Digging his foot into the pitching rubber one morning early in spring training, Padres righthander Yu Darvish lifted his leg and hissed a pitch toward the catcher. Twelve years earlier, when Darvish signed with the Rangers as the latest phenom out of Japan, a bullpen session like this would have drawn a sizable crowd.
Now, the 37-year-old Darvish is long-established in the majors, both the oldest and longest tenured of any active player from Japan. Only a handful of reporters and coaches paid much attention.
The media throng is elsewhere: 10 miles south at Dodgers camp. There, smartphone cameras crane to catch a glimpse of righthander Yoshinobu Yamamoto, the hot new thing out of Nippon Professional Baseball. What Darvish was then—25 years old, uber-talented and hotly pursued by MLB clubs—Yamamoto is now.
The Dodgers signed him only after a fierce bidding war, shelling out $325 million over 12 years in a record guarantee not just for a Japanese player but for any pitcher ever. Coupled with the—significantly deferred—$700 million Los Angeles awarded Shohei Ohtani, it has made for a historic winter for former NPB stars.
But it hardly stops there. Teams always have been interested in top players from Japan and Korea. The Dodgers’ roots run deep in this regard. Los
