{"id":101843,"date":"2025-06-13T23:15:11","date_gmt":"2025-06-13T23:15:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/101843\/"},"modified":"2025-06-13T23:15:11","modified_gmt":"2025-06-13T23:15:11","slug":"mlb-to-celebrate-shohei-ohtani-other-japanese-players-with-custom-manhole-covers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/101843\/","title":{"rendered":"MLB to Celebrate Shohei Ohtani, Other Japanese Players with Custom Manhole Covers"},"content":{"rendered":"

MLB to Celebrate Shohei Ohtani, Other Japanese Players with Custom Manhole Covers<\/a> originally appeared on Athlon Sports<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Los Angeles Dodgers superstar Shohei Ohtani and Chicago Cubs slugger Seiya Suzuki are among 12 active Japanese MLB players that will be celebrated with custom manhole covers in Japan beginning June 16.<\/p>\n

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Per an MLB.com article<\/a>, the 12 custom manhole covers featuring one player in each design, will be installed at locations in Japan associated with that’s player’s roots in baseball.<\/p>\n

St. Louis Cardinals outfielder Lars Nootbaar, who represented the Japan National team in the 2023 World Baseball Classic, will also be one of the 12 players celebrated. Nootbaar, whose mother is of Japanese descent, will have his cover installed on Monday, June 23 in Higashimatsuyama City, Saitama Prefecture.<\/p>\n

In seven games for Team Japan during their 2023 WBC title run, Nootbaar slashed .269\/.424\/.269 with four RBIs, six walks and two stolen bases.<\/p>\n

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This season with the Cardinals, Nootbaar got off to a hot start but has cooled off this month. He’s hitting just .128 in June with 15 strikeouts, and is marred in a 1-for-27 slump in his last seven games.<\/p>\n

\"Japan<\/p>\n

Japan center fielder Lars Nootbaar (23) and team Japan celebrate after defeating the USA in the World Baseball ClassicRhona Wise-Imagn Images<\/p>\n

Each of the manhole covers were designed by different artists and a video depicting how they were made can be\u00a0seen here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The full installation schedule and locations for the custom manhole covers are as follows: <\/p>\n

June 16 \u2013 Shohei Ohtani: Oshu City, Iwate Prefecture<\/p>\n

June 16 \u2013 Yusei Kikuchi: Morioka City, Iwate Prefecture<\/p>\n

June 16 \u2013 Roki Sasaki: Rikuzentakata City, Iwate Prefecture<\/p>\n

June 17 \u2013 Yu Darvish: Habikino City, Osaka Prefecture<\/p>\n

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June 18 \u2013 Yuki Matsui: Yokohama City, Kanagawa Prefecture<\/p>\n

June 19 \u2013 Shota Imanaga: Kitakyushu City, Fukuoka Prefecture<\/p>\n

June 23 \u2013 Lars Nootbaar: Higashimatsuyama City, Saitama Prefecture<\/p>\n

June 24 \u2013 Seiya Suzuki: Arakawa Ward, Tokyo<\/p>\n

June 25 \u2013 Yoshinobu Yamamoto: Bizen City, Okayama Prefecture<\/p>\n

June 26 \u2013 Masataka Yoshida: Fukui City, Fukui Prefecture<\/p>\n

June 27 \u2013 Kodai Senga: Gamagori City, Aichi Prefecture<\/p>\n

June 29 \u2013 Tomoyuki Sugano: Sagamihara City, Kanagawa Prefecture<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

This story was originally reported by Athlon Sports<\/a> on Jun 13, 2025, where it first appeared.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MLB to Celebrate Shohei Ohtani, Other Japanese Players with Custom Manhole Covers originally appeared on Athlon Sports. Los…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":101844,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[5,160,24,23248,2372,1716,1179,57,23246,792,4,110,23247,105,468,770,775,313,1536,7941,809],"class_list":{"0":"post-101843","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-cardinals","10":"tag-chicago-cubs","11":"tag-iwate-prefecture","12":"tag-japan","13":"tag-kodai-senga","14":"tag-lars-nootbaar","15":"tag-los-angeles-dodgers","16":"tag-manhole-covers","17":"tag-masataka-yoshida","18":"tag-mlb","19":"tag-roki-sasaki","20":"tag-saitama-prefecture","21":"tag-seiya-suzuki","22":"tag-shohei-ohtani","23":"tag-shota-imanaga","24":"tag-tomoyuki-sugano","25":"tag-yoshinobu-yamamoto","26":"tag-yu-darvish","27":"tag-yuki-matsui","28":"tag-yusei-kikuchi"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/114678604057145364","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101843","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101843"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101843\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101844"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}