The fans at Jingu Stadium do not know what they are seeing yet. There is no indication something special is about to happen, and it will be months before anyone realizes they saw a small part of history. It is a normal, chilly night like any other early in a baseball season.

The fans are mostly pulling for the hometown Tokyo Yakult Swallows. They're wearing masks as dictated by COVID-19 measures and bundled in thick jackets, gloves and hats as demanded by the cold of an April night outdoors.

Most erupt when Munetaka Murakami homers to give Swallows fans something to cheer about in a game the DeNA BayStars were leading 3-0. There was nothing else particularly impactful about the homer, though, beyond the obvious power it took for the lefty slugger to drive the ball beyond the wall in left center.

That was April 1, and no one had any reason to believe it was the opening chapter of one of the greatest seasons an NPB player has ever authored. Murakami penned the final line on Monday when he ended the regular season by connecting on his 56th home run and securing the Triple Crown.

Hitting No. 56 allowed Murakami to end the year on a high note after the prolonged slump that followed his 55th homer.

"I was relieved," Murakami said of the moment he hit it, according to NHK. "I hit it well and I thought it was a long one. I was just really relieved."

The 2022 season may be over, but we're only beginning to really grasp just how dominant Murakami was this year.

He made a real and sustained challenge to Wladimir Balentien’s single-season record of 60 home runs, ultimately "settling" for passing Sadaharu Oh for the most by a Japan-born player.

"I'm really happy to be able to break a record this great," Murakami said. "Oh-san, (Katsuya) Nomura-san, (Hiromitsu) Ochiai-san and others who came before achieved other great things, so it's important to keep going from here."

The home run chase dominated the headlines, but Murakami is more than just a home run hitter.

He batted .318 with 56 home runs and 134 RBIs in 141 games to become just the eighth player in NPB history to win the Triple Crown and the first since Nobuhiko Matsunaka for the Fukuoka Daiei Hawks in 2004. He is the first Central League winner — and first with the sole lead in all three categories — since Hanshin Tigers great Randy Bass in 1986.

"The team won the championship and I was able to have good individual numbers," Murakami said. "I'm really happy to earn these records and titles.

Murakami is the youngest Triple Crown winner in Japanese pro baseball, surpassing the Tokyo Giants' Harayasu Nakajima (1938) and the Lotte Orions' Hiromitsu Ochiai (1982), who were in their age-29 seasons.

Even though Murakami won the Triple Crown, that distinction still somehow understates how dominant he was on the field.

Murakami had to survive a slump and a battle with Chunichi Dragons veteran Yohei Oshima, who hit.314, to win the batting title, but nothing else was even close. He finished with 47 more home runs than the Yomiuri Giants' Kazuma Okamoto and 47 more RBIs than the BayStars' Shugo Maki and the Tigers' Yusuke Oyama.

He led the CL in walks, 118 to 80 over Okamoto and on-base plus slugging percentage, 1.168 to .861 over Maki. Per Deltagraphs, he also finished with a 223-to-143 edge on Maki in weighted runs created plus.

Murakami led all of Japanese baseball in home runs, RBIs, walks, and OPS, and only two players, the Pacific League’s Go Matsumoto of the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters and the Orix Buffaloes’ Masataka Yoshida, finished with higher batting averages.

Murakami did not have the best season in NPB history, but he produced an all-time great campaign that garnered attention from around the world.

Then there are the home runs.

Murakami did not make it to Balentien’s mark, but vaulted out of a tie with Oh, Tuffy Rhodes and Alex Cabrera for sole possession of second on the single-season list. He was the first Japanese player to reach 50 home runs since former Giants great Hideki Matsui in 2002 and is now one of five NPB players with at least 55 homers in a single season.

Murakami, who at one point homered in five consecutive at-bats, was so prolific that he finished just six home runs behind the Chunichi Dragons’ total as a team.

The run to 60 stalled when Murakami hit a wall late in the season, but this may not be his last bid. Murakami does not look like a one-hit-wonder. He is just 22 and already has three 30-homer seasons under his belt — and hit 28 during the COVID-19 shortened 2020 season — and 160 for his career.

His age and growth as a player means another run to the record is not out of the question.

That thought should keep the fans warm when Murakami starts on a possible encore on some chilly night early in the 2023 season.