Today, Yoshinobu Yamamoto will toe the rubber in Tokyo, and we’ll be off. Let’s get you up to speed:
Wondering why the Dodgers and Cubs are opening the season in Japan in mid-March? Here’s an explainer for you. The short version: Baseball is huge in Japan. Shohei Ohtani is the best player in the sport! Japan won the 2023 World Baseball Classic!
But Ohtani isn’t the lone hometown hero playing in this series. Both Opening Day starters — Yamamoto and Shota Imanaga — plus Dodgers rookie pitcher Roki Sasaki and Chicago outfielder Seiya Suzuki are Japanese.
It is truly a golden age of baseball in the country. (I highly recommend that link, by the way.) It’s also not the first time this has happened — Ichiro’s final games with the Mariners were part of the five previous MLB series played in Japan.
Over the weekend, both MLB teams played exhibition games against Japanese teams. In the stadium where Ohtani once sent a ball through the roof, he (obviously) homered again. The packed stadium coming to a reverent hush before every pitch to him was truly something to behold.
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