As part of their World Tour, Major League Baseball took its beloved game overseas to the Tokyo Dome in Japan, where the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Chicago Cubs opened the 2025 regular season.
Featuring Japanese stars such as Shohei Ohtani, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Shota Imanaga and Seiya Suzuki—and American standouts like Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman, Dansby Swanson and Justin Turner—the Tokyo Series was more than just another set of games. It became a celebration of culture, bridging continents through a shared love of baseball.
In an article for MLB, Michael Clair discussed the significance of the Tokyo Series compared to previous international matchups. “There have been big league games played in Japan before, where even new Japanese and American Baseball Hall of Fame inductee Ichiro Suzuki took part, but never were so many Japanese stars on display in a single game,” he wrote.
With two iconic franchises rooted in historic legacies, the series generated excitement among baseball fans around the world. On March 18, 2025, at 3 a.m. Pacific time, California fans woke up—or stayed awake—to witness the historic opener between the Dodgers and the Cubs.
With Los Angeles’ Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Chicago’s Shota Imanaga starting on the mound, the game went down in MLB history as the first all-Japanese Opening Day pitching matchup.
Michael Miramontes, a longtime Dodgers fan, shared his experience watching the game in a different time zone.
“I stood up the whole day to watch [the game]. It was cool to see … I was really tired but it was cool to hear the crowd,” Miramontes said. “The chants are different than over here, like it’s a whole different crowd over there which is cool, and we won both games, which was pretty nice.”
After Horace Wilson, a schoolteacher from Gorham, Maine, introduced baseball to Japan in 1872, Waseda University’s baseball team traveled to the United States to observe the game’s culture abroad.
“This was the start of the ōendan, or Japanese cheering squads, whose distinctive cheer songs—filled with taiko drums and horns—is one of the defining characteristics of the spectator experience in Japan,” Clair wrote.
Not only did fans celebrate the two MLB franchises with these cheers, but MLB also collaborated with Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) to honor Japan’s premier baseball league. Before the official Tokyo Series, the Dodgers and Cubs played exhibition games against the NPB’s Yomiuri Giants and Hanshin Tigers to build excitement.
Jared Gatlin, freshman history major and Dodgers fan, appreciated the global impact of the series.
“It’s pretty cool to just see the teams go to … other parts of the world because a lot of the time, sports are regulated to just in the United States, and to see them go to other countries and actually have a huge fan base—that’s what’s really cool,” Gatlin said.
As part of MLB’s World Tour, the Boston Red Sox also traveled to Monterrey, Nuevo León, Mexico, for a pair of exhibition games against the Sultanes de Monterrey on March 24–25, 2025. In recent years, MLB has brought games to Korea, Mexico City, London and the Dominican Republic, honoring players and expanding the sport’s reach to fans across the globe.
For both the Dodgers and the Cubs, the Tokyo Series offered a unique opportunity to showcase their talent on an international stage. On a broader level, the historic series strengthened baseball’s global presence, promoting inclusivity and celebrating diverse cultures.
