Dodgers star meets 100-year-old survivor Momoyo Nakamoto Kelley during Coors Field pregame moment
Before Saturday night’s game at Coors Field, Shohei Ohtani was involved in one of the coolest pregame moments we’ve ever seen.
After completing a casting session, Los Angeles Dodgers two-way star learned of a woman sitting nearby in a wheelchair. So he went over, 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 years old 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 family in hopes of seeing Ohtani in person.
Mission accomplished.
“A dream come true,” Kelley called it.
Ohtani signed a baseball for her and posed for photos.
Kelley’s grandson, Patrick Faust, helped arrange the visit as a way to celebrate her milestone birthday.
“Just the idea that 100 is such a big number,” Faust told MLB.com. “I don’t think there are many people (still alive) from when the atomic bomb was dropped. She’s had a terrible experience, a big one. So we wanted to (do something) special.”
A 100-year-old atomic bomb survivor was thrilled to meet Shohei Ohtani.
(Photo by Dustin Bradford/MLB Photos via Getty Images)
Kelley’s love for the game — and for the growing number of Japanese players in MLB — made the meeting even more meaningful.
“Within the last couple of years, especially with all the Japanese players in the game, she’s been really happy about it,” Faust said.
She didn’t just meet Ohtani either. Kelley also spent time with Dodgers pitcher Roki Sasaki and Rocky Mountains pitcher Tomoyuki Sugano, both of whom she has followed closely for years.
“I like so many of the players,” she beamed. “(Yoshinobu) Yamamoto, Sasaki, and Sugano-san.”
Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said he was touched by the experience.
“It was really a pleasure to meet her,” Roberts said. “She was 19 when the A-bomb fell on Nagasaki. And it’s a miracle that she lived to tell her story. Just seeing her is a piece of history.”
Dodgers broadcaster Stephen Nelson added, “It’s humbling. Just being a ‘Yonsei’ (a great-granddaughter 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 make a better life for herself and future generations … we can’t even fathom it, 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, she found herself on a baseball field in Colorado, making new (and much happier) memories with her family.
