Yoshinobu Yamamoto returning to WBC as Japans ace

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz.— The best he can recall, Yoshinobu Yamamoto was in a classroom when he made his first World Baseball Classic memory.Yamamoto was a fifth grader at Inbe Elementary School in the Japanese countryside town of Bizen.

One afternoon in March, his teacher turned on the television for the tournament final, in which defending champion Japan played archnemesis South Korea.“I have recollections of it being in the classroom, but I’m a little uncertain,” Yamamoto said.What he is certain of is how the game was decided: With Ichiro Suzuki stroking a two-run single into center field in the top of the 10th inning.In the years that followed, the short boy in that fifth-grade class moved from second base to the mound.He won a WBC in 2023 when he was part of a Japanese rotation that was led by Shohei Ohtani and Yu Darvish.This time, the now-27-year-old Yamamoto will return to the tournament as Samurai Japan’s undisputed ace.“I want to prepare as well as I can for the games in which I will pitch,” Yamamoto said in Japanese.

“I want to be able to give everything I can give.”Out of respect to the fans of the major league teams that employ them, Japanese players have generally refrained from comparing the WBC and World Series.Yamamoto has said he views them as “different things.” Get the perfect blend of news, sports and entertainment delivered to your inbox every day.

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Never miss a story But the WBC is a huge deal in Japan, so much so that when Dodgers manager Dave Roberts called on Yamamoto to pitch in relief in Game 7 of the World Series, a group of Japanese reporters near me became enraged.Yamamoto had started for the Dodgers the day before.

The way my Japanese colleagues saw it, the WBC was only four months away and Roberts was risking Yamamoto’s health over a relatively trivial competition.As S...