Tuesday morning, March 18th, at 3:10 a.m. Pacific Standard Time, Shota Imanaga of the Chicago Cubs rocked and fired home a 92 mile-per-hour fastball for strike one against the Los Angeles Dodgers’ Shohei Ohtani.
Thus began the 2025 Major League Baseball regular season campaign.
This leading tilt between pitcher and batter did not take place in the confines of Wrigley Field – the home of the Cubs and baseball’s oldest remaining active ballpark in the heart of the northside of Chicago – but in the strange and echoing landscape of the Tokyo Dome in Tokyo, Japan.
One does not have to wonder too hard or long as to why MLB set these two teams up as the ambassadors of their game to Japan, or the contrivance of the teams to ensure that the very first pitch in Tokyo would pit two of the most well known Japanese exports to the Major Leagues – Imanaga and Ohtani (especially Ohtani, reigning National League MVP) – against one another.
Now there is a light in which to cast this story that does not see nefarious motives or corruption as the impetus for these strategic moves. Speaking with former Major League pitcher Mark Dewey – host of the In the Bullpen podcast and a man who spent two and a half decades in professional baseball as a player and coach – there are genuine positives and encouraging outcomes to be had.
“I do think it’s a good thing to bring the game, Major League Baseball, to other (countries),” Dewey said, adding that there really is no other logistical way to do this than to put these ambassadorial trips at the beginning of the 162-game marathon known as MLB’s regular season.
“They are trying to grow the game and make it more international,” he said. “And going to other countries to play is a way to do that.”
The locations of these games, he reasoned, makes this even more clear, as MLB thus far has picked places where there are already plenty of professional players in the league and widespread love of the game because of them. “You’re talking about avid, avid baseball fans.”
Seen in the light of global ambassadors and belief that this game can help spark the imaginations of young boys the world over to play and grow in it and expand the footprint of baseball everywhere, there can be no real argument to the negative here. Why cut against something that has so much goodwill and encouragement behind it?
“Overall I see it as a positive move.” Dewey said. “Now, if I knew the actual motives behind it, I could have all kinds of concerns.”
Are there concerns that fans and (in Dewey’s case) alumni of the game of baseball could see here?
Let’s start with the state of the game entering into 2025. From a popularity perspective, it could be argued that baseball in America has never been less popular. From an attendance standpoint, the game has been on a downward slide since the start of the century.
TV meanwhile, has also been the subject of much consternation in baseball, with dwindling national relevance giving way to more regional coverage. ESPN, for example, is cutting ties with MLB next year, severing a partnership that had been in effect since the early 90’s.
The local networks, though, are not immune to similar problems. Bally Sports Network, for instance, carrying 12 MLB teams, declared bankruptcy in 2023, leaving one third of the league without regional coverage. Those were picked up by other networks for 2024, but the problems were glaring. The popularity of the game is just not what it was in the glory days of Ruth, Gherig, Williams and the like from the early 1900s to the 60s.
Moreover, fewer and fewer boys in America take up the game compared to previous generations, leaving a mighty crisis. According to an article by Statista, only 34% of 18-24 year olds follow the game, and the numbers for Gen Alpha seem to be even lower.
The reasons behind this dwindling interest could be legion. More specialization in youth sports, the growing interest in previously untapped sports like soccer, the comparative cost associated with playing baseball (gloves, bats, and other items are more expensive than other games), these all can go toward why many pick up other sports.
But there is also the argument that the game itself doesn’t fit our modern era. MLB seems to agree. In the last three years, to combat the ever-shrinking attention spans of the youth in America (at all-time lows in the Tik-Tok generation), baseball tried to speed up the game by installing a pitch clock that limits the amount of time between pitches. The game definitely sped up, shaving nearly a half hour off the average game in 2024. But that move, as well as bigger bases and no shift, also expanded the offensive game with more hits and stolen bases to provide a more exciting brand of baseball for fans.
From a marketing standpoint, the game has also sought to widen the net, bringing in more eyes to the game with heightened forms of entertainment, and shameless appeals to perversion and feminism along the way.
“The only reason I have any optimism that (a resurgence) could take place is because God is sovereign,” Dewey said of the lessening interest in baseball. “If you look at where we are as a culture…the game of baseball, at least the game that I love, isn’t going to work. I have no problem trying to grow the game, trying to involve more fans. But I’m convinced if baseball sets all kinds of revenue records, I would still argue that the vast majority of that has nothing to do with baseball fans. You’re not developing fans, you’re expanding a customer base.”
The pandering of baseball to the low attention spans of Americans leads to a shift away from the game as the focal point to things like blaring music between innings, scantily clad dancers, and diversions on big screens. Not to mention the only motivator big league ballparks seem to have to keep fans for nine innings is firework shows after the game ends.
This trend Dewey saw 35 years ago as a minor league closer in Phoenix. “It’s got to be more than a baseball game.”
Ten years after that, he said, in Nashville at another AAA location, the second game action ended there was blasting music and dancing girls on the dugout.
“How is it possible that if a father wants to teach his son to keep score, or if he wants to talk to his son about what happened that last half inning – did you notice the pitcher did this or the batter did that? He can’t! He can’t even hardly talk to his son because there’s music blaring and eye candy, most of it bad, all over the place.”
The failures of baseball to capture the imagination and desire of more recent generations, and the attempts of the league’s owners and commissioner’s office to grow the game abroad, then, compound to paint a different picture than simply carrying the game overseas as goodwill ambassadors.
Following in lockstep with the cultural position of most secular Americans, baseball seems quite ensnared by the spirit of the age.
“There’s no question that baseball is in lockstep with our government and our culture,” Dewey said. “Are they simply following, or to borrow the pride month thing, are they leading this parade? I’m persuaded that that is intentional. They aren’t going along to get along, they are leading this thing.”
And part of that spirit is the pursuit of globalism at all costs. Many Americans are familiar with this, and can see its fruit in what has been called “Great Replacement Theory.” The idea behind the theory is that in pursuit of a global economy, of watering down American Exceptionalism, and pushing “minority voices”, America, much like Europe, can be unhitched from its Christian underpinnings into a globalist, godless, communist utopia.
Is that happening in baseball? As Dewey said, most of baseball’s current leaders are cut from that very cloth, being born and bred into Ivy League universities where that kind of thought is the feature, not a bug.
With dwindling local reserves, baseball has to secure its interests and ensure its survival in a crowded entertainment market. So who cares where those future players hale from, as long as there are butts in the seats.
How do we combat this idea from taking root? Even if we hold to a mindset that tries to look at the best in people and not the worst, it is clear the game of baseball needs to be rehabbed within our own borders.
And for Dewey, it is the $64,000 question. How do you recapture young people to love the game of baseball. And for him, it all boils down to discipleship.
“Like everything, it has to start in the home, and then it has to go from the home to the local community,” Dewey said. “You’re looking at eight year olds (today) who do not have any connection anymore to their local community as it regards baseball. It’s all about me, it’s about showcase, travelball kind of things.”
Those mindsets, he added, fuel what is clearly the idolatry of self that is rampant in our culture, something you can see at any local ballpark on a Sunday morning in the summer. Rather than putting aside the game to be in worship on the Lord’s day, they scurry from one team to the next trying to build their brand and “be seen” in the hopes of elevating themselves.
To revive baseball, then, here, in the land where it began, is about recovering so much more. It’s about recovering our love of God, our love of neighbor, and then, only then, can we recover a love of this great game.
