Yoshi meets Yoshi for a special Nintendo bobblehead.

There’s excitement in the air for Nintendo fans, as we’re now less than one month away from the opening of The Super Mario Galaxy Movie. With 2023’s The Super Mario Bros. Movie turning out to be a smash hit that exorcised the specter of Nintendo’s original 1993 live-action cinematic adaptation of its flagship video game franchise, The Super Mario Galaxy Movie is looking to ambitiously expand its storytelling scope, with Mario’s beloved dinosaur steed Yoshi set to join the cast.

But while Yoshi will be arriving on the big screen when the movie opens on April 1, he’ll actually be showing up somewhere else one day earlier. On March 31, Major League Baseball’s Los Angeles Dodgers will be giving away a special Yoshi Bobblehead figure of the Super Mario dino wearing a Dodgers uniform.

The Yoshi figure will be given to the first 40,000 fans in attendance at Dodgers Stadium on March 31 for the team’s game against the visiting Cleveland Guardians.

Now, with Nintendo’s American headquarters being in Seattle, and the company not only sponsoring the local Mariners but even having a 10-percent ownership stake in the team, some hybrid video game/baseball fans might question why Yoshi is wearing Dodgers gear. There’s a hint in the specific jersey Yoshi is wearing, as 18 is also the number of Yoshinobu Yamamoto, the Dodgers’ star pitcher who was named World Series MVP last season and whose heroic performance included being on the mound as the Dodgers recorded the final out and won their second straight championship.

▼ Yoshinobu, securing his status as a Los Angeles sports legend.

Though their names are pronounced slightly differently in Japanese (Super Mario’s Yoshi is pronounced like “Yoshhii,” with a more strongly compressed H-sound and elongated ending vowel), they spell their names the same way in English, and in addition to sharing a name they share the spotlight in a cute video announcing the giveaway.

Of course, another contributing factor is likely that the Dodgers are, by a wide margin, Japan’s favorite MLB team. Since Shohei Ohtani joined the team at the start of the 2024 season, Dodgers highlights have been a regular part of sports news in Japan, and with back-to-back World Series titles since then, the team’s popularity has soared even higher. The Dodgers have also shown plenty of enthusiasm to collaborate with Japanese pop culture franchises, though if in addition to Yoshi you’re keen to also add MLB’s Hello Kitty bobblehead to your collection, you’ll have to head to one other stadium for her.

Source: MLB, Twitter/@Dodgers
Images: Tiwtter/@Dodgers
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