TOKYO – The baseball-mad country of Japan greeted perhaps the brightest star it has ever produced with silence. When Shohei Ohtani stepped into the batter’s box to open Major League Baseball’s season against his fellow countryman, Shota Imanaga, the 42,365 fans inside of the Tokyo Dome hushed to near silence. Such is the custom. The Chicago Cubs were technically the home team in this international showcase. But it’s the reigning World Series champion Los Angeles Dodgers, unmatched in their spending and envied for their dominance in the sport, whose presence in this country looms larger than all of their counterparts.
None, of course, are bigger than Ohtani. On a historic night in the midst of the country’s golden era of baseball, Ohtani has powered everything. It’s Ohtani’s face that is plastered on advertisements throughout Tokyo and beyond, and Ohtani whose fingerprints have been used to “paint Japan Dodger blue,” who leads this talented generation of players, and who found himself again as the center of attention as the Dodgers defeated the Cubs, 4-1, in the opener of the 2025 Major League Baseball season.
The thousands inside the Tokyo Dome and the millions watching on television bore witness to the first-ever Opening Day matchup of Japanese-born pitchers as Imanaga delivered four no-hit innings and Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who received the richest contract ever for a pitcher 15 months ago, went five innings while allowing just one run while showing signs of dominance in getting the win. Seiya Suzuki hit second in the order as the Cubs’ designated hitter, an acknowledgment of his value for a franchise seeking a breakthrough.
Yet whenever Ohtani stepped up to the plate, a sea of phones and flashbulbs greeted his every move. The three-time MVP has become the face not just of the sport but an ubiquitous part of Japanese life, the biggest star in a monoculture that adores him above all. For much of the last week, each at-bat has become a must-see event. At 7:10 p.m., the cameras trained on him captured him grounding out against Imanaga. In the third inning, the crowd stirred, then groaned as Ohtani’s line drive found the back of second baseman Jon Berti’s glove rather than the shiny green turf.
They roared to life in the fifth inning as Ohtani cracked a single that, at 107.4 mph, nearly struck the Dodgers’ Andy Pages on the basepaths. Instead, it shot through the right side of the infield for the Dodgers’ first hit. A batter later, Tommy Edman tied the game with a single of his own. Teoscar Hernández chopped a ground ball for a potential double play that Berti instead fired past Michael Busch at first base – Ohtani scored, becoming just the second Japanese player after Hideki Matsui to score a run in his home country in a major league game. They roared again when Ohtani hooked a double down the right-field line in the ninth inning, coming around to score again two batters later.
Every element of the night seemed like a fantasy for the sport, which chose these two squads for the international assignment nearly a year ago. The Dodgers have embraced Japan more than ever before, committing more than $1 billion combined to Ohtani and Yamamoto in December 2023 and adding to what they hope is a competitive and financial advantage in the market this past offseason in signing Roki Sasaki, who is set to make his major league debut on Wednesday. Their bottom lines are healthy, and their business opportunities have seemingly increased by the day.
“I had a luncheon today with all of our sponsors,” Dodgers CEO Stan Kasten said in the hours before his team took the global stage. “It was a big luncheon. And they are all so pleased. Whenever you have a customer that’s that happy with you, it’s very gratifying.”
The Cubs, seeking a return to contention, have leaned back into a Japanese pipeline in hopes of making that happen. In the days before the series began, manager Craig Counsell suggested that the bonding experience fostered by spending a week untethered on the other side of the planet could help sow the seeds of the next great iteration of the franchise in the midst of a make-or-break season.
“As much as anything, this is the word: kizuna,” Counsell said, “which is a Japanese word for bond…This is the start of a journey for our team.”
A packed crowd in front of a frenetic baseball fan base served a great start.
“It feels like a playoff environment, which is awesome,” said Cubs president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer. “Those are the butterflies that you want, that’s the energy that you want. There’s no feeling like the postseason when everyone’s hanging on every pitch. I have a feeling this is going to feel that way. It’s good for our players to feel that.
The days of exhibitions against Japanese clubs such as the Yomiuri Giants and Hanshin Tigers provided an introduction beyond quirks like a between-innings sushi race. Dodgers infielder Miguel Rojas recalled the tales of Venezuelan ballplayers Alex Ramirez and Alex Cabrera, who rose to stardom playing in Japan’s highest league, Nippon Professional Baseball. This, they said, was the closest comparison there was to winter ball in Latin America.
“The Japanese culture and fans live baseball,” Rojas said.
In Japan, of course, it sounds a little different.
“I think it’s great how it’s pitch silent while the home team is pitching,” Dodgers utility man Kiké Hernández said. “And then it’s just like a party when they’re hitting. That’s my kind of party.”
This party looked more like a continued coronation, not just for the defending World Series champions playing in the equivalent to a title-winning soccer club taking a victory tour but for the game’s biggest star.
(Top photo: Masterpress / Getty Images)
