By Rocky Swift
TOKYO (Reuters) – Masanori Murakami travelled to San Francisco 61 years ago this month on his way to becoming the first Japanese player in Major League Baseball.
On Tuesday, five of his countrymen, including national hero Shohei Ohtani, will don MLB uniforms in Tokyo as the world champion Los Angeles Dodgers face the Chicago Cubs in their season opener.
“Everyone in Japan is going to be watching for Ohtani on TV,” said Murakami, 80, who played for the San Francisco Giants in the mid 1960s and plans to attend the two-game series this week. “The old people say ‘he’s such a good boy,’ and the young girls say ‘oh, he’s so cool.'”
Ohtani is joined by Japanese teammates Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Roki Sasaki, both pitchers for the Dodgers, while the Cubs have outfielder Seiya Suzuki and pitcher Shota Imanaga. It marks the highest representation of Japanese players in the six times the MLB has held season openers in Japan since 2000.
“What is different (about this opener) is the world champion MLB team with three Japanese stars, one of whom is arguably the greatest player in history,” said Robert Whiting, author of “The Chrysanthemum and the Bat,” and other books on baseball in Japan.
Tokyo is awash in Dodger blue and white ahead of the games, and Ohtani, who won his third Most Valuable Player award last year, stares out from innumerable advertisements plastered across the city.
Baseball has been big in Japan for a century, with Hall of Famers Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig playing exhibition games in Tokyo in 1934. But the advent of Ohtani, the first pitching and batting threat in the majors since Ruth, has sent interest in the sport into overdrive.
Ohtani-mania has soared in Japan since his signing of a record contract with the Dodgers at the end of 2023, followed by media sensations over his dog, his marriage, and his split from a larcenous translator.
Giving his surgically repaired pitching arm a rest last year, Ohtani became baseball’s first 50 home run, 50 stolen base man, culminating in a World Series win after six frustrating seasons with the Los Angeles Angels.
Ohtani’s fame manifested into a “social phenomenon,” according to Kansai University emeritus professor Katsuhiro Miyamoto, rippling through merchandise sales and endorsements worth an estimated 117 billion yen ($787 million) to the Dodgers franchise last year.
The two Dodgers and Cubs games in Tokyo sold out within an hour last month, local media reported, and tickets were listed for as much as 2.5 million yen ($16,873) on secondary market site StubHub.
The Major League teams played exhibition games over the weekend against the Yomiuri Giants and Hanshin Tigers of the Japanese pro league. The Japanese squads came out on top except for a Saturday match where a two-run homer from Ohtani powered the Dodgers over the Giants.
Hundreds gathered at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport on Thursday hoping to welcome the arrival of the Dodgers from the United States, but the team was spirited away from the crowds. Talking to reporters on Friday, Ohtani paid respect to previous Japanese ball players who had paved the way for his entrance to the majors.
Fans are on tenterhooks to see what will happen when Ohtani faces the Cubs’ scheduled starter, Imanaga, on Tuesday.
Murakami, the trailblazing pitcher who played 54 games in the majors before a successful career in Japan, said he’d try fooling Ohtani with a screwball high and inside for a third strike.
But Murakami, who threw out the ceremonial first pitch before the Cubs and Tigers games on Saturday, was partial to Chicago due to a previous connection with the team.
“Maybe a base hit, okay?,” he said about the Ohtani and Imanaga showdown. “Don’t hit a home run.”
($1 = 148.6900 yen)
(Reporting by Rocky Swift. Editing by Gerry Doyle)
