In one week, an entire country will come to a standstill for a monumental collision of sports and national pride.
Five of Japan’s favorite sons will return to their native country when the Chicago Cubs face the Los Angeles Dodgers in a pair of regular-season games March 18-19 at the Tokyo Dome.
It is sure to be sensory overload for a sports-loving country that has embraced baseball as its own. Tokyo’s Yomiuri Giants, as big as teams get in Japan, will open their doors for the Cubs and Dodgers in their home ballpark—then take an immediate back seat in popularity.
Ask somebody from Japan with even a moderate appreciation for baseball, and the consensus is the Dodgers are even bigger than the local Giants, who have won 22 Japan Series titles and nine more when counting the league’s predecessor, the Japanese Baseball League.
But there is one entity bigger than both teams. The Dodgers’ Shohei Ohtani is returning home as a king.
The Cubs will have left-hander Shota Imanaga, as well as outfielder Seiya Suzuki, playing on home turf again. The Dodgers have right-handers Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Roki Sasaki. In fact, Imanaga will pitch against Yamamoto in the opener. The Dodgers have not made it official, but Sasaki is expected to make his major league debut in the second game.
Ohtani, though, remains larger than life by conquering baseball like no other, foreign or domestic.
The moment isn’t lost on Dodgers pitcher Tyler Glasnow, even if he did understate the occasion just a bit.
“Ohtani’s like Justin Bieber times 10 over there, so it’s probably going to be insane,” Glasnow said.
At least Glasnow has a decent perspective on the energy that is expected. It will take at least a few more Biebers to rise to the occasion.
Infielder Tadahito Iguchi rode an earlier wave of Japan-born players in the major leagues when he made his debut for the Chicago White Sox in 2005 and helped a revamped roster win the franchise’s only World Series title since 1917.
After four MLB seasons, the contact-savvy No. 2 hitter returned to Japan to play nine seasons for the Chiba Lotte Marines, hitting 102 home runs in the process. He won his third Japan Series title in 2010 and became manager of the club for four seasons through 2022.
Now a baseball analyst and color commentator for Japan’s NHK, Iguchi was at the Dodgers’ spring training facility in Phoenix in recent days to begin counting down MLB’s arrival in his home country.
“Everywhere in Japan there are signs the Dodgers are coming,” Iguchi said through an interpreter. “If you go to the airport, if you go to the (subway) station, you can see ads, billboards, signs that the Dodgers are coming. It’s huge. Everyone is looking forward to it.”
And Ohtani’s presence is being valued most of all.
“You cannot compare. It goes Ohtani, then Dodgers, then Giants,” Iguchi said, ranking the three in popularity order. “You can’t compare with any Japanese teams. The Dodgers and Ohtani are the highest. If you watch TV shows in Japan, there is Ohtani news everywhere. So yes, the impact of Ohtani is huge.”
There is also a meet-up of a different kind that will have all of Japan entranced.
The Dodgers will face the Yomiuri Giants in an exhibition game Sunday at the Tokyo Dome. It could be as big of a deal as, say, a Japan vs. United States clash in the World Baseball Classic, even if the stakes are low for both clubs.
Dodgers manager Dave Roberts, who is of Japanese heritage, understands the magnitude, but he still plans to treat the game like the exhibition it is. His focus remains on the Cubs and getting his team’s title defense off to a flying start.
“I remember being in Japan as a young kid and watching the Tokyo Giants play and my grandfather telling me that this is the team,” Roberts said from Dodgers camp Monday, just 48 hours before boarding the team’s overseas flight. “So to now be playing against those guys, or managing against those guys, I think it’s great. I think it’s amazing.”
As Japan savors the spectacle of next week’s Cubs-Dodgers games in prime time, only the insomniacs among us in the United States will be watching live. The games will begin at 5 a.m. in Chicago and at a deep-into-the-night 3 a.m. in Los Angeles.
Just don’t let that minimize the importance.
“This is bigger than us,” Roberts said. “It’s about global baseball, so I just think I’m very fortunate to be a part of this, as are the Dodgers.”
