Baseball has players from many Latin-based countries like the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Venezuela, Mexico, and U.S. territory Puerto Rico? How about Colombia or Curaçao?
Oh, you have? What about Japan? It’s okay if you haven’t. After all, you may have not have seen the hoards of Japanese media gathered at Angels Stadium for a showdown between Shohei Ohtani and Yusei Kikuchi on Saturday. Two parallel American super-hyped Japanese superstars who attended the same high school, but have managed to just miss each other in the AL West rivals first few series of 2019.
Japanese baseball leagues go back further than you think.