![\"\"](\"https:\/\/soranews24.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2025\/06\/sub2_16b554.jpg?w=640\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
These are some manhole league baseball players<\/strong>.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n They say in Japan, you\u2019ve never really made it until they make a manhole lid of you\u2026 OK, fine, they don\u2019t actually say that, but they should because the proliferation of honorary manhole covers has been widespread in recent years with utility holes capped by the likes of Pok\u00e9mon<\/em><\/a>, Gundam<\/em><\/a>, Sailor Moon<\/em><\/a>, Kabosu<\/em><\/a>, Love Live!<\/em><\/a>, and SaGa Frontier<\/em><\/a> to name a few.<\/p>\n Now, it\u2019s time for some of Japan\u2019s greatest baseball heroes to shine in glistening cast iron and MLB Japan is set to install a series of 12 manhole lids all over the country<\/strong>. Each lid will feature a Japanese player who is currently making waves in the North American league and will be installed in a location significant to their rise to fame.<\/p>\n Iwate Prefecture alone will be home to three of the lids, the most notable one belonging to Shohei Ohtani<\/a> who was born and raised in what is now the city of Oshu, where his lid will be placed. Ohtani\u2019s teammate on the Dodgers Roki Sasaki and Yusei Kikuchi, who currently pitches for Ohtani\u2019s former team the Angels, both also hail from Iwate and will get lids in their respective hometowns, Rikuzentakata and Morioka.<\/p>\n Other notable players will get lids in the cities where they were either born or raised, with the exception of Lars Nootbaar who was born and raised in the USA but has a mother from Higashimatsuyama, Saitama Prefecture, where his lid will be placed.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s the full list of players, the location of their lids, and when the lids will be installed.<\/p>\n Shohei Ohtani<\/strong> \u2013 Oshu, Iwate Prefecture (16 June)<\/em> Each lid features an illustration of the player by a different artist, featuring details such as Kodai Senga winding up for a pitch with a phantom coming out of his hand in honor of his signature ghost fork<\/strong>. Yu Darvish\u2019s lid also shows him in mid-wind-up but with 10 arms radiating out from him<\/strong>, each one holding the ball in a different way to celebrate his outstanding arsenal of 10 different pitches to keep opposing batters on their toes.<\/p>\n If you want to learn more about these players and where they came from, just stop by any of their manholes. That\u2019s because these lids do much more than prevent people from falling to their deaths, by scanning them with your smartphone an AR short film can be seen<\/strong>. The MLB is planning something else with these lids in conjunction with airline JAL, but details won\u2019t be released until after the lids start being installed.<\/p>\n While it\u2019s certainly understandable the MLB wants to promote active players, hopefully, they\u2019ll also pay respect to past greats too like Sadaharu Oh, Hideki Matsui, and Ichiro Suzuki<\/a>. And even though his stats might not be up to the others, I think we can all agree that Munenori Kawasaki\u2019s<\/a> contributions to Major League Baseball have more than earned him a lid.<\/p>\n Source, images: PR Times<\/a><\/em> These are some manhole league baseball players. They say in Japan, you\u2019ve never really made it until they make a manhole lid of you\u2026 OK, fine, they don\u2019t actually say…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-988","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-rss"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/988","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=988"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/988\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/soranews24.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2025\/06\/sub1_f031a1.jpg?w=640\")
<\/p>\n\n
\nYusei Kikuchi<\/strong> \u2013 Morioka, Iwate Prefecture (16 June)<\/em>
\nRoki Sasaki<\/strong> \u2013 Rikuzentakata, Iwate Prefecture (16 June)<\/em>
\nYu Darvish<\/strong> \u2013 Habikino, Osaka Prefecture (17 June)<\/em>
\nYuki Matsui<\/strong> \u2013 Kawasaki, Kanagawa Prefecture (18 June)<\/em>
\nShota Imanaga<\/strong> \u2013 Kitakyushu, Fukuoka Prefecture (19 June)<\/em>
\nLars Nootbaar<\/strong> \u2013 Higashimatsuyama City, Saitama Prefecture (23 June)<\/em>
\nSeiya Suzuki<\/strong> \u2013 Arakawa Ward, Tokyo (24 June)<\/em>
\nYoshinobu Yamamoto<\/strong> \u2013 Bizen, Okayama Prefecture (25 June)<\/em>
\nMasataka Yoshida<\/strong> \u2013 Fukui, Fukui Prefecture (26 June)<\/em>
\nKodai Senga<\/strong> \u2013 Gamagori, Aichi Prefecture (27 June)<\/em>
\nTomoyuki Sugano<\/strong> \u2013 Sagamihara, Kanagawa Prefecture (29 June)<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/soranews24.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2025\/06\/main_dcf5f7.jpg?w=640\")
<\/p>\n
\n\u25cf Want to hear about SoraNews24\u2019s latest articles as soon as they\u2019re published? Follow us on Facebook<\/a> and Twitter<\/a>!<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"