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SEATTLE -- Logan Gilbert sprawled across an athletic trainer’s table while receiving a massage in between starts last year and opened the Japanese language lessons he’d been taking on Spotify.

These massages can be long, from 45 minutes to two hours, leaving Gilbert -- and many Mariners players -- extended time to connect with manual therapist Kazuhiro Yamamoto, who oversees these procedures. Yamamoto, who is from Tokyo and moved to the U.S. in 2018, is entering his fourth season in Seattle and has become a clubhouse favorite for ailing injuries, a passionate dedication to his craft -- but perhaps above all, his bluntly humorous personality.

“He’s really funny, and it’s grown too,” Gilbert said. “Since I’ve met him, and his English, I mean, it’s become perfect, but as he learns more phrases or English idioms or things like that, he can kind of give it and take it when he understands that you’re joking.”

The Spotify lessons have been Gilbert’s way to further connect with Yamamoto, as well as Justin Novak -- the Mariners’ bullpen catcher who has also become incredibly close with many players.

“Especially with a high stress job environment, he fits in perfectly with his job as a massage therapist,” Gilbert said. “You go to see him, and he's just the type of person that has the same attitude every day. He's always positive, always wanting to help other people out. And so it's kind of like a calming effect and some stability and an otherwise unstable job.”

Yamamoto joined the Mariners ahead of the 2022 season with an extensive background in manual therapy -- but virtually none in baseball, making his path to the sport both fascinating and inspiring.

He came to the States for opportunity, earning his master's in athletic training from East Stroudsburg University of Pennsylvania then became a graduate assistant for women’s rugby and swimming and diving at Mount St. Mary’s University in order to maintain visa status.

During the offseason for those sports, he traveled to Las Vegas and worked at a private massage practice specializing in performing arts, which remains his true passion. Yamamoto also worked a stint as an athletic trainer for the department of theater and dance at Ball State University.

“I wouldn’t be surprised to see him work for Cirque du Soleil one day,” Mariners pitcher Bryan Woo said.

During Yamamoto’s time in Vegas, one of his clients was the translator for Yoshihisa Hirano, who pitched for the Mariners in 2020 and whose translator had remained in touch with Seattle’s head athletic trainer, Kyle Torgerson. So when Torgerson put out feelers in need for a low-level massage therapist ahead of ‘22, Yamamoto’s name came up in a correspondence with that translator.

Baseball can be a challenging industry to break into with no experience in the sport, but Yamamoto sold himself for having a uniquely different lens.

“Being able to appreciate how the body moves and if it's going in both directions, the reciprocal movements that baseball players do, and what dance does, it really kind of tied in his understanding of the body,” Torgerson said. “It wasn't traditional baseball, which I actually really, really liked, because he still looks at the body in a way that was a little different than baseball -- which actually added to his value to the team.”

Specifically, Yamamoto arrived with a specialization in Japanese Seitai, a manual therapy technique to restore the proper skeletal frame by manipulating soft tissue and allowing the body to self heal. He describes his clinical interests as performing arts medicine, chronic pain management, eastern medicine, and interdisciplinary healthcare.

“Baseball has so many over-use injuries, like shoulder, elbow, back, hips -- and also baseball plays a lot,” Yamamoto said. “They're playing 162 games in one season, in like 180 days. It's very intense. Performing arts is kind of the same, like they have like eight to nine shows every week. ... Also, baseball has a very international environment, which is another reason I think it's very similar, and what I wanted to do.”

Yamamoto has also come to love the game -- and it loves him back.

“I thought there’d be a stereotype in baseball, or like professional sports in general, that everyone is standoffish,” Yamamoto said. “But the people here are very nice, and they welcome people with different backgrounds, even if you don’t have any experience in baseball. In my first year, players were teaching me all the rules in the dugout. They were happy to help me, and now I’m very comfortable working in baseball.”