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Shohei Ohtani of Samurai Japan had a weird reaction to his team’s dramatic defeat.
Team Japan, also known as Samurai Japan, has dominated the World Baseball Classic, taking home the trophy in three of the five tournaments held so far, starting with the inaugural WBC in 2006. Samurai Japan is also the reigning champion, winning the 2023 tournament with Los Angeles Dodgers superstar Shohei Ohtani taking the MVP award in his first WBC appearance — though he played in MLB for the Los Angeles Angels at the time.
On Monday, Samurai Japan prepared for its defense of the title, taking on Nippon Professional Baseball Pacific League club Orix Buffaloes in a warm-up game in Osaka, Japan, at a packed Kyocera Dome, and with a reported TV audience of 36 million, not including live stream viewers.
That massive number of Japanese baseball fans saw the Buffaloes pull off a shocking upset of Samurai Japan, a team that features nine MLB players including Ohtani, and 21 from NPB, Japan’s top-level professional domestic league — a game that came down to a dramatic, close play at the plate.
But as he watched his team lose the game with a runner thrown out at the plate, Ohtani had an odd reaction that quickly went viral online. For some reason, Ohtani was seen in the Samurai Japan dugout smiling and applauding as his team lost in stunning fashion.
The loss against a Japanese domestic team that finished third in the six-team Pacific League was not exactly what the three-time champions were expecting.
“A lot of issues came up in the first inning,” said Angels pitcher Yusei Kikuchi, who started the game for Samurai Japan, as quoted by Japan Today. “It was a good experience before the real thing.”
How Many Hits Did Ohtani Have in the Game Against Orix?
Ohtani’s rather weird reaction to his team’s shocking defeat seemed even more incongruous after the 31-year-old future Hall of Famer’s own lackluster performance against the Buffaloes, in his first game with the Japan WBC team, which was actually Samurai Japan’s fifth exhibition game as manager Hirokazu Ibata’s club prepares to defend its WBC championship.
“As for Shohei, he went 0-for-3 with a strikeout, getting his Team Japan experience off to a slow start,” reported Steve Webb of Dodgers Beat.
The hitting star for Samurai Japan was former Buffalo and current Boston Red Sox outfielder Masataka Yoshida, who returned after three years in MLB to blast a 415-foot home run into the right-field upper deck at Kyocera Dome.
“Samurai Japan trailed by three in the top of the fifth when (Yoshida) got a low pitch from Orix right-hander Alen Kuri and lifted it to right field with authority. The ball kept carrying until it landed up in the fifth-tier seats for a massive three-run homer that snapped the game awake,” Webb reported.
What’s Next For Samurai Japan?
In the team’s first four exhibition games against NPB teams, Samurai Japan split a two-game series with the current NPB Japan Series champion Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks, winning the first contest by a lopsided 13-3 score before suffering a 4-0 shutout loss in the second.
The Japan club then traveled north to Nagoya where they swept a pair from the Chunichi Dragons, 5-3 and 7-3. But the MLB contingent of players had not yet joined the roster for any of those four warm-up games.
Samurai Japan wraps up its pre-tournament exhibition schedule Tuesday at Kyocera Dome against the NPB Central League pennant winners, the Hanshin Tigers.
To finish off the week, Samurai Japan plays its first official WBC game, taking on Taipei in Pool C play at Tokyo Dome in Tokyo, Japan. That game gets underway at 9 p.m. Japan time, 5 a.m. U.S. Eastern time, 2 a.m. Pacific time on Friday, March 6.
Jonathan Vankin JONATHAN VANKIN is an award-winning journalist and writer who now covers baseball and other sports for Heavy.com. He twice won New England Press Association awards for sports feature writing. He was a sports editor and writer at The Daily Yomiuri in Tokyo, Japan, covering Japan Pro Baseball, boxing, sumo and other sports. More about Jonathan Vankin
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