When the Chicago Cubs opened the 2000 season with a two-game series in Tokyo against the New York Mets, it was considered the start of a new era.
“I don’t think this is going to be a ‘put your toe into the water and take it out and never do it again,’ ” then-Cubs President Andy MacPhail told the Tribune. “This is probably an indication of things to come.
“Major League Baseball and the players association believe that if you are going to promote the game beyond the traditional borders, you have to do more than the barnstorming All-Star trips after the season. You’re going to need to show them the real McCoy.”
Twenty-five years later, the real McCoy returns to Japan on Tuesday when the Cubs and Los Angeles Dodgers open the season at the Tokyo Dome, the first of a two-game series. It’s the sixth major-league series in Japan, including the Cubs-Mets debut, which took place on March 29-30 after the end of spring training instead of during it.
Watching the Chicago River turn green while preparing for opening day on the same weekend makes for an adjustment most Cubs fans might find a bit strange.
But these are strange times, as we’ve all learned, so just go with the flow.
The 2000 Cubs flew back to Chicago after splitting the series in Japan, then began a trip in St. Louis on April 3 — a three-day rest to recover from jet lag. The Cubs vowed there would be no excuses for jet lag.
“If we don’t play well, it’s our own fault,” first baseman Mark Grace said.
The Cubs were then swept in three games by a combined score of 30-8. By the time they got to Wrigley Field, they were 2-6.
No worries. This is a new era, with better scheduling rules and tech-savvy organizations that monitor every player’s activity level to find ways to get the most rest possible.
After Wednesday night’s series finale, the Cubs fly back to Phoenix, where they’ll continue Cactus League play against the San Diego Padres on Friday with only two days’ rest. Look for a lot of minor-leaguers in that lineup and maybe a sleepier-looking Craig Counsell.
Those players traveling back from Japan will have seven days to recover — an off day, five exhibition games and a workout day — before their “second” opener against the Arizona Diamondbacks on March 27 in Phoenix. The approximate travel time to the ballpark will be less than a half-hour, depending on whether they live in the Valley. No excuses will be valid.
The Cubs home opener against the Padres, on April 4, is still 19 days away. That’s time enough for another snow day or two and maybe a few more 70-degree days like Friday. March Madness, which begins this week, will be almost over by then, with the Final Four on April 5.
Major League Baseball needs Japan as its closest friend and most avid consumer of MLB products, including jerseys, caps, bobbleheads and Topps cards. Playing an actual series in Japan every year makes a lot of sense, and it probably should always feature the Dodgers as one of those teams for at least the length of Shohei Ohtani’s 10-year, $700 million contract.
But opening day?
Time begins on opening day, as Hall of Fame-bound writer Thomas Boswell explained in a book by the same name published in 1984. Some 41 years later, no one has yet to dispute Boswell’s premise.
Opening day is the one day on the sports calendar that still means something in a rapidly changing world in which the New York Yankees can grow facial hair and bags no longer fly free on Southwest Airlines. It’s a special day, not the kind to be shipped overseas for promotional value.
It’s a baseball fan’s version of New Year’s Day, a chance to dream of things you know in the back of your mind are not going to happen — losing that paunch, drinking less or the Cubs winning the World Series. Though it’s only one of 162 — a mere .006% of the baseball schedule — it’s meaningful enough to be penciled in on fans’ calendars the day the schedule is announced.
For the Cubs, this particular opening day is a chance to start fresh without the baggage of last year to unpack. They finished four games over .500 for the second straight season, with a different manager and most of the same stars. This year they’ve added one star (Kyle Tucker) and subtracted another (Cody Bellinger) while entering the 2025 season as division favorites.
For the Dodgers, the opener is a chance to show off their $306 million payroll and let the world know they aren’t willing to rest on their success. The previous 23 World Series champs failed to repeat, but few added to their arsenal like the Dodgers did with pitchers Blake Snell, Roki Sasaki and Tanner Scott.
This definitely should be a fun series to watch, as long as you’re willing to wake up at 5 a.m. in Chicago or 3 a.m. in Los Angeles to tune in live. Cubs Japanese star Shota Imanaga faces Yoshinobu Yamamoto, the highest paid Japanese pitcher of all time, in Tuesday’s opener. The two memorably faced off in September in Dodger Stadium, with the Cubs winning 6-3.
Opening days are made for memories. No other professional sport treats its opening day with as much pomp and ceremony as baseball, in which flashbacks of openers from the past are always most welcome. Cubs fans vividly recall Willie Smith, ‘Tuffy’ Rhodes and Kosuke Fukudome for their opening-day home runs, no matter how the rest of their Cubs careers turned out.
Smith’s two-run, walk-off blast in a 7-6, 11-inning win over the Philadelphia Phillies in the 1969 opener at Wrigley Field was forever branded by announcer Jack Brickhouse losing his mind on the WGN-TV call. Rhodes hit three home runs off the New York Mets’ Dwight Gooden on opening day of 1994 at Wrigley yet finished with only 11 in his 123 games over three seasons with the Cubs. Fukudome’s tying three-run home run in the ninth inning against the Milwaukee Brewers in the 2008 opener at Wrigley, in the 100th anniversary of their last championship season, was such a legendary major-league debut it’s almost forgotten the Cubs lost the game and Fukudome never really panned out.
It’s easy to understand why MLB scheduled the Tokyo Series during spring training rather than at the start of the season. Jet lag is real, and not so spectacular, so it makes perfect sense to let the players get reacclimated to their own time zone without affecting their body clocks in any real games.
Still, it would be preferable to schedule the Tokyo Series later in the season and forget about the two MLB teams playing a pair of exhibition games each against Japanese clubs. Just make it a four-game series from Wednesday-Saturday the week before the All-Star break, when there would be no NBA games, no March Madness and no NFL free agency to divert fans’ attention.
Everyone in July is already in a baseball mindset.
MLB also wouldn’t have to worry about jet lag affecting any regular-season games. Except for the players in the All-Star Game, the others would all get an extra day off before the four-day break. The handful or so of those selected for the All-Star Game could either opt out or choose to make a cameo appearance if they’re too jet-lagged.
Players would get their proper rest. Japanese fans would still enjoy their small slice of MLB baseball. And MLB would still receive the international promotion of the game and the ensuing revenues that come with it.
That’s win-win-win.
Playing in Japan in July could even lead to interest in a newfangled All-Star Game in Tokyo, pitting the best players from Japan against the best of the rest of the major leagues.
Sound impossible? Perhaps.
But that’s what they once said about the Yankees changing their facial-hair policy.
