U.S. baseball's opening day heads to Japan

Thu, 03/22/2012 - 04:55 — Anonymous by Dan ShapiroWith professional
football eclipsing baseball as America's pastime, and Japan's dominance at
the 2006 and 2009 World Baseball Classics (WBC), is it time to proclaim Japan
as the world's ichi-ban baseball country? No doubt U.S. baseball fans would
take exception to that claim, but consider that even before the Nippon
Professional Baseball (NPB) league begins its 76th season on March 30, Major
League Baseball will throw out the first pitch of its 2012 season not at a
packed stadium in the United States, but at the Tokyo Dome. Tokyo will host a
pair of games on March 28 and 29 between the Ichiro Suzuki-led Seattle
Mariners and Hideki Matsui's Oakland Athletics. Before that, a stellar
lineup of games will be played between local outfits and the visitors from
across the Pacific, making Japan in late March one hot destination for sports
fans. In honor of the coming season of "Puro Yakyu," as pro baseball is
known in Japan, herewith are some of the legends who raised the profile of
Japanese baseball around the world.read more