{"id":547660,"date":"2026-03-18T04:42:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-18T04:42:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/547660\/"},"modified":"2026-03-18T04:42:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-18T04:42:10","slug":"dodgers-shohei-ohtani-is-driving-mlbs-boom-in-japan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/547660\/","title":{"rendered":"Dodgers Shohei Ohtani is driving MLB’s boom in Japan"},"content":{"rendered":"

Los Angeles Dodgers<\/a> superstar Shohei Ohtani<\/a> isn\u2019t just the best baseball player in the world. He\u2019s also the driving force<\/a> behind why Japanese fans are watching Major League Baseball.<\/p>\n

In a country where baseball already pulses through the culture like oxygen, Ohtani has turned passion into obsession. According to a YouGov Sport survey<\/a>, nearly 8 in 10 Japanese fans now say he\u2019s one of their favorite MLB players, and more importantly, 79 percent admit he\u2019s the reason their interest in Major League Baseball has grown.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"ShoheiShohei Ohtani smiles after he is intentionally walked during the third inning of a World Baseball Classic quarterfinal game against Venezuela. AP<\/p>\n

Ohtani\u2019s current team, the Dodgers, have now become Japan\u2019s team. A commanding 59 percent of the nation said the Dodgers are their favorite MLB team. That\u2019s no coincidence. Ohtani, alongside countrymen Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Roki Sasaki, has turned Dodger Stadium into a second home for millions of fans watching from across the Pacific.\u00a0<\/p>\n

When the Dodgers reached the 2025 World Series, more than half of Japanese sports fans tuned in\u2014and 86 percent of them weren\u2019t just watching. They were emotionally invested.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This is the rarest kind of athlete, the kind who doesn\u2019t just dominate a sport but redefines its geography. Ohtani hasn\u2019t simply bridged Japan and America\u2014he\u2019s collapsed the distance between them. Every home run, every splitter, every moment under the lights pulls two baseball worlds closer together.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Los Angeles Dodgers superstar Shohei Ohtani isn\u2019t just the best baseball player in the world. He\u2019s also the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":547661,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,485,941,481,1187,591,5149,85],"class_list":["post-547660","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-california","tag-japan","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-dodgers","tag-mlb","tag-shohei-ohtani","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547660","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=547660"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547660\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/547661"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=547660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=547660"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=547660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}