Dodger blue and World Series mania in Shohei Ohtani’s hometown

OSHU, Japan — It was moments before Game 3 was set to begin, and the city where Shohei Ohtani was born breathed a collective sigh of relief.

“I almost cried when I saw the injury,” 50-year-old resident Ayako Oyama said, referring to a partial shoulder dislocation the Dodgers superstar had suffered on a base-stealing attempt two days earlier.

Despite fears that the designated hitter would be out for the rest of this series, he had bounced back, and Oyama, dressed in a blue Ohtani jersey, had come to the local auditorium where the city was holding a World Series watching party.

Her employer — the city of Oshu — had given her the morning off to attend. (Oshu is 16 hours ahead of Los Angeles.) She had gotten up early to mark her place in the long line that wrapped around the building with around 200 other residents and Mayor Jun Kuranari, who earlier this month traveled to California to sign a friendship city agreement with his counterpart in Torrance. A camera team from Fox was livestreaming the scene to U.S. audiences.

“I’ve never seen Oshu at the center of attention like this,” Oyama said, clutching two blue bambams.

Ohtani is, of course, a national hero in all of Japan, his image plastered over billboards, green tea advertisements and newspaper pages.

But there is something else to Oshu’s love for its native son. He is more than just a celebrity from their city, or a rare baseball talent, but someone truly one of their own.

“The people in this region are known for having a serious, diligent and persevering character,” Tomonori Toriumi, an official in Oshu’s sports promotion department, said.

“That is Ohtani. Even when he is under such pressure, he doesn’t show it.”

A colleague from the “Shohei Ohtani Hometown Cheering Team,” the city’s fan club that Toriumi leads, took the stage to rehearse several chants with the crowd: “Let’s go Shohei!”

The first inning started out strong: The Yankees walked Ohtani. Freddie Freeman followed up with a homer and drove him home.

The crowd whooped, furiously slapping together their bambams.

Oshu, a semi-rural city of around 114,000, is not exactly a tourist hot spot.

The handful of hotels in the city are more likely to be booked up by businesspeople from Taiwan and South Korea visiting the nearby semiconductor factories. The streets are dead quiet and pitch dark by 10 p.m.

Among the leading local attractions is the Cattle Museum, a nod to the region’s high-quality beef. Other local specialties include a form of traditional ironware known as Nambu Tekki, and apples.

“Very few people come here,” Hidetoshi Watanabe, a 68-year-old taxi driver, said.

“For every 100 outsiders you see, maybe one or two are tourists.”

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Like many of the longtime locals, Watanabe affectionately remembers a time when Ohtani was just one of the neighborhood kids: the skinny freshman who joined the baseball team at nearby Hanamaki High School, where Watanabe’s son was a senior outfielder.

“My son looked after Ohtani a lot,” Watanabe said.

Even then, Ohtani was already famous as a “yakyu baka”: a boy obsessed with baseball.

“I knew he was destined to become big,” Watanabe said. “You could tell he had a much sharper sense for baseball. Everybody knew Ohtani was different.”

In the years since he left home — and went on to become who many say is the most talented baseball player of all time — Ohtani’s local presence has only grown.

Arrive at the bullet train station near the area where Ohtani grew up and you are greeted by metal wind chimes engraved with messages of support and a small glass-enclosed exhibit featuring signed memorabilia.

Local elementary schools serve their students Ohtani-themed lunches, including menu items like toast with “Dodgers 17″ scribbled in blueberry jam. The city has designated the 17th of each month as Ohtani Day, meaning bank workers, taxi drivers and civil servants go to work in their Dodgers garb. (Los Angeles followed suit, declaring May 17 an annual Ohtani day.)

One of Oshu’s most popular events is an annual festival featuring rice art, made from growing five different varieties of rice to form vast images on the paddies. This year’s offering: Ohtani in his Dodgers uniform, tossing aside his bat after one of his 54 regular-season home runs.

Meanwhile, nearly every trace of Ohtani’s former team has been mercilessly scrubbed from the city. There is no Angels red in Oshu.

The Ohtani posters reading “The Pride of Oshu City” — plastered across the city, in bars, train stations, government offices — are now all blue.

“Well, we support Ohtani first and foremost, not the Angels,” Toshihide Oikawa, an official at the Oshu Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said with a sheepish laugh.

Though Oshu, a three-hour train ride from Tokyo, isn’t exactly drawing hordes, city officials like Toriumi still field continuous email inquiries from foreign and Japanese fans alike looking to make an Ohtani pilgrimage.

“Nobody can speak English very well so it’s difficult to properly respond to them,” Toriumi said apologetically.

Some find their way regardless.

In the lobby of Oshu City Hall is an iron replica of Ohtani’s hand, cast while he was playing for the Japanese league’s Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters, his team before the Angels.

“Around 20 to 30 people from overseas have come in the last month,” Miyoko Ishikawa, whose seat at the information desk directly faces the outstretched appendage.

“They come as a family, couple or friends — they come to shake the hand.”

By the time the ninth inning came around, it was apparent that Game 3 would be another win. Oyama, the civil servant, hurried off to go to lunch before she had to return to work.

The projector screen displayed Yankees star Juan Soto looking defeated.

Ohtani had had a quiet outing, but the slightly thinned-out crowd belted out one last chant for his final at-bat, groaning loudly when the ball glanced off his left toe, leading to a walk. The Japanese broadcasters had filled the lack of action by sampling a Wagyu burger from Yankee Stadium.

But Oshu doesn’t care if Ohtani wins or loses, whether he is slumping or the clutch-time hero.

“The Dodgers winning the World Series would of course be an amazing thing because we want to see Ohtani’s dreams come true,” Toriumi said.

“But even if Ohtani doesn’t win a World Series, Oshu will always love him.”