TOKYO (AP) — Ichiro Suzuki was having his typical day on a baseball field in 2000, putting on a power display during batting practice before ripping line drives all over the field for the Orix BlueWave during a preseason doubleheader.
American infielder Torey Lovullo — who was in the other dugout playing the final year of his career in Japan with the Yakult Swallows — couldn’t believe his eyes.
The 26-year-old’s combination of speed, power and skill was off the charts. How did he not know about this guy?
“I told my translator, get me three baseballs,” the current Arizona Diamondbacks manager said. “He needs to sign them. That’s the best hitter I’ve ever seen.”
Lovullo was ahead of the curve in identifying a future Major League Baseball legend. Suzuki came to the United States the following year, signing with the Seattle Mariners, and embarked on a Hall of Fame career that included 3,089 MLB hits and a lasting legacy.
Nearly 25 years after Suzuki’s MLB debut, the defending World Series champion Los Angeles Dodgers will face the Chicago Cubs in two regular-season games in Tokyo, and Japanese players will be the centerpiece of the experience. Two-way Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani is widely considered the best player in the world while teammates Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Roki Sasaki are important parts of the pitching staff.
Over on the Cubs, Seiya Suzuki is one of the best hitters in the lineup, while Shota Imanaga is the ace pitcher. He’ll face Yamamoto on Tuesday in the first all-Japanese starting pitcher duel in MLB history.
It’s quite a moment for Japan, Japanese baseball and the dozens of players who slowly paved the road for today’s generation to be such a big part of the American baseball scene.
“Very excited — my family’s very excited,” Seiya Suzuki said. “I think it’s a great opportunity to make memories over there.”
The first Japanese-born player in the big leagues was Masanori Murakami, who pitched for the San Francisco Giants during the 1964 and 1965 seasons.
But it was thirty years later when pitcher Hideo Nomo came to the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1995 that Japan’s presence in the big leagues really started to be felt. His unorthodox delivery — turning his back toward home plate during his windup — helped make him an immediate sensation and he won National League Rookie of the Year and made the All-Star team after finishing with a 13-6 record and 2.54 ERA.
“It was on TV, so as a kid growing up, you’d see him pitch in the major leagues and that became a thing in Japan,” said Atsuya Furuta, who was a star catcher in Japan from 1990-2007. “Baseball kids wanted to play in the major leagues.”
At first, it was mostly pitchers who came from Japan to play in the U.S. Shigetoshi Hasegawa was a quality reliever for the Angels and Mariners starting in the late 1990s, and Kazuhiro Sasaki was an All-Star closer for the Mariners in the early 2000s.
But Suzuki was the one who opened the door for Japanese hitters, signing with the Mariners in 2001.
“When Ichiro finally came over and began his rise in this game, it showed the way for other young Japanese players to see it was possible to come here,” Lovullo said. “There was always an insecurity that they weren’t big enough or strong enough and couldn’t compete at this level.
