Dodgers star meets 100-year-old survivor Momoyo Nakamoto Kelley during pregame moment at Coors Field
Before Saturday night’s game at Coors Field, Shohei Ohtani was involved in one of the coolest pregame moments we’ve ever seen.
After finishing a casting session, the Los Angeles Dodgers The two-way star was told about a woman sitting nearby in a wheelchair. Then he approached, knelt down and introduced himself.
That woman was Momoyo Nakamoto Kelley, a 100-year-old survivor of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki.
Kelley, who was 19 when the bomb was dropped on August 9, 1945, later immigrated to the United States and now lives in Salt Lake City. A lifelong baseball fan, she had traveled to Colorado with her family in hopes of seeing Ohtani in person.
Mission accomplished.
“A dream come true,” Kelley called it.
Ohtani signed a baseball for him and posed for photos.
Kelley’s grandson, Patrick Faust, helped organize the visit as a way to celebrate his milestone birthday.
“Just the idea that 100 is such a big number”, Fausto he told MLB.com. “I don’t think there were many people (still alive) when the atomic bomb was dropped. She’s had a terrible, terrible experience. So we wanted to (do something) special.”
A 100-year-old atomic bombing survivor was delighted to meet Shohei Ohtani.
(Photo by Dustin Bradford/MLB Photos via Getty Images)
Kelley’s love for the game (and the growing number of Japanese players in MLB) made the meeting even more meaningful.
“Over the last few years, especially with all the Japanese players in the game, she’s been very interested,” Faust said.
She didn’t just meet Ohtani either. Kelley also spent time with Dodgers pitcher Roki Sasaki and Rockies pitcher Tomoyuki Sugano, whom he has followed closely for years.
“I like a lot of the players,” he smiled. “(Yoshinobu) Yamamoto, Sasaki and Sugano-san.”
Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said he was moved by the experience.
“It was really a pleasure meeting her,” Roberts said. “She was 19 when the bomb fell on Nagasaki. And it’s a miracle that she lived to tell her story. Just seeing it is a piece of history.”
Added Dodgers announcer Stephen Nelson: “It’s humbling. Just being ‘Yonsei’ (great-grandson of a Japanese immigrant), you’re standing on a lot of shoulders. For her to experience what she went through and endure it, and come here to have a better life for herself and future generations… we can’t even imagine that, right?”
Kelley herself has vivid memories of that day in 1945. She described the explosion as “like the sky was on fire.”
And yet, 81 years later, he found himself on a baseball field in Colorado, making new (and much happier) memories with his family.
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