Capped by Classic, Stephen Nelson paving manner for Asian American broadcasters

When MLB Network finalized plans to broadcast World Baseball Classic video games from Japan this previous March, Stephen Nelson isn’t afraid to confess he “basically begged for the assignment.” Up till that time, Nelson, who’s a fourth-generation Japanese American, had solely heard tales of his ancestral homeland — household folklore-type tales, the kind that change into essentially woven into the material of so many Americans’ senses of self however that so few get to entry or actualize.

So when Nelson, whose star had been rising on the community since 2018, was granted the project, he jumped at it. Flying from Southern California days earlier than the match, the 34-year-old and his younger household crammed in a detour to Kumamoto, a significant metropolis on Japan’s south island Kyushu. The ornate castles there date again to the seventeenth century; Nelson had been raised to imagine his lineage traced again not solely to the area but in addition to these castles, his mom’s household descendant from Samurai and farmers of the realm earlier than they left for Hawaii within the late 1800s.

“There was no address,” Nelson mentioned. “It wasn’t like the scene in ‘White Lotus’ … but our guide, he found our family crest and it was very similar to the family that lived in Kumamoto Castle. It gave validation to my grandmother’s stories that she passed on. Then we went out into the country, and there’s this monument that is basically an ode to the farmers who lived on that land. And so it was really, really heavy.”

The expertise was crystalizing for Nelson, who now, in his first season calling Dodgers video games, holds the excellence as MLB’s solely Asian American play-by-play announcer. The highlight inherent with the position has been enhanced even additional throughout Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month this May, which Nelson has spent reiterating a message of continued progress and inclusion in high-profile interviews on packages like “The Today Show” and elsewhere.

“It’s a bewildering honor that I’ll cherish forever, but it’s also a signal, like, how much work we got to do for broadcasters of color, right?” Nelson mentioned. “It’s a cool thing, but the way I keep saying it is, being the first one is really special, but it will mean a lot less to me if I’m the last or the only.”

An essential a part of that honor, Nelson believes, is illustration. Another is displaying the youthful era that it’s potential. Having grown up in SoCal rooting for the Dodgers, Nelson understands the venerable skilled lineage he’s now part of as a voice of the group, in firm with icons like Vin Scully and Jaime Jarrín. But the broadcasters who had the most important influence on him got here from native information: KTLA’s Frank Buckley and ABC 7’s Rob Fukuzaki, who’re each Japanese American.

For Nelson, watching and later assembly Buckley and Fukuzaki taught him that aspiring to a profession in journalism “wasn’t this crazy thing.” He is aware of that each time he straps on his headset from the Vin Scully Press Box at Chavez Ravine, he may have the identical influence.

“What if there’s another young Japanese American kid out there right now?” Nelson mentioned. “I try not to think too much about that when it’s bases loaded, two outs. I try not to add that pressure to an already pressure-packed situation. But I’d be lying if I told you that I didn’t. That I wasn’t aware of it. The word that comes to mind is responsibility, because it is a massive one. I don’t want to let anybody down.”

If you caught Nelson’s interview on “The Today Show,” you’d have seen him say his solely objective for his new position “is to not disappoint my parents.” Reflecting on that comment just a few weeks later, Nelson confirmed with a chuckle that he’s, actually, not letting his family members down. The emotion he’s way more crammed with is gratitude, for the assist and sacrifices his father, Scott, and mom, Flo, made to form him, not solely with a data of who he’s but in addition with a conviction to comply with his goals.

“My wife calls me Peter Pan, because she says I don’t want to grow up or let go of my childhood and how that’s a beautiful thing, because I had such an amazing childhood,” Nelson mentioned. “And she’s right. I look back on growing up with such a full heart. We didn’t want for anything.”

Nelson credit Flo, who was a part of the inaugural employees for downtown L.A.’s Japanese American National Museum, for instilling him with “the love and respect for who we are a culture and where we come from as a family.” Almost yearly, Flo and Scott took Stephen and his little sister, Kimi, to go to their kin in Hawaii, with a watch towards strengthening the kids’s connections to their Japanese aspect. Nelson cherishes childhood recollections of studying origami and consuming meals in Little Tokyo with Flo, attending Japanese college on the weekends and persevering with his language schooling as an elective via highschool, even when alternatives to use it have been restricted.

Eventually, they arose. Nelson isn’t a fluent speaker, however he proved on the 2021 World Series that he stays greater than conversational sufficient by presenting Shohei Ohtani with the Commissioner’s Historic Achievement Award within the Japanese star’s native language. His intention? “To make sure every Japanese person in that room felt seen and heard and welcomed,” he mentioned.

“Being mixed, identity is something that I’ve battled with at certain points in my life, especially during those formative teenage years. I used to kind of look at my heritage as like a dial: I can dial it back here, dial it up there,” Nelson added. “That’s something that’s gone away completely as I’ve gotten older. I’m 50 percent Japanese but 100 percent proud of that, and I’m going to embrace and wave that banner proudly.”