150 years of baseball history has led to this historic Opening Day in Tokyo
Michael Clair
@michaelsclairThe story of baseball runs through the United States and Japan. It’s a ribbon threaded through the history of the sport and its greatest players, connecting the two nations for more than 150 years. Not even Nostradamus himself could have envisioned what would happen in the decades since schoolteacher Horace Wilson first arrived on Japan’s shores in 1872 and began teaching the game of baseball to his eager students. For here, on the dawn of a new Major League Baseball season, we have a once-in-a-lifetime ballgame.
Here, inside the Tokyo Dome, we have the World Series champion Los Angeles Dodgers led by a trio of Japanese superstars -- fronted by the most exceptionally gifted athlete to ever walk onto the ballfield in Shohei Ohtani and two pitchers in Roki Sasaki and Yoshinobu Yamamoto, each gifted with generational skill.
The Cubs, another of baseball’s legendary ballclubs, features five-time NPB All-Star Seiya Suzuki and the changeup-specialist and human-quote-machine Shota Imanaga, who just played in his first MLB All-Star Game during his rookie season in the United States.
There have been big league games played in Japan before, where even new Japanese and American Baseball Hall of Fame inductee Ichiro Suzuki took part, but never were so many Japanese stars on display in a single game. Never before has the inclusion of Japanese players on MLB rosters, or American ex-pats on NPB teams, been the norm, the expectation. Baseball, as can clearly be seen on each and every roster, has truly become a global game.
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This may be the most star-studded MLB game to take part inside the Tokyo Dome, but it’s far from the first partnership between the two baseball-crazed nations. After the sport flourished in the country following Wilson’s proselytizing of the game (though there is new research from Nobby Ito, NPB’s official historian, to suggest that there were baseball games played near Osaka before Wilson arrived), Waseda University’s baseball team arrived at Stanford University in 1905 to learn more about the American style of playing the game. During that trip, where they traveled up and down the United States’ west coast, the players picked up new information “such as the wind-up, breaking balls, spiked shoes, sliding skills by baserunners and base coaches, the squeeze play, how to practice hitting and fielding,” Ito said.
That wasn’t all, though: Inspired by the group cheering and music from college marching bands, the Waseda University players returned and incorporated the idea. This was the start of the ōendan, or Japanese cheering squads, whose distinctive cheer songs -- filled with taiko drums and horns -- is one of the defining characteristics of the spectator experience in Japan.
Already, the interchange of ideas, play styles, even fan cultures, were being exchanged, built upon and modified.
American teams soon returned the favor, with a team of St. Louis college alumni (who had just won the Honolulu Baseball League -- 51 years before Hawaii became a U.S. State) arriving in Japan in 1907. More than 100 U.S. teams from both the college and professional ranks set sail for these series which were known as “Nichibei Yakyu” -- “Nichibei means ‘Japan and the US,’ derived from the first kanji used to write Japan and the United States of America,” Japanese baseball historian Rob Fitts wrote. “Yakyu is the Japanese name for baseball.”
These tours, connecting the two nations over the shared love of baseball, perhaps culminated when Babe Ruth brought a team of “All-Americans” to the nation. These weren't just some big leaguers, though, these were all-time greats -- names like Lou Gehrig, Jimmie Foxx, Lefty Gomez and Charlie Gehringer all cramming into the same lineup (one that was managed by the great Connie Mack.)
A mythic figure in every way, Ruth’s larger-than-life personality brought out throngs of fans to each of the 19 games the team played in the country; thousands cheering as Ruth deposited home runs into the outfield stands.
That legacy still lives on today: In 2002, a Babe Ruth statue was built in Yagiyama Zoological Park in Sendai City, erected on the exact spot where Ruth hit his first home run on the tour.
Nearly 30 years after Ruth’s arrival, Masanori Murakami became the first Japanese player to reach the Major Leagues. The original goal was for him and two teammates to join the Giants in Spring Training, learning training aspects from the big league team, but Murakami proved a sensation: He sparkled on the mound for Fresno, Calif., getting honored with a “Japanese American Day” at the Minor League ballpark and later earning a callup to the Major Leagues that fall.
"Our dream has come true after 30 years of effort since the establishment of [Japanese] professional baseball," a reporter wrote in "Shukan Baseball."
Like Ruth's tour of nearly 50 years prior, MLB All-Star teams began returning to Japan in 1979, with stars and future Hall of Famers Rod Carew, Lou Brock, Ozzie Smith, Ted Simmons, Paul Molitor and Phil Niekro playing. They faced off against eight players who would one day gain induction into the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame with Sadaharu Oh, Yutaka Fukumoto, Koji Yamamoto and Tsutomu Wakamatsu, and pitchers Choji Murata, Keishi Suzuki, Hisashi Yamada and Manabu Kitabeppu all playing.
Even the game’s greatest home run hitters -- Hank Aaron, his sweet swing leading him to hit 755 big league home runs, and Oh smashing 858 long balls -- came together, viewing themselves as ambassadors to the sport rather than rivals for the home run crown. They started the World Children’s Baseball Fair in 1990, hoping to “promote friendship among children and help to create a borderless world.”
The fair is still held to this day, perhaps the two’s greatest legacy being the number of young children who get to experience the sport and play with people from all over the world every summer.
In 2000, MLB opened the year in Tokyo for the very first time, with the Mets and Cubs playing before an absolutely packed, sold-out crowd.
Four years later, MLB returned again and Japanese legend Hideki Matsui got the very first hit of the year with a double. He followed that up with a home run into the crowded outfield stands a few innings later.
Now, Japanese stars come to the Major Leagues and become standouts -- whether it’s Hideo Nomo and his twisting tornado of a windup leading to Nomomania, Ichiro slashing his way to the single-season hits record or Ohtani crushing 50 home runs and stealing 50 bases in a single year, a combo previously thought not just unattainable but unimaginable.
MLB players have headed to Japan, looking to broaden their horizons and pick up new styles of play. Some have set NPB records, too. Matt Murton briefly held the single-season hits record, and Wladimir Balentien smashed 60 home runs.
It is a magical time to be a baseball fan, whether in Japan, the United States or anywhere else on the planet. There are English-language accounts devoted to Japanese baseball, and Japanese-language accounts focused on the Major Leagues. MLB players will pick up new tips and tools from their Japanese teammates -- sometimes even resurrecting their careers by playing overseas before returning like Rangers pitcher Tony Barnette did nearly a decade ago.
Tens of millions of fans have watched in awe and astonishment as Japan won three World Baseball Classics, the last ending in an incredible 3-2 count strikeout of Mike Trout by his then-teammate Ohtani.
Eighty-one players born in Japan have now played on Major League fields and that number should continue to grow, even as more nations and fans are inspired by the great players they'll see take the field on Tuesday.
From Horace Wilson to Nomomania; to Ichiro Suzuki setting the single-season hits record to Tuffy Rhodes' majestic blasts in the NPB: from Ohtani striking out Trout to, well, Ohtani going 50/50 in a single season, the baseball devotion shared between Japan and the United States continues to make the sport better, brighter and more exciting than ever before.
What a great time to be alive.