BLUE, BLUE, OHTANI'S JAPAN IS BLUE

All hail Shohei Ohtani - peerless slugger, pitcher and pitchman - in the Land of the Rising Baseball

No need to indulge in the current wretch of blusterous imperialism for Shohei Ohtani. He walks softly while carrying a big stick. But don't be fooled by his deferential nature, because his form of imperialism is every bit as consuming. Not only does Ohtani own baseball, after this past week he has the deed on his homeland Japan as well.

The game of baseball has been played for close to 200 years and to this day the most mythical figure in the history of the most mythical of sports is still Babe Ruth. The Bambino captivated America like no sportsman ever back in the 1920's with his swashbuckling heroics. A peerless slugger, who was also once a peerless pitcher, Ruth's is the only name ever mentioned as a comparable for slugger/pitcher Ohtani. In essence, a player like Ohtani comes around once every 100 years.

Bunyanesque in stature, Ruthian in clout, the kid from Iwate prefecture on the northeast tip of Honshu Island left Japan for America seven years ago. This week he returned home a 3-time MVP and recent World Series champion after his first year with the Los Angeles Dodgers, a season in which he hit 54 homeruns and stole an absurd 59 bases. It was simply the greatest display of speed and power in the history of the game.

Since the Japanese have a natural inclination for suffocating the celebrated, you can imagine the reception Ohtani received when he arrived with the Dodgers to open the Major League Baseball (MLB) season in Tokyo against the Chicago Cubs. Joining him on this ryokou would be a couple of Japanese pitching stars now wearing Dodger blue, Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Roki Sasaki. Over in the Cubs dugout were a pair of big-name homegrown stars as well in pitcher Shota Imanaga and slugger Seiya Suzkui.

"Japanese baseball is having a moment," said Cubs broadcaster Jim Deshaies, making his first trip to the country. "This series, Ohtani being the best player on the planet and Ichiro going into the Hall of Fame. It's just really cool to see."

Such is the omnipresence of Ohtani that the impact of Ichiro Suzuki, the OG of Japanese baseball stateside, is largely forgotten. Before he arrived to play for the Seattle Mariners in 2001, no Japanese positional player had ever swung a bat in Major League Baseball. Today Ichiro is considered one of the greatest outfielders in the history of the game, and for those of us who have been around Asian baseball for over 30 years it’s sweet vindication.

When an MLB all-star team toured Japan in 1998 to play a select squad of domestic stars, Ichiro was nothing more than an amusing afterthought to the major league overlords. I kept asking them; could he play in the US? "Maybe as a fourth outfielder," said MLB team manager and Cleveland Indians skipper Mike Hargrove. Bear in mind that there are only three outfielders on the field at one time.

The institutional arrogance certainly pissed me off, but Ichiro? He couldn't give a flying F what they thought. Robin Williams once described Jack Nicholson as being so cool that he was half man, half cat. And that was Ichiro in a nutshell, the coolest dude this side of the Pacific. Naturally, as his profile grew so too did the marketing opportunities. But Ichiro was fairly judicious with his choices and while he was known as a fitness and training fanatic, he did enjoy an occasional tipple of beer.

Watching Ichiro in one of his memorable Kirin beer ads, what you see is pure lust. Nothing else exists in that moment other than a man and his beer, and if you have been lucky enough to enjoy a nama-beeru in Japan you will understand. It is beyond sublime.

Besides, if its good enough for Ichiro, it's good enough for me and that's what celebrity endorsements are all about. While Ichiro may have broken the barrier for Japanese hitters in the US and in the process written the template for sports marketing at home, Ohtani has taken all that and knocked it so far out of the park that it may never land. From the steaming hot springs in southern Kyushu to the frosted tips of northern Hokkaido, Ohtani's face is literally everywhere. Like EVERYWHERE - on every billboard, TV, taxi, toilet, supermarket fridge, fruit stand, coffee shop, jazzu kissa and gas-o-leen stand-o. You simply cannot get away from Shohei Ohtani in Japan. It’s Beatlemania on steroids and such a powerfully pervasive blast of imperialism that he has drug store dictators from Washington D.C. to Moscow, Oblast licking their chops in envy.

But what separates Ohtani from the faux emperors is that he is truly the real deal, or as the hipsters say in his homeland mono-hon. What also separates him is that, externally at least, he appears to have no desire to rule the world. According to the people who spend significant time around him, all Ohtani wants to do is ball. He would be happy to get his four or five at bats a game and spend the rest of his day in the batting cage while coming up for air just long enough to say hey to his pregnant wife and pet his beloved dog, Decoy.

So why is it exactly that a guy who is monomaniacal in his lust for baseball and who also has a contract for $700 million - generational wealth by any standard - feels the need to earn another $100 million or so annually by pimping in excess of 20 different consumer brands? He certainly seems like a forthright character, so it's safe to assume that he actually uses all the products he endorses. If that's the case, then his to do list when he wakes up in the morning is longer than all seven volumes of Marcel Proust’s ponderous In Search of Lost Time.

Something is not jiving here. Could it be that like the modern day faces of imperialism, Ohtani is fronting for a bigger cause? When the Dodgers signed Ohtani last year, their President of Baseball Operations Andrew Friedman said one of the team's goals was to "paint Japan Dodger blue." Well they certainly painted the country Dodger green, having spent over a billion dollars on the contracts for Ohtani, Yamamoto and Sasaki.

Granted, the Dodgers have done an enviable job in building a vibrant culture in Japan thanks in large part to the tireless work of their Asian Pacific baseball ops. But they are owned by a subsidiary of Guggenheim Partners, a financial services firm that has more than $330 billion of assets under management. At the end of the day, the playbook is the cheque book.

Sales of Dodger paraphernalia also went completely nuclear with official apparel provider Fanatics reporting the MLB Tokyo Series generated $40 million in total merchandise and trading card sales. Fanatics said it was a company record for a special event, more than any Super Bowl, World Series or any All-Star game. The Ohtani bump was staggering on every front. MLB said the Series was their most watched baseball event in Japan with 24 million viewers and their largest ever MLB fan festival with 450,000 visitors.

The Cubs and Dodgers both played weekend exhibition matches at the Tokyo Dome against the Yomiuri Giants and the Hanshin Tigers. On Saturday, the afternoon exhibition game drew 42,365 fans who exited orderly while another 42,365 came in for the night cap. The same thing on Sunday, which meant that in the space of 32 hours, close to 170,000 paying fans came through the doors. Throw in the two season opening games between the Cubs and the Dodgers, and that's over 250,000 spectators. They could have easily sold ten times that many tickets.

So they dig their baseball in Japan, that we knew. This, however, was next level and while it helped that both the Dodgers and Cubs have a large following, no North American League that holds games internationally - not the NBA, the NFL, the NHL or even MLB - has had five indigenous star players to promote. It was a seminal event greatly aided by a plethora of homegrown conquering heroes, including a mythical unicorn in his prime who comes around once a century. Even Haley's comet appears more often than an event like this will.

Ohtani is a billionaire and he damn well should be because for all the money he earns, he makes everyone, from the Guggenheimers to the Dodgers to MLB to the TV networks and the merch pushers, twice as much. He may play his home games in the shadow of the Hollywood dream factory, but there is no need to overhype Ohtani. His feats captivate while his legend resonates, and that sells on both sides of that Pacific.

But let's not delude ourselves here. 20 years ago Japan wasn't covered in Mariner’s blue, it was covered in Ichiro blue. Today Japan is not covered in Dodger blue, it's covered in Ohtani blue. Even in a consumer mad country like Japan, there is a difference between merchandise and national pride. The Dodgers are selling t-shirts. Ohtani is building an empire.

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