The Australian national baseball team, which will play its first game against Korea in the 2023 World Baseball Classic (WBC), showed more interest in Japan. The presence of Ohtani Shohei (29, LA Angels) was great.
Australian media ABC said on the 27th (Korean time), “By facing the Japanese national team in Tokyo, Japan, the Australian national team has a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to face one of the greatest baseball players ever seen.”
The best baseball player they said was Ohtani. ABC defined Ohtani as “a superstar who rewrote the myths of the century about the possible and the impossible in baseball,” and praised Ohtani as “one of the best hitters in the world while also combining pitching as no one has done since Babe Ruth.”
“Many experts predict that he will eventually win a contract worth more than $500 million. Lionel Messi (36, PSG) is the only player to have received a $500 million contract, and Ohtani will be the rarest player in the world.” showed great interest.
Unlike Ohtani, most of the Australian national baseball team players combine baseball and work life. Only a few have advanced to the minor leagues in the US and are struggling to focus on baseball. The ABC expects that “many baseball players in Australia live a life away from the ballpark. But the two worlds soon collide.” 메이저놀이터
The reaction of the players was also hot. “We may never see a player like Ohtani again,” said Warwick Saupold (33), who played for Hanwha in the KBO League in 2019-2020. Catcher Alex Hall couldn’t hide his excitement, saying, “It will be a crazy experience. Ohtani is one of the unicorns in baseball. I’m really excited to play against one of the best players in the world.”
Australia, along with Korea, Japan, China and the Czech Republic, are in Group B of the first round of the WBC finals. Starting with the first match against Korea on March 9, the third match will be played against Japan at the Tokyo Dome on the 12th. According to ABC, 55,000 seats at the Tokyo Dome, where Japan and Australia will face off, sold out in just a few minutes. At the same time, he introduced the Japanese national team as “Samurai Japan, led by Ohtani, is a championship candidate that has domestic superstars and major league talents such as Loki Sasaki and Munetaka Murakami.”
“(The Tokyo Dome match) will be unlike any other match. They will be loud, but we are lucky to be in that match,” said firefighter Tim Kennelly, who plays for the same Perth Heat as Serpold. “Japan is definitely a really better team than us, but we don’t know what will happen in nine innings. We have to try to be on top and hopefully we can this time.”