MLB begins its season in Japan

The LA Dodgers topped the Chicago Cubs 4-1 yesterday in the first matchup of a two-game series in Tokyo, Japan, kicking off the MLB regular season and also tossing a nod to a tradition that’s tied the US and island nation in the Pacific together for 150+ years.

Not just America’s national pastime

Baseball has been in Japan for nearly as long as it's been in the states thanks to American teacher Horace Wilson, who moved to Tokyo in 1872 and taught the game to his students. Decades of cross-nation collaboration and friendly competition followed.

• Japanese teams traveled to play in the US dating back to the early 1900s, while 100+ US college and pro teams have embarked on baseball tours of Japan.
• Possibly the most famous of these tours occurred in 1934, when The Sultan of Swat The King of Crash The Colossus of Clout The Colossus of Clout Babe Ruth and other future Hall of Famers played a 19-game barnstorming tour against a Japanese all-star team.

Speaking of Japanese star power…The Dodgers-Cubs series features five Japanese players, including the newly signed Rōki Sasaki, who takes the mound for LA in his MLB debut today, and the kind-of-good-at-baseball Shohei Ohtani.

As for Opening Day stateside: It’s not quite time to be scarfing down a hot dog in an MLB stadium while simultaneously chirping the opposing team’s left fielder and talking about how “this is the year, guys, I swear” – but it will be soon. March 27, to be exact.