In efforts to expand the sport internationally, Major League Baseball hosted games in the Dominican Republic, Mexico, South Korea and the United Kingdom this year.
The league intended to return to Mexico for the 2025 season, as well as play games in France, Japan and Puerto Rico. However, those plans have slowly fallen apart.
It was reported this past spring that MLB would not make their highly anticipated debut in Paris next year because of a lack of a presenting sponsor.
MLB commissioner Rob Manfred has now confirmed that the league won’t be playing games in Puerto Rico during the 2025 season, via Evan Drellich of The Athletic:
“We’re not going to San Juan,” commissioner Rob Manfred said. “We did not have, despite a lot of efforts, an arrangement that made economic sense for us. We’d still like to do San Juan, and what’s available kind of changes year to year, and I’m hopeful it works out in the future.”
Manfred also said the 2025 Mexico City Series has been canceled, but did note MLB will be back in the future:
“We had a really, really aggressive international play undertaking last season. … But we’ve been to Mexico the last few years in a row, and we’re taking one year off. We’ll be back, though.”
While games in Mexico and Puerto Rico have been canceled for the 2025 season, the Los Angeles Dodgers and Chicago Cubs will still open the year with the Tokyo Series in Japan.
For the Dodgers, it marks their fourth international series, joining the 2014 season-opening series in Sydney, Australia, against the Arizona Diamondbacks, their 2018 matchup against the Padres in Monterrey, Mexico, and the aforementioned Seoul Series in 2024.
MLB history in Japan
The upcoming Tokyo Series between the Dodgers and Cubs will be the sixth time that MLB opens its regular season in Tokyo, and the 25th anniversary of the first-ever regular season games played in Japan in 2000 between the Cubs and the New York Mets.
It will also be the first games in Japan since the Seattle Mariners and Oakland Athletics opened the 2019 season at the Tokyo Dome. In addition to 2000 and 2019, other season-openers in Japan took place in 2004 (New York Yankees vs. Tampa Bay Rays), 2008 (Boston Red Sox vs. Oakland Athletics) and 2012 (Seattle Mariners vs. Athletics).
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