How Los Angeles Dodgers' plan to win over Japan has begun - ESPN

GLENDALE, Ariz. — Seiko Watanabe stood beside the pathway to the baseball fields at the Los Angeles Dodgers' spring training facility on a recent weekday morning, wearing a white Shohei Ohtani jersey purchased from the team's store a day earlier. She kept one eye on her 6-year-old son — outfitted with a Dodgers cap, a Dodgers glove and a blue Dodgers shirsey with Ohtani's No. 17 on the back — and the other on a nearby door from where players typically emerge.

Two days earlier, Watanabe had flown close to 6,000 miles from her Japanese hometown of Yokohama in hopes of merely catching a glimpse of Ohtani, with no guarantee of an autograph or even an interaction.

«I just want to see him,» she said. «That's my dream.»

Twelve months ago, Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman sat on the bleachers in Miyazaki, Japan, to watch the Japanese national team practice for the World Baseball Classic and thought about people like Watanabe. He was struck by the thousands of fans who showed up, but also by how their loyalties were splintered across a half-dozen Major League Baseball teams. He imagined them all wearing Dodgers gear instead. That image stayed with Friedman and his front office lieutenants throughout 2023 — and helped push them to allocate more than $1 billion for Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto.

«I think the passion for the game of baseball there is as strong or stronger than any other country in the world,» Friedman said. «And so in an ideal world, in the next five to 10 years, we're going to have kids growing up as Dodger fans.»

The Dodgers have yet to play their first game of 2024 — that will happen Thursday, in an exhibition contest against the division-rival San Diego Padres, at 3:10 p.m. ET on ESPN —