{"id":517584,"date":"2026-03-04T06:48:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-04T06:48:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/517584\/"},"modified":"2026-03-04T06:48:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-04T06:48:09","slug":"murakami-and-okamoto-put-mlb-prep-on-hold-to-answer-the-call-for-samurai-japan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/517584\/","title":{"rendered":"Murakami and Okamoto put MLB prep on hold to answer the call for Samurai Japan"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>                                    OSAKA \u2013 <\/p>\n<p>After making big contributions to help Japan win the 2023 World Baseball Classic, Munetaka Murakami and Kazuma Okamoto were ready to answer the call this year even though it meant putting preparations for their first MLB seasons on hold.<\/p>\n<p>Murakami put his spring training schedule with the Chicago White Sox on hold while Okamoto departed from the Toronto Blue Jays camp to play for Samurai Japan in the 2026 WBC.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf there is a chance to represent my country, I wouldn\u2019t turn it down,\u201d Murakami said in Osaka, shortly after arriving in Japan. \u201cIt\u2019s something to be proud of. I had no hesitation at all.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"OSAKA \u2013 After making big contributions to help Japan win the 2023 World Baseball Classic, Munetaka Murakami and&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":517585,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,170750,591,128516,228468,85,143382],"class_list":{"0":"post-517584","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-kazuma-okamoto","11":"tag-mlb","12":"tag-munetaka-murakami","13":"tag-samurai-japan","14":"tag-sports","15":"tag-world-baseball-classic"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/517584","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=517584"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/517584\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/517585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=517584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=517584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=517584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}