Author: rincon

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Left-hander Carlos Rodón will start the AL Championship Series opener for the New York Yankees against the Cleveland Guardians on Monday night.

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Shin Uebori coaches the Fukagawa Hawks youth baseball team in Tokyo, and he is very aware of how Los Angeles Dodgers superstar Shohei Ohtani touches his players.

“With Ohtani, the kids think everything is possible,” Uebori said, wrapping up practice on Sunday on an all-dirt field set alongside a local Buddhist temple, below an elevated highway, and in the shadow of tall apartment blocks in central Tokyo.

“Nothing is impossible with him,” Uebori said, stepping out of the fenced practice field that keeps balls from landing on the temple grounds. None of the young players hitting sponge-soft baseball has reached the highway, yet. “A dream is not a dream.”

Ohtani-mania ebbs and flows in Japan, though blue Dodgers caps have replaced Yankees caps as the country’s go-to sports fashion item.

Japan has other big names on the world sports stage — golfer Hideki Matsuyama, boxer Naoya Inoue, and tennis player Naomi Osaka. And Japan came away from the Paris Olympics with a record of 20 gold medals, a best for the country for a Games on foreign soil.

But no one matches Ohtani, not even teammate Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who outpitched fellow Japanese Yu Darvish to defeat the San Diego Padres in the best-of-five NLDS.

[Read more: How the Dodgers’ maligned pitching staff, manager delivered a masterclass to win NLDS]

The mania topped out when Japan won the World Baseball Classic about 20 months ago, defeating the United States. And it hit another peak when Ohtani signed a 10-year, $700-million contract and moved from the Los Angeles Angels to the Dodgers to start the 2024 season.

The only hiccup came in March when Ohtani was implicated in a gambling scandal. Prosecutors eventually found no evidence Ohtani was involved.

The next peak is building slowly with Ohtani and teammate Yamamoto in the NLCS against the New York Mets. If the Dodgers reach the World Series, public viewing areas are almost certain to be set up across Japan to watch the games — most being shown in early morning in the country.

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Lane Thomas hit a grand slam off Tarik Skubal and Cleveland beat the Detroit Tigers 7-3 on Saturday in Game 5 of their AL Division Series, moving the Guardians into another postseason matchup against the New York Yankees.

Cleveland will meet New York in the ALCS, setting up a series between two teams that have crossed paths six previous times in October. They last met in 2022, with the Yankees taking their ALDS in five games.

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Game 1 is Monday in the Bronx.

Thomas had five RBIs for the Guardians, who weren’t expected to contend this season. But they won the tough AL Central under first-year manager Stephen Vogt, and Cleveland is still alive with a chance to end a World Series title drought stretching to 1948.

The Guardians had to take down Skubal, the front-runner for the AL Cy Young Award, to keep it going. The left-hander had not given up a run in 24 consecutive innings — 17 in this postseason — before the Guardians tagged him in the fifth for five runs, tying the most he allowed in 2024.

And Cleveland did with its familiar, scrappy style dubbed “Guards Ball,” getting three singles — one an infield roller — to load the bases before Skubal hit All-Star José Ramírez on the left hand to force in a run.

That brought up Thomas, who hit a three-run homer in Cleveland’s 7-0 win in Game 1.

The center fielder, who struggled in his first month with the Guardians after coming over in a July trade from Washington, connected on Skubal’s first pitch, sending it just over the 19-foot-high wall in left-center field.

When the ball touched down, the Guardians’ dugout emptied and the screaming, red-clad Progressive Field crowd erupted in celebration.

As has been the case all season, Vogt leaned on his MLB-best bullpen, which showed some wear and tear.

After Thomas hit his homer, the Tigers threatened in the sixth, scoring a run on a single by Jake Rogers and loading the bases with two outs. But Hunter Gaddis struck out Kerry Carpenter, who won Game 2 with a three-run homer in the ninth.

The Tigers, though, kept clawing and closed to 5-3 on Colt Keith’s one-out RBI double in the seventh. Eli Morgan came in for Cleveland and struck out both batters he faced.

Thomas hit an RBI single in the eighth to put the Guardians up by three, and that’s when Vogt turned to All-Star closer Emmanuel Clase, the AL’s saves leader, to put the Tigers away.

Throwing one 100 mph fastball after another, Clase got the final six outs. When he retired Keith on a routine grounder to first, the Guardians could finally exhale and plan for their first ALCS visit since 2016.

Skubal lost for the first time since Aug. 2, and the Tigers, who missed a chance to eliminate the Guardians at Comerica Park on Thursday, had their unimaginable late-season push end in disappointment.

Out of contention in August, Detroit regrouped and rerouted its season. Energized by some kids they brought up from the minors, the Tigers took off and went 31-13 after Aug. 11 to earn a postseason berth — one of three AL Central teams to make it.

They then swept Houston in the wild-card round before meeting Cleveland in the postseason for the first time after more than 2,300 games between the franchises.

The Guardians took hold of first place in April and never let go. Cleveland became one of the season’s biggest surprises, winning 92 games under Vogt, a former journeyman catcher who had no previous managerial experience.

Before the game, Vogt was confident his team wasn’t done.

“It feels like we’re going to New York,” said Vogt.

The Guardians are on their way.

TRAINER’S ROOM

Tigers: Carpenter wasn’t in the starting lineup due to a hamstring injury suffered in Game 4. He didn’t have much time to heal with the quick turnaround and MLB’s decision to switch the start time from 8:08 p.m. to 1:08. Carpenter entered in the fifth as a pinch hitter and singled home Trey Sweeney for a 1-0 lead.

Reporting by The Associated Press. 

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