Tokyo – Shin Uehori, the coach of Tokyo’s Fukagawa Hawks youth baseball team, is well aware of how Los Angeles Dodgers superstar Shohei Ohtani inspires his players.
“With Ohtani, the kids think anything is possible,” said Kamihori after Sunday practice, sitting next to a local Buddhist temple, under an expressway overpass, and in the shadow of a high-rise apartment complex in central Tokyo. We have finished practicing at the grounds set up all over the country.
“Nothing is impossible for him. A dream is not a dream,” Kamihori said as he emerged from the practice field, fenced off to prevent balls from falling on the grounds of the temple. None of the young players who hit sponge soft baseball have reached the expressway yet.
Otanimania waxes and wanes in Japan, but blue Dodgers caps have supplanted Yankees caps as the country’s go-to sports fashion item.
Japan also has other big names active on the world sports stage, such as golfer Hideki Matsuyama, boxer Naoya Inoue, and tennis player Naomi Osaka. Japan achieved a record of 20 gold medals at the Paris Olympics, the highest ever for an Olympics held in a foreign country.
But no one can match Ohtani, not even his teammate Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who surpassed fellow Japanese pitcher Yu Darvish and defeated the San Diego Padres in a best-of-five game in the NLDS.
The excitement reached a fever pitch about 20 months ago when Japan defeated the United States to win the World Baseball Classic. Ohtani reached another peak when he signed a 10-year, $700 million contract and was traded from the Angels to the Dodgers to start the 2024 season.
The only trough came in March when Ohtani was involved in a gambling scandal. Prosecutors ultimately found no evidence of Ohtani’s involvement.
The next peak is slowly building, with Ohtani and teammate Yamamoto in the National League CS game against the New York Mets. If the Dodgers advance to the World Series, it is almost certain that public viewing areas will be set up across Japan to watch the game, and most of them will be shown early in the morning in the country.
The time difference between New York and Tokyo is 13 hours. The time between Tokyo and Los Angeles is 16:00.
Yukako Takahashi watched her 10-year-old son Haruka during Sunday’s practice and was clearly aware of the impact Ohtani had on him and his teammates.
“Everyone is inspired by him,” she said. “The kids wonder how he got that spirit. He’s just a big idol to them. He’s perfect.”
She said she doesn’t regularly watch Ohtani’s games from the U.S., but she follows him on local news. Many days, he’s at the top of the headlines, and not just in the top sports stories. He suggested that interest will certainly increase if the Dodgers advance to the World Series later this month.
She also said Ohtani is an inspiration to all of Japan because he can beat Americans, and Latin Americans, at their own game.
“Recently, Japan’s economy has been in a slump,” she said. “Things are very difficult these days. But Ohtani is successful, so he is our hope.”
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AP MLB: https://apnews.com/MLB
