When the Los Angeles Dodgers square off against the Chicago Cubs for the Major League Baseball season opener in Japan’s Tokyo Dome this Tuesday, Dodgers co-owner Todd Boehly will watch with mixed emotions.
No doubt he’ll revel in the spectacle. Thanks to a pitching roster that includes three of Japan’s biggest stars—Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Roki Sasaki, and super-slugger Shohei Ohtani—Japanese fans practically think of the Dodgers as their national team. The Dodgers’ World Series victory over the New York Yankees last year drew an average of 12.9 million Japanese viewers; Game Two in that series had more Japanese viewers than Americans. Tickets for Tuesday’s game and a second on Wednesday sold out instantly, with premium seats on the re-sale market changing hands for as much as $20,000. The roar of the crowd inside the 50,000-seat “Big Egg” will be thunderous. Millions more Japanese will tune into the games on television. The Japanese media, which covers the Dodgers obsessively, is sure to whip itself into a frenzy.
