An ode to Masahiro Tanaka and the Yomiuri Giants

All I want for Christmas is a direct-to-consumer streaming app for Yomiuri Giants baseball games.

This has been a recurring, unquenched wish for 20 years, of course, but it is heightened this year by Japan’s most fabled team signing the legendary Masahiro Tanaka, who I greatly admire. 

The synergy is iconic, and I yearn for an easy way to watch along.

Tanaka is one of my favourite pitchers of recent vintage. In fact, he may be my favourite Yankees pitcher this side of Roger Clemens. Yes, even ahead of Gerrit Cole and CC Sabathia. You see, Tanaka was the Yankees’ ace as my interest in the team intensified, and there was an impressive mystique – a hushed and prodigious mystery – to his dominance that captured my heart.

Moreover, Tanaka started the first MLB game I ever attended – Game 1 of the 2019 London Series, when the Yankees and Red Sox visited my homeland in a scarcely believable fever dream. And though Tanaka was thoroughly shellacked in the Olympic Stadium fishbowl, allowing six earned runs on four hits and two walks while recording just two outs, I had a tremendous view of his pre-game warm-up, perched atop the Yankees’ bullpen. I was awestruck by Tanaka, who prepared with such meticulous diligence, and the effortless movement of his trademark splitter introduced me to the befuddling art of pitching mastery.

The prototypical phenom, Tanaka crafted a precocious reputation with the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles in Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) league, before signing a seven-year, $155 million deal with the Yankees in January 2014. Masahiro provided excellent value throughout that pact, giving the Yankees a reliable rotation anchor between the decline of Sabathia and the arrival of Cole.

To that end, Tanaka is remembered incorrectly – or perhaps incompletely – by a large swathe of baseball fans. Early in his Yankee tenure, Masahiro suffered a partially torn ulnar collateral ligament in his pitching elbow, and recurring forearm soreness created an illusion of vulnerability. And while Tanaka did hold back to manage his arm without surgery, he was still a bonafide workhorse in pinstripes, topping 150 innings pitched in five separate seasons.

Tanaka was also a stud, posting a 78-46 record for the Yankees with a 3.74 ERA and a 1.130 WHIP. Indeed, among starters to pitch at least 1,000 innings for the Yankees, all-time, Tanaka ranks first in K%, K/9% and K-BB%, while only two members of that cohort – Tiny Bonham and Jack Chesbro – posted better WHIPs. Tanaka lacked the longevity to be considered a true Yankee great, but within his own context, he was elite. His true majestic essence could never be captured in numbers alone, and I cannot help but smile upon hearing his name.

Accordingly, I lobbied hard for re-signing Tanaka after the 2020 season, when his initial Yankee deal elapsed. Masahiro was only 32 at that point, and despite the aforementioned injury caveats, his physique, arsenal and cerebral approach figured to age well. A three-year deal would not have fazed me, and it may have allowed Tanaka to burnish his pinstriped credentials. Alas, Masahiro felt unsafe in the US amid a saddening rise in anti-Asian racism surrounding the Covid-19 pandemic. Tanaka’s child endured gross negativity in kindergarten, and the family returned to Japan seeking comfort.

His former team, the Golden Eagles, signed Tanaka to a two-year, $17.2 million contract, making him the highest-paid player in NPB history. Tanaka earned a subsequent extension with two stellar, signature seasons, before showing signs of wear and tear in 2023 and 2024. Masahiro finally underwent elbow cleanup surgery back in Sendai, and pitched just once for Rakuten last season, before parting ways in late-November. Now, aged 36, Tanaka has caught on with the Yomiuri Giants, who will give him a chance to empty the tank while mentoring young upstarts. 

To most observers, then, this signing is little other than a feel-good footnote – and perhaps rightly so. It is unclear how much Tanaka has left, and he will not headline the Giants’ rotation. However, to baseball romantics, and to those, like me, who are irrepressibly fascinated by Japanese baseball, this deal is much more consequential. It is riveting, in fact – one of Japan’s most exalted pitching savants coalescing with its mightiest team. 

I cannot get enough. 

Of course, the Yomiuri Giants have not won a Japan Series title since 2012. And yes, power has shifted elsewhere in the NPB, as the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks have won six championships since then; the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters kickstarted the career of Shohei Ohtani; and the Orix Buffaloes won it all with Yoshinobu Yamamoto. Right now, even the Chiba Lotte Marines are compelling, as they prepare to export Rōki Sasaki, while the Hanshin Tigers ended The Curse of Colonel Sanders (no, seriously, Google it) in 2023.

Still, the Yomiuri Giants are, well, The Yomiuri Giants. Known parochially as ‘The New York Yankees of Japan,’ the Giants, like their stateside spirit animal, have won more championships (22) than any other team. The imposing Tokyo Dome, which the Giants call home, is the most recognisable baseball stadium in Japan, and the team enjoys a large, sprawling fanbase throughout the country. Home attendances often top 40,000, and ownership by Yomiuri Shimbun – a powerful media conglomerate – ensures a relentless Dallas Cowboys-style, feed-the-limelight scrutiny. 

Indeed, like the Cowboys and Yankees, the Giants are a divisive force across Japan. Regular polls – of admittedly dubious provenance and accuracy – claim around 50% of Japanese baseball fans root for the Giants. However, ‘Japan’s Team’ is also reviled in some quarters, with rival fans chafing at their corporate, Yankee-esque largesse. The Giants know they are the most illustrious ballclub in Japan – recent results be damned – and their persistent regurgitation of that message can feel reductive.

As such, many yakyū scholars roll their eyes when hearing of another nonchalant outsider besotted with the front-running kyojin. However, to me, the Yomiuri Giants are a baroque, mysterious fulcrum of enchanted aura, and no amount of sobriety can dispel that wilful worship.

To me, the Giants are Sadaharu Oh slamming his way to the world professional home run record.

The Giants are Eiji Sawamura striking out Charlie Gehringer, Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and Jimmie Foxx consecutively in an exhibition game. 

The Giants are Hideki Matsui receiving a tickertape parade after signing with the Yankees.

The Giants are history, heritage and hegemony.

The Giants transcend baseball.

I once heard somebody say that, if aliens dropped to earth, entirely disorientated, and with limited contextual knowledge, they would still be able to tell, right away, if it was a Sunday. There is just something about Sundays. You know, instinctively, when its melancholic twinge bathes an otherwise serene day. Well, I often feel the same about far-flung sports teams – including the Yomiuri Giants, Boca Juniors, Scuderia Ferrari, Club América and Toronto Maple Leafs. For practical reasons, I spend little time actively watching these teams, but I know, subconsciously, that I revere them as institutions. I know I ‘support’ them, ostensibly. They possess an ineffable, implacable spirit, comprised of common values and philosophies, that appeals with timeless magnetism. They match my proprietary notion of eminence without necessarily living it day-to-day.

Indeed, part of my Yomiuri deference is informed by the Giants’ pristine international scarcity – namely, the sense of foreign wonder derived from an inability to easily access their games. In the absence of an intuitive, official streaming platform, our minds are left to wander regarding Japanese baseball. Sure, there are diehards more dedicated and plugged-in than me, who mine streaming links from the darkest reaches of cyberspace, but my casual interest relies on generalisation and a fair dollop of fan fiction. The concept of the Yomiuri Giants may appeal more to me than their reality, in this respect. Epistemic distance – and suspended disbelief – allows me to build the Giants into whatever I feel. And I feel their poetic symbolism.

Undoubtedly, I want to close that epistemic distance. If, tomorrow, the Giants released a fully-authorised, direct-to-consumer streaming package for international fans, I would be the first subscriber – regardless of the price. And yes, I know there are clunky ways around this – involving VPNs, dodgy hyperlinks and popup-besmirched simulcasts – but, quite frankly, I’m too old for all the hassle. I’m a lazy consumer who needs to be spoon-fed.

In this age of superfluous AI, where a Machiavellian billionaire wants to colonise Mars, all I desire is a fuss-free way to stream Japanese baseball games. 

I just want somewhere reliable to register, pay, login, click a button and watch the Yomiuri Giants, without wading through thinly-veiled malware. 

I just want a safe and efficient outlet for my transcendental yearning. 

I just want to watch Masahiro Tanaka in black and orange. 

Is that too much to ask?

Santa may be my only hope.