The Pitch That Caused an Entire Country To Stand Still
Tuesday’s World Baseball Classic final is everything that’s right with sports
When the ninth inning finally came, with Shohei Ohtani pitching to his Angels teammate Mike Trout for the World Baseball Classic championship, it was a little after 11 a.m. in Tokyo. It was a Wednesday there, the middle of the work week, though some offices granted “WBC Leave.” Added together, 97.4% of TVs in Japan were tuned into the ballgame.
You read that right. 97.4 percent.
Nearly 500 people gathered at the base of the iconic Tokyo Tower to watch on a giant screen. “Thank you Ohtani!” shouted one Sho Ishii, a 29-year-old fan watching there after the final out. “Thank you, Samurai Team Japan!”
A few hours later, Yomiuri, the country’s largest newspaper, printed a special edition that declared, “Japan, the World’s No. 1.” Some of the first copies came to Shimbashi Station, where so many people tried to buy a copy that police arrived to help the paper’s employees distribute them more quickly.
On TV—on all those TVs across the country, including one playing in a community center in Hanamaki where Ohtani attended high school—the game never ended. At least the celebration didn’t. In the US, the postgame show wrapped after 30 minutes. In Japan, it lasted for two hours after the final pitch.
These are the moments that only sports can create. To have the best player in the world pitching for his country to his own MLB teammate—whom others might argue is actually the best in the world—in the ninth inning, with a full count, with a one run lead. It’s easy to say it’s straight out of a movie.
“I thought it was like a manga,” said Japan first baseman Kazuma Okamoto.
And finally, Ohtani dealt a vicious slider. Even Mike Trout stood no chance against it. Years ago, when he was a boy playing in Japan, Ohtani wrote out a list of goals for himself, one for every year of his future. For age 27, he said he wanted to be a, “member of Japan WBC team and MVP.”
Mission accomplished.
“I think [Mexico manager] Benji Gil said it last night, that baseball won last night,” Japan outfielder Lars Nootbaar said. “And I think with Shohei Ohtani and Mike Trout ending that game the way they did, I think baseball won again. I just think this World Baseball Classic as a whole elevated the game, and I hope the exposure that it got creates baseball fans all over the world.”
This is when baseball is at its best, drama steeped in a one-of-a-kind mixture of brute strength and elegance, a 101 MPH fastball followed by a wiping slider. It’s about playing for something larger than yourself, where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
In Tokyo on Tuesday, the cherry blossoms exploded all over to tint the city in hues of white and pink. They almost never bloom this soon, but due to a warm winter, they blossomed nine days earlier than predicted—one of the earliest blooms in Japanese history. On Tuesday, officials say they reached their peak.
They were just on time to join in the celebration.
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