Meet the dancing, joyful slugger at the heart of Samurai Japan's greatness

TOKYO -- Before facing the rival USA Baseball team on Thursday night in the super-round of WBSC's Premier12 tournament, the cherubic Shugo Maki gathered his teammates around him near the Samurai Japan dugout. With the hint of a smile and a mischievous glint in his eye, the slugger gave his team a pregame speech to raise spirits and unite the No. 1 ranked team in the world against the American baseball powerhouse.

"I would rate my talk a 20 out of 100," Maki joked with MLB.com through Yukino Imai, who interpreted. "I think very poorly of it. I feel like maybe I did OK to warm up the team a little bit, but I wasn't satisfied."

Despite his protestations to the contrary, the speech must have worked: Japan defeated the United States, 9-2, further extending the Samurais' international winning streak. The team's last loss in international competition came against the United States at the Premier12 tournament in 2019.

"It's a different squad than the squad that we played against in the World Baseball Classic, but still, winning against the USA means a lot to me," Maki said. "We think that they have the highest level of players, and so the fact that we've been able to win twice against this strong team makes me very proud of myself and my teammates."

Maki has become famous beyond Japan not just for his skill -- though he has plenty of that, topping 20 home runs and hitting nearly .300 in every season since he made his debut for the Yokohama BayStars in 2021 -- but also for his exuberant, fun-loving nature. He plays the game with a gleeful joy that seems more apt for the playground, regularly contorting his rubber-faced features for comedic effect.

When he hits a home run, he pulls out an arm bar called "Destasha" that is not too dissimilar from Edwin Encarnacion's famous parrot routine in the Major Leagues. This one, however, was inspired by Maki's BayStars and Samurai teammate Keita Sano and popular YouTuber SAWAYAN. (Unlike Encarnacion's trot, Maki makes the move and then drops it, not rounding the bases with his arm held high.)

In the clubhouse, he'll regularly dance around, hips shaking and arms pumping, to uproarious laughter.

"I'm a natural born dancer," Maki deadpanned.

He had plenty of reason to celebrate this past season, too. Maki was named to his third consecutive All-Star game and the BayStars won their first Japan Series title since 1998, riding the good vibes from a third-place finish in the regular season to becoming unlikely NPB champions.

"The BayStars as a team are very vocal," Maki explained. "It's very important to be loud and funny. We bet our lives on being loud on the bench. I feel I am able to play a big role in being part of the BayStars squad."

Behind all the joking, though, is a player who takes the game very seriously. Learning the sport by playing in the backyard with his grandfather while his parents were at work, the second baseman has moved over to first for this tournament. He has worked hard on improving his defense and, with the BayStars looking to be more active on the basepaths, set a career-high with 11 stolen bases, never once being caught.

His manager for the national team loves his presence in the lineup, too, noting his willingness to bat anywhere in the lineup and play an unfamiliar position.

"He's been doing more than enough, really," manager Hirokazu Ibata said. "He's playing first base, which he is not so used to, and he's been very efficient. ... He's quite a dependable player."

Even homering twice in the 2023 World Baseball Classic "wasn't enough" for Maki, as he wanted to provide even more thump for the undefeated championship squad.

Perhaps what he did on Friday night was enough, then: Playing against Venezuela in the Premier12 super-round, Japan fell behind when Carlos Eduardo Pérez homered for the second consecutive game. An anxious murmur fell across the Tokyo Dome crowd, who sensed that this seemingly immortal team might actually lose a ballgame for the first time in five years.

Instead, showing why they're the world's best, Japan stormed back to tie the game in the bottom half of the sixth before Maki stepped to the plate with the bases loaded. After taking the first pitch for a ball, he swung, unleashed his Destasha and watched as the ball soared over the left-field wall for what would prove to be the game-winning grand slam.

The victory not only extended Japan's remarkable winning streak, but has them set to play against Chinese Taipei on Sunday with another tournament victory on the line. It would be the perfect cap to a remarkable run of success for the young ballplayer that stretches back to March 2023.

Like many of his Japanese teammates, Maki dreams of a future in the Major Leagues, though he feels it's something that is "still in the distant future."

For now, he'll focus on winning the Premier12 tournament, hopefully dancing his way across the clubhouse to the delight of his teammates after Sunday's final. He'll also hold onto his favorite memories: Winning the Japan Series this past season and basking in the warm glow of the 2023 Classic victory.

"The champagne fight," Maki said, a wide smile across his boyish face, "was the greatest memory I've ever had."