Weird take. If anything “can” is an understatement, baseball is substantially more popular in Japan than soccer and their WBC games will likely eclipse those numbers. Especially if they advance further into the tournament but quite possibly the early games too.

The Koshien baseball tournament attracts millions and millions of viewers in Japan, it’s basically their March Madness and Super Bowl rolled into one event.

That’s a yearly high school tournament; this a national team event that hasn’t happened in six years and for the first time features the best Japanese player the sport has ever seen.