by Dan Shapiro
With professional football eclipsing baseball as America's pastime, and Japan?s dominance at the 2006 and 2009 World Baseball Classics (WBC), is it time to proclaim Japan as the world's ichi-ban baseball country?
No doubt U.S. baseball fans would take exception to that claim, but consider that even before the Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) league begins its 76th season on March 30, Major League Baseball will throw out the first pitch of its 2012 season not at a packed stadium in the United States, but at the Tokyo Dome.
Tokyo will host a pair of games on March 28 and 29 between the Ichiro Suzuki-led Seattle Mariners and Hideki Matsui?s Oakland Athletics.
Before that, a stellar lineup of games will be played between local outfits and the visitors from across the Pacific, making Japan in late March one hot destination for sports fans.
In honor of the coming season of ?Puro Yakyu,? as pro baseball is known in Japan, herewith are some of the legends who raised the profile of Japanese baseball around the world.
read moreSource: http://rss.cnngo.com/~r/cnngo/~3/hF9eO2AfpEo/10-giants-japanese-baseball-374742
Jennifer Love Hewitt Mariah Carey Elin Nordegren Naomi Campbell
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