While it was reported earlier in the season, the official MLB schedule for 2025 was released today. It has been confirmed that the Cubs will kick off the Major League Baseball season next year. Not only will they be the first game to start next season, but the Cubs and Dodgers will also be heading to Tokyo, Japan, to get things started.
In Major League Baseball’s continued effort to grow the game and play more international games, the Cubs and Dodgers will play the sixth-ever series in Japan. The series will occur from March 18-19, a couple of days before the official MLB Opening Day. It will be similar to how the Dodgers and Padres kicked off the season in Seoul, South Korea.
The two-game series makes more sense than any other two teams in Major League Baseball, with both the Dodgers and Cubs likely having the biggest Japanese stars in the sport. For the Cubs, they obviously have Seiya Suzuki and Shota Imanaga, while the Dodgers have Shohei Ohtani and right-handed starter Yoshinobu Yamamoto. Going further and even thinking about the possibilities of this game, it is very likely that all three of those pitchers will likely get to start in these games, with Yamamoto and Imanaga, and Ohtani making his pitching debut for the Dodgers after fully recovering from Tommy John surgery.
The Cubs’ social media team helped in the festivities of the official announcement by dropping a fantastic video showcasing two young boys watching the Cubs play the Mets in Japan 25 years ago. In this video, they were reenacting Imanaga and Suzuki as young boys watching the game. Take a look here.
We still have a long way to go til 2025, a whole half-season and off-season to get through, but frankly, it is awesome to see the Cubs already going out of their way to promote this game. It’s a historical game with an MLB game that has not been hosted in Japan since 2019, and what makes it even more remarkable is the amount of Japanese talent that has emerged since that year. Ohtani has become the best player in the game, Yamamoto became the highest-paid pitcher of all time before he even threw a pitch in the MLB, and Imanaga was an All-Star in his rookie season. Plus, the World Baseball Classic showcased a championship in which Japan beat the United States. The connection between the USA and Japan in terms of baseball has become so prominent.
The MLB’s continuing expansion with these international games has been cool overall, and putting two of the most historic teams in Japan to kick off the season makes it even better.
