Japanese stars take postseason center stage, and the whole world is watching

Fifty-three thousand fans pushed their way through the turnstiles for the must-win contest as the Dodgers and Padres played for their postseason survival last week in NLDS Game 5. Five thousand miles away, when the day was just beginning for fans in Japan, millions more woke up and flipped on their TVs to tune in.

This wasn’t just any rivalry game, though. This was Yu Darvish, the only Japanese pitcher to strike out 2,000 batters in the Major Leagues, going up against the ridiculously talented, three-time Sawamura Award-winning young right-hander Yoshinobu Yamamoto.

A year before, the two had been teammates for Samurai Japan in the World Baseball Classic, with Darvish taking the role of mentor to Yamamoto. And now, for the first time in MLB postseason history, two Japanese-born pitchers were facing each other.

“For Yamamoto, I don’t think any of us can appreciate the pressure on a global scale,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said after the game. “He was pitching for the country of Japan."

It didn’t hurt that Shohei Ohtani was leading off for the Dodgers, either, making this also the first time that three Japanese players were in the starting lineup in a single postseason game. (To add another wrinkle to the whole thing: Darvish was Ohtani’s hero growing up.)

“I think this is probably the most exciting MLB postseason ever for Japanese [fans],” Aogu Tanaka, a writer for the popular Japanese sports magazine Number told MLB.com in an email. “Even people who weren't interested in baseball are now paying attention.”

“I think for most Japanese people it was just really cool to see an all-Japanese matchup,” Yuri Karasawa, perhaps better known by his X/Twitter handle and YouTube account, Yakyu Cosmopolitan, where he covers Japanese baseball in English. “It was the same mood for Yamamoto vs. [Shota] Imanaga in the regular season. Hard to describe it, but I would say the closest thing in American sports might be like when the Williams sisters matched up in tennis. A friendly rivalry.”

Despite the odd time for the game in Japan – first pitch was at 9:08 a.m. on a Saturday – the contest earned nearly a 20 percent rating in Japan, with almost 13 million people tuning in. “[A]n astonishing number,” Tanaka wrote.

The bars and izakayas may have been closed, keeping people from congregating together to watch, but still: This was top of mind for most fans in Japan.

“Even when you're on the train or in a cafe, you can hear conversations like ‘Ohtani hit it’ or ‘I wonder if the Dodgers will win,’ from somewhere,” Tanaka, who is currently in Los Angeles to cover the NLCS if it returns to Dodger Stadium, said.

“I think one of the main ways people stay in touch with what’s going on is TV programs and variety shows after the games are already finished,” Karasawa added. “They have sports programs all the time, including those that focus on just Ohtani every month or so. I watched one just the other day that they made directly after he reached 50/50 and they were basically recapping his entire season and providing some commentary about his teammates and other teams to help people understand MLB better.”

Ever since “Mashi” Murakami made his debut for the Giants in 1964, you cannot tell the story of the Major Leagues without talking about the impact made by Japanese ballplayers. Hideo Nomo and his twisting, twirling dervish of a delivery inspired Nomo-mania in the ‘90s; Ichiro Suzuki attacked the record books, slashing his way to the single-season hits record and topping 3,000 knocks in the Major Leagues.

This is also not the first time that Japanese players have taken center stage during the postseason: Hideki Matsui won the World Series MVP Award after hitting .615 with three home runs and eight RBIs for the Yankees in the 2009 Fall Classic. Four years later, Red Sox reliever Koji Uehara rode his unhittable split-finger to the ALCS MVP Award en route to a World Series victory, too.

What’s different this year is how many stars have come over from Nippon Professional Baseball and how integral each player is to his team’s chances of winning the World Series. Yamamoto is one of the best arms currently in the Dodgers rotation, while Ohtani’s 50-50 campaign is arguably the greatest single offensive season in baseball history.

Despite missing most of the year with an injury and struggling with his command in his first appearance against the Dodgers this series, the Mets’ Kodai Senga possesses ace-like stuff -- including a legendary "ghost fork" -- and he might be relied upon to bounce back out of the bullpen in a must-win NLCS Game 5 on Friday night.

While Ohtani may dominate the discussion, with Karasawa noting that he “transcends baseball,” and is “probably the most famous person in the country at this point” -- it can be hard to walk down a street in Tokyo or Little Tokyo in Los Angeles without seeing Ohtani’s face on a billboard -- this is likely only the start of more to come.

Fireballing Roki Sasaki has expressed his desire to come to the Major Leagues for some time and interest from big league teams should only have grown after he tossed eight shutout innings against the Nippon-Ham Fighters in the NPB playoffs last week. Longtime Yomiuri Giants ace Tomoyuki Sugano is set to come to the States this winter as a free agent. The 35-year-old wrapped up arguably the best season in his 12-year career, going 15-3 with a 1.67 ERA and a remarkable 111/16 K/BB ratio. Rintaro Sasaki opted to play college baseball at Stanford instead of likely being picked first overall in the NPB draft, and teams are still tantalized by single-season NPB home run record-holder Munetaka Murakami’s light-tower power, even with some significant concerns about his penchant to swing and miss.

"There's no doubt that they are aspiring to move to MLB," Tanaka wrote. "However, judging from their comments so far, I think that if they see such an exciting postseason, they will want to go to MLB sooner. The speed, power, excitement, cheers ... everything is extraordinary. They will definitely want to play there."

The baseball world is only getting bigger. We as fans are just the ones lucky enough to sit back and enjoy it all.