Shohei Ohtani is one of the most amazing baseball players I’ve ever seen from any country and so glad to see his incredible success from both the pitching mound and at the plate, which is unusual for a player from any country.
The baseball world is incredibly excited for his achievements so far and I’m thrilled to see if he has the staying power that Coach Madden has for him.
It’s easy to compare a hot player to the legends of yesteryear but can they keep it up for more than one season, that is the biggest question.
Personally, I’m just glad to see fans in the states taking Japanese Baseball Players more and more
seriously. For a long time I had heard some bits and pieces about how seriously they take Americas Pastime there, but it wasn’t until 1992s Tom Selleck film, Mr Baseball did I start to look into Japan’s rich history of baseball.
The movie was about an aging American ballplayer who get traded to a Japanese baseball team, who happens to have a legendary Coach. The American ends up challenging his coaches game-to-game hitting streak, but at the core was also the films look at how Japan looks at baseball, it’s a good bit different than here in the states. Neither is necessarily right or wrong, it’s just a difference in the culture and that is part of what really interested me. I highly recommend the film, by the way, it’s a romantic-comedy that has a lot of fun, but it’s also got some good views into Japanese life and differences in the people that keeps it interesting throughout.
What I started asking friends from Japan about baseball there, I got some great stories that weren’t unlike stories here in the states, about family trips, father & son, throwing the ball with friends, it was all kind of familiar and that’s the beauty of baseball, it’s one of our universal languages in sports.
Players like Japans Home Run King, Sadaharu Oh, then America being introduced to another legend, Kaoru Betto on the t-shirt of #TheDude from the #BigLebowski, to players like Ichiro Suzuki and Hideki Matsui making the jump to the Majors here in the states, have gotten the attention of fans from hardcore to just general fans, but Ohtani is getting the attention of the entire sports world.
I’m thankful for the fictional characters in the movies like the ones in Mr Baseball or, Tanaka in Major League II but I genuinely hope that more American baseball fans start digging into the history of baseball in Japan.
It is one of my dreams, on my trip over there, to catch some baseball games and get the full experience of noodles instead of hotdogs, learning a team chant or two and even trying to find some collectibles to add to my own, like the original card and mask I have of Betto, and of the ones who have made the transition like Suzuki & Matsui.
Going back to Ohtani, I hope to see him wowing fans for years, and see his career grow, he certainly looks like he has the potential and work ethic to stay strong.
Even though Baseball is America’s pastime, Japan has taken this game and made it her own as well, like so many other countries have. I consider it one of our great achievements to have the international relations that baseball has created.
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