A few final thoughts about the Tokyo Series

Baseball did pretty much everything right here — and they should do more of it.

I returned to Chicago on the longest Monday ever — leaving Tokyo’s Haneda Airport at 6:20 p.m. local time and arriving at O’Hare at 4:05 p.m. CT. That gave me a full Monday in Tokyo and allowed me to arrive home to catch the last few innings of the Cubs/Braves game on Marquee. (Thanks to Josh for recapping spring games while they were going on in the middle of the night where I was!)

As most of you know, I’m a big fan of what MLB is now calling their “World Tour.” I went to see the Cubs and Cardinals play in London two years ago, and wouldn’t have missed these Tokyo games for anything. Everything in Japan exceeded my wildest dreams. The people in Japan are wonderful, always polite, friendly and helpful. And they love baseball so much — maybe more so that some on this side of the Pacific. Of course, I’d have loved to see different results from the two Cubs/Dodgers games, but the entire experience was wonderful, as I detailed in these articles. This was my second trip to Japan, as I also went to see the Cubs and Mets play 25 years ago. This time I got to see a bit more of the country and all it made me want to do was come back again to see more. Don’t know when that will happen, but I’m determined to make it happen someday.

Here are just some of the reasons doing this sort of thing was a huge success.

Over $40 million of merchandise was sold, which included the following:

• The Murakami collection, which launched on March 7, sold out on the Fanatics App in less than one hour, with the majority of products selling out in the first 15 minutes
• More than 100,000 fans downloaded the Fanatics App to secure access to the exclusive Murakami drop
• Fanatics later released an even more rare Sakura Elite jersey – of which less than 40 were made – with more than 5,000 fans entering for a chance to purchase
• More than 200,000 fans shopped across the Fanatics-operated MLB Official Stores in Tokyo throughout the week
• The traffic was so high at the primary MLB Official Store at the Tokyo Dome that 140 registers were needed to handle the demand
• More than 2,000 fans waited in line to get into the store before the first game on March 18
• More than 1,000 fans waited in line in the snow to get into the store before the second game on March 19
• More than 12,000 Topps Series 1 Japan Exclusive Mega Boxes sold out within hours on Topps’ online store in Japan
• Topps cards also sold out quickly at the Tokyo Dome, MLB pop-up stores and on MLB’s official online store in Japan
• Each of the two Topps Tokyo Series sets available to collectors included a dual-signed 1/1 autograph of Takashi Murakami and Shohei Ohtani, the most sought-after cards of the entire event

I have to say, that there were so many people lined up at that MLB official store at the Tokyo Dome that I never did get inside. The lines were taking at least 45 minutes to get in, and Fanatics isn’t kidding about the snow they mention above — it snowed for much of Wednesday morning before clearing, and some of the locals told me that snow is extremely rare in the central areas of Tokyo, especially in March.

This will give you an idea of how long the lines were:

Fanatics

The merch was overwhelmingly Dodgers/Shohei Ohtani, which made it difficult to get Cubs stuff that had “Tokyo Series” on it. I did manage to find a T-shirt at the Tokyo Skytree pop-up store, and thanks to a friend I scored one of the Takashi Murakami-designed Cubs caps, which look like this:

Fanatics

Cool design, I thought. Not cheap, I have to say — these ran me $88 and I heard they were selling for more at some locations.

I looked for pins with the Tokyo Series logo and the team logos — no dice, though I heard they were being sold at the Cubs store at Sloan Park! Also struck out on finding a baseball, a cap or a sweatshirt with the Tokyo Series logo.

Still, the entire trip was worth it, despite the two losses.

Not only that, but here in the USA, where the games began at 5:10 a.m. Chicago time and 3:10 a.m. in Los Angeles, viewership was high (relative to the time of day):

Beyond that, per Major League Baseball:

The first game of the Tokyo Series drew an average of more than 25 million viewers across all platforms making it the most-watched MLB game ever in Japan. The audience was more than 6 million higher than the previously most-watched MLB game in the country, which was the first game of the 2024 Seoul Series (18.7 million) and more than 19 million viewers higher than the first game of 2019 Tokyo Series (5.6 million).

The second game of the Tokyo Series averaged more than 23 million viewers across all platforms making it the second most-watched MLB game in Japan’s history. The two-game Tokyo Series averaged more than 24 million viewers making it the most-watched MLB series ever in Japan. Viewership for the series eclipsed the previous high of the 2024 Seoul Series by nearly 7 million (17.2 million over two games) and the 2019 Tokyo Series by more than 16 million (7.7 million over two games).

I don’t see how anyone could view this as anything less than a huge success for Major League Baseball. As I wrote last week from Tokyo, though, the Cubs still have a long way to go to catch up with the Dodgers in terms of popularity in Japan. It’s great that the Cubs have two star Japanese players, Shōta Imanaga and Seiya Suzuki, and I did meet quite a number of people in Tokyo who have become Cubs fans because of those two. That’s still dwarfed by the popularity of Ohtani, who is at a Taylor Swift level of stardom in Japan.

I’m glad the Cubs participated in the Tokyo Series and am glad that I went, it was a long trip and lots to do and I’m pretty tired. But that’s what you might call a “good tired.” Every single moment was worth it to me, and I think worth it for the Cubs to go. The players sure thought so — check out some of the things they did in this Paul Sullivan article.

We’ll have more international baseball next year with the World Baseball Classic and another London Series, teams TBD. Hopefully more to come after that.

Now let’s win some games in North America.