TOKYO — For a moment, it felt like all of Japan held its collective breath. The Tokyo Dome, known throughout the globe for its energy and electric atmosphere fell silent as the sheeted dead. Then, as Shohei Ohtani’s bat connected on a curveball, a line drive to right field, the crowd erupted.
The Dodgers international megastar, playing on his home soil for the first time as a major leaguer, delivered the hit that jolted Los Angeles to life, setting the stage for the team’s thrilling 4-1 comeback over the Chicago Cubs in the opening game of the 2025 MLB season.
The journey to Opening Day was nearly a year in the making as both teams traveled over 6,000 miles for this moment. None of the other 28 teams in Major League Baseball had to travel across the world to play two games before heading all the way back across the Pacific Ocean for more spring training games.
No one else had to arrive a week early to spring training, end it a weak earlier, break their normal routines and disrupt their lives for a couple of games on the other side of the world. But nobody else is Shohei Ohtani and the reigning World Series champion Los Angeles Dodgers.
In front of a packed house, in a city that is buzzing with baseball fever, two historic franchises clashed under the Tokyo lights. The 2025 MLB Tokyo Series was a celebration of Japanese baseball at its finest. Five Japanese-born players were on the active rosters and will play in the series.
Even though this was a series between two of baseball’s iconic franchises, it was still the Ohtani show.
Ohtani is more than just famous in his home country. He’s an A-list celebrity, a rock star and a cultural icon all rolled into one. During the two-game series, over a dozen different commercials featuring Ohtani flashed across TV screens in Tokyo. His face is featured on billboards, taxi cabs, subway trains, storefront windows and more.
Each and every time Ohtani stepped to the plate, fans roared and cheered. They all took out their phones to record his every movement and held their collective breath during each pitch. They oohed and aahed at every ball he put into play and gasped when he struck out.
So, after the flags were unfurled and the national anthems, played by Japanese musician Yoshiki, were completed, after the Pokemon introductions and the plethora of Pikachu’s danced across the diamond, there was finally baseball being played in the 2025 MLB season.
For the first time since the Dodgers defeated the Yankees in Game 5 of the 2024 World Series at Yankee Stadium on Oct. 30, the games actually counted, and LA’s title defense has officially begun.
Ohtani finished the game 2-for-5 with a single, a double and two runs scored. His first hit of the 2025 season, a line drive to right field, came in the top of the fifth inning.
Tommy Edman tied the game with a line drive to left field, and Ohtani scored the go-ahead run on an errant throw by Cubs second baseman Jon Berti.
Teoscar Hernandez added an insurance run in the top of the ninth.
That would be all the Dodgers would need as their pitching staff did the rest. Anthony Banda, Ben Casparius, Blake Treinen and free agent acquisition Tanner Scott combined for four shutout innings with the latter earning his first save in Dodger blue.
Yamamoto knows what it's like to travel across the world to pitch in a baseball game, and is no longer a rookie with the weight of the world on his shoulders. After a dominant postseason in which he was the ace of the Dodgers injury riddled World Series-winning pitching staff, Yamamoto has emerged as the ace of the 2025 staff.
TOKYO, JAPAN - MARCH 18: Yoshinobu Yamamoto #18 of the Los Angeles Dodgers reacts after the bottom of the fifth inning during the MLB Tokyo Series game against Chicago Cubs at Tokyo Dome on March 18, 2025 in Tokyo, Japan. (Photo by Masterpress/Getty Images)
Despite being the proverbial middle child, to “big brother” Ohtani and little brother Roki Sasaki, Yamamoto’s three-pitch mix of fastball, curveball and splitter kept the Cubs hitters off-balance all night long. His only blemish was an RBI double to Miguel Amaya in the bottom of the second.
In a mirror opposite performance from his first start of the 2024 season, Yamamoto allowed just one run on three hits with four strikeouts in five innings. He seized the opportunity in his home country and earned the win over his fellow countryman Shota Imanaga in the first all-Japanese Opening Day starting pitching matchup in MLB history.
Both teams will play again tomorrow, but the memories of this game will last a lifetime, and for the 42,635 fans in attendance at Tokyo Dome, they will remember it for years to come.
