Shohei Ohtani: how the LA Dodgers’ humble, normcore megastar reached baseball’s biggest stage
IIt’s the final week of the Los Angeles Dodgers’ regular season. The San Diego Padres are in town and a win tonight at Dodger Stadium over their Interstate 5 rivals would secure their 11th NL West division title in 12 years. There is an excited buzz in the halls, even now, hours before the gates open to the public. The clubhouse is palpably tense: At the end of an injury-plagued season, the chance to earn a first-round bye and bypass the wild-card round could prove invaluable to their ultimate goal: a World Series title. A tall man with floppy hair enters the room, noticeably calmer than anyone around him, armed with a soft smile and a steaming cup of tea, and plops down at his locker. He is almost astonishingly untroubled. You would never guess that he is a global phenomenon making history, ready to embark on his first-ever trip to the postseason since joining Major League Baseball six years ago with the Crosstown Angels. But Shohei Ohtani is not your average superstar.
At this point, the 30-year-old’s staggering statistical achievements speak for themselves, as difficult as they may be to comprehend. Even in a season where his unprecedented two-way skills were forced to take a backseat as he rehabbed from a second major elbow surgery that kept him off the pitcher’s mound, Ohtani found a whole new way to rewrite baseball’s record books. Just a few days ago, he became the first player in Major League history to score 50 home runs and 50 stolen bases in a single campaign. By the end of the week, he will have concluded the regular season having led the National League in home runs (54) and runs batted in (130) with a batting average (.310), second only to San Diego’s Luis Arráez (. 314), falling a few percentage points shy of becoming the NL’s first Triple Crown winner since Joe Medwick of the St. Louis Cardinals in 1937. The eye-popping numbers don’t stop there: 134 runs scored, 411 total bases, a .646 slugging percentage and an OPS over 1.000.
Ohtani’s first season on a record-breaking 10-year, $700 million contract with the Dodgers has somehow been worth every penny as he led the team to the best record in the Majors despite a slew of injuries. But to hear those close to him tell it, it’s Ohtani’s attitude off the lines and in the clubhouse that further sets him apart.
“The way he carries himself, I mean, he knows there’s a lot of attention on him and you wouldn’t even know it,” said third base coach Dino Ebel, who worked with Ohtani in his first year with the Angels before they were reunited. with the Dodgers this spring. His face immediately lights up when I ask what Ohtani is like, and he echoes the sentiments I hear time and time again when I ask people across the team about him. The word ‘humble’ comes up in every conversation. He just wants to be one of the guys is another common refrain. “He’s Shohei Ohtani,” Ebel says, smiling and shrugging. “He’s just a genuine, wonderful person.”
Although he breaks records with stunning regularity, Ohtani, who speaks only Japanese during tightly controlled media availability, has cultivated a celebrity that transcends baseball. He is very handsome, but in a boyish, wholesome way. His impeccably groomed, impeccably trained Dutch Kooikerhondje named Decoy threw the first pitch before a match in August. The Los Angeles City Council passed a resolution declaring every May 17th Shohei Ohtani Day for the duration of his Dodger career. He’s a perfect modern superstar: almost as if he was custom-made in a laboratory to sell baseball jerseys. Say nothing of the slew of Japanese sponsors his presence has attracted to the Dodgers, who have experienced a sharp increase in attendance at both road games and tours by Japanese-speaking guides.
Perhaps for these reasons, many who believed that Ohtani’s squeaky-clean public image was too good to be true almost seemed relieved when a “gotcha” moment came during spring training, when he found himself in the middle of a theft and gambling scandal involving his good friend and longtime interpreter. But even there, the truth was disappointingly innocuous for those who had been waiting for a soap opera scandal. According to an extensive federal investigation, Ohtani was found to have been the victim of a Caesar and Brutus-like case of fraud (described as “deep and extensive” by U.S. Attorney Martin Estrada) by one of his most trusted confidantes, who was charged with stealing $16 million from the star to pay illegal gambling debts.
Such an unsettling experience could derail other players, especially those who played under the pressure of a $700 million contract and were hailed as the savior of a sport in danger of becoming outdated and obsolete. But not Ohtani. Could it be possible that this GOAT candidate could actually just be nice and funny and, for lack of a better word, normal?
By all accounts, it’s a testament to both Ohtani’s greatness and remarkable equality that he was able to bounce back from a potentially explosive scandal to such an extent that it hasn’t even come close to being the defining story of his season. . It is said that Ohtani’s calm and respectful nature is a result of Japanese culture, and while that is probably at least partially true, I am also struck by his ease and joviality. These are somewhat unusual features for a competitor of its caliber, and ones that can’t really be attributed to geographical origins.
“He’s a little kid in a grown man’s body,” Dodgers third baseman Max Muncy said. “He doesn’t like to take things too seriously, he likes to have fun. He’s always laughing and always trying to make jokes. You certainly would have no idea he is the man he is. If you didn’t know anything about baseball and had never seen him before, you wouldn’t think he had a big influence on the way he acted.”
Teoscar Hernández, the Dodgers fielder who is also in his first year with the club, and has developed a close friendship with Ohtani despite their language barrier, agrees. “He’s one of those guys. If you sit next to him and talk to him, he will always be nice. He jokes a lot, and you know, he’s a good guy,” Hernández said. “Everyone sees him as a quiet man, a serious man, but I think he is the opposite. I just think, if he is here”, he gestures to the field, “he is focused.”
Ebel offers a similar hypothesis, nodding to Ohtani’s famously meticulous preparation habits: “When he’s in [the clubhouse]see you Shohei. When he comes out [to the field]For me it’s more like: I am focused now, this is my job.”
It’s not uncommon for stars to have personas both on and off the field. But to remain so grounded and easy-going behind the scenes when faced with an international megastar is certainly not the norm. Ohtani has been a household name in Japan since his days at Hanamaki Higashi High School, where he made headlines by throwing a then-record 160 km/h (99 mph) fastball as an 18-year-old at the Summer Koshien, the national baseball championship the high school events that captivate the entire country, just like March Madness in the United States.
His profile only rose during a brilliant five-year stint with the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters of Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball, where he won a championship in 2016 before breaking into the MLB with the Angels two seasons later. And it has grown exponentially in the years since, as roundtable debates over whether he is the greatest of all time have become more and more common.
I ask shortstop Miguel Rojas if Ohtani’s down-to-earth nature came as a surprise, given the immense hype surrounding him and the sheer magnitude of his fame. “Definitely, 100%,” he says. “Because I’ve played with other stars in the game who are different, and they’re needy. At some point they need a lot of people around them because they are superstars. They can’t live a normal life like all the other players who can actually do things. But for me, this place, for Shohei, is a kind of escape from many things.
Rojas says he found it surprising “how normal and how kind of Naturally” Ohtani was as soon as he arrived in Los Angeles. “He is always smiling and eager to get to know his teammates. [He’s] interested in what you like, and also expressing what he likes. He’s a pretty normal, down-to-earth guy.”
Former Dodgers manager Dave Roberts describes Ohtani as “workman-like” and says he is “very respectful, very humble” and that he “treats everyone the same.” “Honestly,” Roberts says, “he is very present and engaged every day and in every interaction.”
As the Dodgers prepare to open their postseason Saturday against those same Padres in the best-of-five National League Division Series, Roberts says Ohtani’s enthusiasm and excitement for his highly anticipated debut on baseball’s biggest stage is contagious and appreciated. “I think what I see with Shohei is that this is all new to him. And you could say this is something he’s been waiting for all his life: to play in the postseason in the major leagues,” Roberts said. “So you see his focus, his excitement, his joy and his energy. And that’s what I want from every guy, whether he’s played 50 playoff games or hasn’t played a playoff game yet. I think that’s part of the recipe for success.”
In my conversation with Ebel, I share some of the anecdotes I heard about Ohtani in the clubhouse, such as Hernández saying they exchange stories about his native Dominican Republic and Ohtani’s Japan, and how everyone I talk to has a genuine fondness for seems to have for him. It’s hard to fathom that they’re describing one of the most famous athletes in the world, and I ask Ebel if he thinks this is the Real Shohei. He leans forward. ‘That’s who he is. Really, deep down, someone who cares. And he just wants to be Shohei Ohtani’s person.