Max Homa throws out the ceremonial first pitch at Dodger Stadium in 2019. | Photo by Jayne Kamin-Oncea/Getty Images
Max Homa will keep a close eye on the Dodgers this week while playing in the ZOZO Championship in Japan.
Perhaps nobody is more excited for this year’s highly anticipated World Series than Los Angeles Dodgers superfan Max Homa.
But he faces a minor inconvenience this week. He is in Japan, making his first appearance in the ZOZO Championship since 2019. Homa hopes to win and play well, but he will be keeping a close eye on his Dodgers, too, which will be somewhat hard to do. Since Japanese Standard Time is 13 hours ahead of the East Coast, the World Series will start at 9 a.m. each day in Tokyo.
“It’s tough because we also play in the morning,” Homa explained.
“We listened to the last game against the Mets on the radio and then watched on our phone and finally found a stream of it.”
That worked out for Homa and his Dodgers, as they ended the Mets’ rollercoaster ride of a season in six games in the NLCS. Led by Japanese superstar Shohei Ohtani, the Dodgers will face the New York Yankees, who won the American League Pennant for the first time since 2009. These two teams last met in 1981, when the Dodgers won their first title in 16 years. Despite that being more than four decades ago, no World Series matchup has occurred more often than Dodgers-Yankees in baseball history.
A historic rivalry will be renewed this week, and all of Japan—and the world, for that matter—will have their eyes on Ohtani, the best player in the world, a label even Yankees star Aaron Judge agreed with. The numbers support that notion, too. Consider this: since Sept. 19, two weeks before the Postseason began, Ohtani has come to the plate on 23 occasions with runners in scoring position. In those instances, he is batting a preposterous .783. He has 18 hits, seven of which came via a home run. He also has 28 RBIs, per Jeff Passan of ESPN.
So, given that Homa is playing in Ohtani’s native country, which produced better television ratings for the Dodgers than the American market, the 6-time PGA Tour winner called this series a “dream scenario” for him.
“It’s really cool being here. Obviously, we have two Japanese players on the Dodgers that are tremendous, one of which is Ohtani, who is the best baseball player I’ve ever seen,” Homa said.
“So it’s quite cool to come here. I’ve actually seen quite a few L.A. hats. It’s quite neat to be in Japan when the best baseball player in the world is Japanese, and he’s on the team I root for. It’s kind of a dream scenario. I would be lying if I said I wish I wasn’t home a little bit so I could go to the game, or a game, but yeah, it’s neat to be here.”
The other player Homa alluded to is pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who carried a 3.00 ERA and a 7-2 record through his first year with the Dodgers this past season.
So it’s no wonder why the Dodgers will begin the Fall Classic as slight favorites against the Bronx Bombers.
“It’s been great, the run they’ve been on,” Homa added.
“It’s been very fun to watch.”
It must be fun to listen to as well, especially while in Japan.
Jack Milko is a golf staff writer for SB Nation’s Playing Through. Be sure to check out @_PlayingThrough for more golf coverage. You can follow him on Twitter @jack_milko as well.
