is a number. Of course 14 year old girls wouldn't be contributing much in $$$.
I was in the Okayama Mission when the baptism numbers took off in Tokyo South, back in 1979. We knew that something was not right with what we were being told. I think there were a lot of leaders, including Kikuchi who wanted to think that they were seeing a miracle occur. The truth of it was that President Groberg either lost control or outright encouraged "teaching" practices that allowed people to get baptized who had little understanding of what they were getting into. Our mission continued to have relatively low monthly baptism numbers and I have to credit that to our president, Okamoto. Even though there was a certain amount of effort made in Okayama to mirror the success in Tokyo South, we were still made to teach all the required lessons and our investigators were put through a legitimate interview process prior to baptism (again, this was comparative to other missions). I met an elder from T.S. a couple of years after I returned home and his stories of how they conducted the "work" literally made me sick. In my opinion what happened under Groberg probably ruined the missions of a lot of young men.