I’ve been thinking about Japan a lot lately, especially when it comes to baseball. I’m not sure why, but it probably traces back to the series between the Dodgers and Cubs that launched the 2025 season from the TokyoDome. I saw more than a few people complain about America’s Pastime beginning the season in a foreign county, but I didn’t have a problem with it. For starters, I don’t think it takes anything away from the celebration of Opening Day here, and on top of that, Japan has earned it.
Here’s what I mean by that. Like many Americans, my perspective of the world is very west-centric. Even as a medieval historian, my focus has largely been on Western Europe, rarely drifting farther east than the Byzantine Empire. This, despite the fact that Japan has a complex and interesting history of its own. But in terms of baseball, nobody wants it more than Japan.
Despite a much smaller population, there are more baseball fans on record in Japan than all of the United States. I don’t know who conducts these surveys or how accurate their results are, but I have an easy time believing it. We might have invented the game, but it has receded into the margins in this country. Much like in Latin America, baseball is just a different thing in the Far East.
Here, it’s not uncommon to find a game on in the background at a bar or restaurant, but unless it’s the postseason, most of the patrons aren’t that invested. In Japan, fanbases have their own bars and clubs where they crowd into watch every game with each other. And the scene in the stands at the ballpark is just as much of a contrast. Whereas the seats are often half-empty for most regular season games in the U.S.,* Japanese fans usually pack the house and watch the game with the same kind of energy and passion we generally only break out for college football games. It’s insane, in the best way possible.
*MLB will tell you they’re breaking attendance records every year, but it doesn’t feel that way watching on TV. I know there are exceptions (Wrigley, Fenway, etc.), and winning certainly helps any team at the turnstile, but it’s hardly a guarantee. For example, ticket sales were supposed to jump for the Royals after their successful 2024 season, but there were only 13,000 people at the first game I attended this season, on a beautiful spring night. Hell, MLB The Show doesn’t even feature sold-out crowds. If you can’t pack the house in your own video game, what is going on?
And Japanese fans have reasons to get rowdy. Their top pro league, the NPB (Nippon Professional Baseball) puts out a quality product. Not everyone agrees on ranking the professional baseball leagues around the world, but the NPB is consistently ranked second, behind only MLB itself. However, it is only in the last few decades that American fans have been able to see Japanese baseball players firsthand.
Baseball was first introduced in Japan in 1872, but it was really pushed during the American occupation following World War II. In 1964, Masanori Murakami became the first Japanese player to sign for an American team when he was recruited by the San Francisco Giants. That’s when everything went wrong.
A dispute broke out, which resulted in Murakami being returned to Japan and the establishment of the U.S.-Japanese Player Contract Agreement (aka the Working Agreement). This basically kept MLB teams from poaching Japanese talent. The arrangement was a victory for Japanese clubs, but it kept their greatest players from being able to showcase their abilities on the biggest stage.
The best example of this is Sadaharu Oh. For those of you unfamiliar with Oh, I’ll assume you aren’t Beastie Boys fans.* Oh slugged 868 home runs in his legendary career, making him the global leader in dingers, giving him over a hundred more than current and previous MLB leaders Barry Bonds, Hank Aaron, and Babe Ruth.^ His detractors will argue he achieved his mark against inferior competition, and no one who knows baseball will debate otherwise. But as Kelvin Sampson would say, he wasn’t playing in the toy poodle league either, so it’s safe to assume that even if his numbers wouldn’t have been quite as gaudy in the U.S., he could have more than held his own. In fact, I’m convinced he would have been a star wherever he played.
*The Beastie Boys have more hits than numerous baseball greats, including Rod Carew and Sadaharu Oh. If you know what I’m talking about, I applaud your taste in music. If you don’t, it’s fine, just go back to the non-italic text. And maybe check out the song, “Hey Ladies.”
^Depending on who you talk to, some will argue Josh Gibson hit even more than Oh, but there’s no way to know for sure. The records for Gibson’s career in the Negro Leagues are not complete, so his true total remains a mystery. Just know that all the players I’ve mentioned here were premier sluggers.
Oh remains active with NPB, and was front-and-center during the Cubs-Dodgers series in March, stating he’s never seen “this level of excitement from fans and players.” What’s interesting is that this golden age for NPB comes at a time when more Japanese players than ever have jumped to MLB.
Hideo Nomo was the first, when he jumped to the Dodgers in 1995. This move set up the “posting system,” which provides a window for MLB teams to negotiate with Japanese players and purchase their contracts, and it’s still in use today. Over the last three decades, MLB has seen an influx of Japanese players, many of whom have become legitimate stars.
Hideki Matsui, aka Godzilla, was the 2009 World Series MVP for the Yankees. Yu Darvish is a multi-time All-Star still pitching at a high level for the Padres.* Ichiro Suzuki will become the first Japanese player inducted into Cooperstown later this month. And then there is the current iteration of the Dodgers.
*Well, not currently. He’s missed the entire 2025 season, but he is working on a rehab assignment as I write this and could be back in Petco in the very near future.
The reigning World Series champs boast two of the most highly-prized pitchers to ever come out of Japan in Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Roki Sasaki, and the best baseball player on the planet. Shohei Ohtani is the unicorn, a player who hits, pitches, and runs at an All-Star level, and when all is said and done, he might go down as the greatest player in baseball history. Perhaps I’m getting ahead of myself, but he has already provided us with one of the greatest moments in baseball history.
You might be asking, which one, and it would be a fair question, because Ohtani has given us so many highlight reel moments, including the home run I personally saw him slug at Kauffman Stadium in 2023. That it was followed up by a Mike Trout dinger only made it that much cooler. But I’m thinking even bigger here, though Mike Trout was also involved in this moment as well.
I’m talking about the championship game of the 2023 World Baseball Classic, of course. The WBC is a cool event that has sometimes struggled to catch on, but the 2023 final might have finally been its breakthrough moment. Just before they were due to report for spring camp as teammates (Ohtani and Trout were both still Angels at that time), they found themselves facing off for the WBC crown as Japan played the U.S.
The game was tight all the way, with Japan leading 3-1 after the fourth. Kyle Schwarber hit a solo home run in the top of the eighth to bring the Americans within one, and Ohtani came in for the save in the ninth. After inducing a double play from Mookie Betts, he watched as Trout stepped into the box with two outs.
What followed was an epic six-pitch at-bat, in which Trout swung and missed at two 100 mph fastballs before working the count full. Then, with baseball fans across the world watching from the edge of their seats, Ohtani tricked him with an 87 mph slider across the outside part of the plate. Trout swung and missed, and Japan celebrated.*
*As an American, obviously I was rooting for Trout and the U.S. to pull it out, but it was impossible to be too upset about it. Two of the best players in the world gave us an iconic moment for the ages.
But even that is not my favorite moment from Japanese baseball history. No, that has to be the Curse of the Colonel. That’s right, I’m talking about Colonel Sanders of KFC fame.* Sure, we have the Curse of the Bambino and the Billy Goat Curse, but this one is just as good, maybe even better.
*When I tried to tell this story to my oldest son, who is moderately interested in baseball, he already knew it. I was shocked, but he told me it was actually featured in a video game. So yeah, it was a pretty big deal. Also, I’m not sure I can describe how irrationally happy this unexpected collision of our worlds made me. What can I say? Fatherhood is weird sometimes.
The story starts in 1985.* The Hanshin Tigers upset the Seibu Lions in the Japan Series, which is their championship, in large part due to the heroics of an American player named Randy Bass. During the wild celebration that followed, Hanshin fans read off the names on the roster. As they did so, a fan who bore a passing resemblance to the named player would jump into the nearby canal.^
*Just a great year for baseball, amirite, Royals fans?
^Hey, since when do championship celebrations have to make sense?
The only problem was that when they got around to Bass, they didn’t have any white dudes to jump in the canal. So they grabbed the next best thing: a statue of Col. Sanders from a local KFC. They tossed it into the canal, everyone cheered, and continued to party.
Unfortunately, this was followed by an eighteen-year streak of ineptitude from the Tigers. They finished in either last or next-to-last place every season. Was the sunken Colonel to blame? Seems like a stretch to me, but that became the story. For years, fans tried anything they could to atone for dunking the chicken tycoon. People dove into the canal to try and recover him, they apologized to the manager of the KFC, and all the other superstitious stuff fans resort to when faced with a curse.
None of it worked, and even the recovery of the statue in 2009 was not an immediate fix. The statue was cleaned up and put back in its old spot, but the Tigers still fell short of another championship. But at least they got out of the cellar. Only in 2023, after the Tigers won the Japan Series in seven games, was the Colonel appeased. This time, a fan dressed as Col. Sanders jumped into the canal, and the statue was left in peace.
Unfortunately, the following March, KFC decided to get rid of the statue themselves, citing difficulties in maintaining it. They held an elaborate funeral and buried it, so unless you bring a shovel,* the gravesite is the closest you can get to visiting it.
*Please don’t bring a shovel.
Only time will tell how peacefully the Colonel is resting, and how that might affect the fortunes of the Hanshin Tigers.
Thanks for reading Powder Blue Nostalgia. Anyone out there ever been to a game in Japan? Whether you have or haven’t, if you’ve got a good story about baseball in Japan, this is the place to share it.
Wonderful! I enjoyed every bit of this.
Great article. Love your work. Ohtani got Trout with an 87 mph slider across the outside corner.