Just like Japanese ballplayers, Takashi Matsuba also dreams of competing at the highest level, of taking his game to the United States and the major leagues.

Although Matsuba's game is manufacturing goods for fans of Japanese sports teams, he says there is a strong parallel with his countrymen wanting to play in Major League Baseball.

"Japanese players want to go play in MLB, because it's the biggest stage. For me, it's the biggest market," said the 47-year-old Matsuba in a recent phone interview.

In December, his company, Matsuba Entertainment Ltd., took steps toward that market by exhibiting at American baseball's winter meetings trade fair in Florida.

With various businesses -- including Japanese giants Fujitsu and NTT Data -- demonstrating goods, services, software, ballpark tools and training equipment in a huge hall, Matsuba and his staff occupied a small space away from the entrance.

Matsuba's featured product was a 14-centimeter 3D caricature of New York Yankees ace Masahiro Tanaka in the middle of his windup. From a photo and a 2D caricature, Matsuba said his company can receive a unique new product in 10 days from his manufacturer in China.

He is aware that regardless of what innovations he might bring, American competitors will quickly adapt and learn to produce similar goods. But he believes service is what counts.

"I have confidence I can do better than suppliers in the States, considering the way they do business," Matsuba said. "They have some quality goods, for sure, but the service is no good."

While young Japanese ballplayers now dream of playing in the majors, Matsuba, too, looked toward America while growing up. Gregarious and adventurous, he longed for the land of the musical "Grease" and Michael Jackson, but did not make it until the summer of 1990. As a university sophomore, Matsuba spent the summer in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where his cousin had gone to study.

There, Ruth Boyce, whose family his cousin had stayed with, helped him gain a toehold and became his biggest supporter. Admittedly a poor student, Matsuba's English was energized by taping music radio programs and listening until he could memorize the banter between iconic Milwaukee DJs Bob Reitman and Gene Mueller.

The language he did acquire proved valuable after he landed a job with J-League club Shimizu S-Pulse. As the team secretary, Matsuba became close to two of the managers, Ossie Ardiles and his successor Steve Perryman. And when Perryman left in 2001, Matsuba did, too.

"I just quit," he said. "I did nothing for six months. I went to England, met Steve and Ossie. They took me to (soccer) games in London and gave me a merchandise catalog the size of a coffee table book."

"I had no interest in merchandising. I was thinking, 'Why don't you give me goods instead?' I brought the catalog to S-Pulse and the guy said, 'Why don't you buy this stuff, and we'll get it from you?' There was no reason not to do that."

His first products were English-style supporters' scarves for Japanese teams, which then only offered towels. At first he operated under his father's company, before founding Matsuba Entertainment in 2005. He now supplies promotional products to 30 J-League teams and five clubs in Nippon Professional Baseball, although it's been anything but a smooth and straight road to success.

Matsuba at first did not understand about pricing. He would charge customers the prices they wanted to pay for a product, only for them to complain when they discovered other teams were buying the same goods for less.

"I was always losing money. I didn't know how to set prices," he said. "I was doing business on the road, carrying my computer, a small printer and samples. I didn't remember what prices I had quoted before."

"When customers found out the prices were different, some would say, 'You cheated me!' But I told them, 'How did I cheat you? I gave you the price you wanted.'"

He listened, however, and he learned, getting invaluable advice from his mother Yoko, who manages the family business. By attending trade fairs around the globe to find suppliers of goods his customers asked him for, he expanded his product line.

After the 2015 baseball trade fair in Nashville, Tennessee, Matsuba decided to take part this winter. He came armed with a process for supplying caricature goods that one of NPB's more innovative teams, the Rakuten Eagles, asked him to provide.

"I don't come up with product ideas. My customers do," Matsuba said of the goods the Eagles buy to give as promotional gifts to their growing fan base.

But even with an attractive and unique product in hand, his previous experience of the trade fair did not prepare Matsuba for the harsh challenge of crashing the American baseball market.

"I was really impressed in Nashville," he said. "It was very interesting, but I was just visiting. This time was a completely different story, because as an exhibitor, I have to get business."

Now after his first brush with the American market, Matsuba sounds like a Japanese ballplayer struggling at his first big league spring training.

"I see what the facts are. I came to get business, but it's so hard to make contacts. It was harder than I thought, but I know my position now in the real world. Now I have to get a result."