MLB Opening Day will look a bit different than usual this year. For the first time ever, the highest level of professional baseball will be played across the Pacific Ocean in Seoul, South Korea.
The Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego Padres will meet at Gocheok Sky Dome, home of the Korean Baseball League’s Kiwoom Heroes, on March 20 and 21.
For MLB, it will be an opportunity to showcase some of its biggest stars to a new audience. The Dodgers and Padres boast some of the biggest names in baseball, and both franchises finished top three in attendance last season.
The biggest of those names will obviously be Shohei Ohtani. The two-way superstar from Japan has quickly established himself as not just a baseball phenomenon, but a global one.
The Seoul Series will mark not only his debut in a Dodgers uniform, but also an opportunity to play an MLB game on his home continent. With flights from Tokyo to Seoul under three hours, you can bet that a lot of Japanese fans will make the short trip to watch Ohtani.
But Ohtani is not the only notable name who will be playing much closer to home than usual. There’s also Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who signed with the Dodgers this offseason and will likely make his first MLB start in Seoul.
Padres’ utility player Ha-Seong Kim is from Bucheon, South Korea—less than 20 miles from Seoul—and played in the KBO for seven years. And although he is a U.S. citizen and spent the majority of his childhood in the United States, Dodgers’ manager Dave Roberts was actually born in Naha, Japan.
There are also plenty of American and Latin American-born stars who will play across the Pacific Ocean for the first time. For the Dodgers, that group is highlighted by surefire future Hall of Famers Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman. And San Diego is not lacking for stars either, with a lineup that includes Manny Machado, Fernando Tatis Jr., Juan Soto and Xander Bogaerts.
The players will not be the only thing MLB is bringing to Korea, however. They will also bring many popular concessions from Dodger Stadium and Petco Park to sell at the games. Those will include Dodger Dogs, the famous Dodger Stadium hot dogs that go all the way back to the team’s time in Brooklyn.
While the series is still more than a month away, the excitement is already building. With the Dodgers and Padres both beginning Spring Training workouts in Arizona this week, preparation is officially underway.