OHTANI IS BRINGING LIFE TO THE WORLD, BUT ULTIMATELY, HE MUST WIN IT ALL
A March series in Seoul widens his global scope, including a fake bomb threat, and as we watch how much excitement he generates, he was hired by the Dodgers to ultimately collect World Series titles
Are we globalizing Shohei Ohtani? Or is he globalizing us? What kind of dope would email a bomb threat today before his debut in Seoul, prompting 150 police officers to use sniffing canines and X-ray detectors inside the Gocheok Sky Dome? The claim was false, police said, coming to Vancouver from a purported Japanese lawyer not viewed as credible after a series of previous fake threats.
Once the stadium was cleared, including K-pop performers investigated in the outfield, it should behoove one and all to behave in front of Ohtani. He is a likable human being who has mastered baseball, like no player of his time, with a vicious swing and a wondrous pitching arm. Don’t mess.
When he dug his cleats into history, Ohtani brought new life from his native land to South Korea, where scars should be lethal and permanent after Japan colonized the peninsula a century ago. It was startling how fans roared as he led the Sho-nas Brothers, the Dodgers, while some wore his jersey for $510. Who knew he is bigger than Asian geopolitics, which he proved with two singles, an RBI, a steal, hitting the roof with a 119 mph foul ball and rocking a chanting crowd in his triumphant Los Angeles debut? He also had a boo-boo, called out when he failed to retouch second base for an inning-ending double play after a four-run eighth — not as awkward as a grounder that shot through the webbing of Padres first baseman Jake Cronenworth.
“It sucks,” Cronenworth said. “It was an easy double-play ball.”
That would be victory No. 1 in a 162-0 regular season, or so people think. Imagine if the two-game series was happening in Japan, as it will next March, where he is known as “kanpeki na hito,” or the perfect person — not bad when culture and politics have suffered amid China’s clout with the global economy falling to fourth. The Japanese do have solace when Ohtani is so “suteki,” so cool.
As teammate Freddie Freeman said, “Our great-grandchildren will be talking about Shohei. Just like we talked about Babe Ruth, we’re going to be talking about Shohei.”
After the 5-2 win over San Diego, Ohtani was relieved. “I've always watched the games between Japan and Korea, and I always respected, looked up to Team Korea and Korean players,” he said. “So being accepted like this and welcomed is a very good feeling. And I want to put on a very good show for everybody.” He took at-bats to an audacious song he didn’t choose, Daechwita by Agust D, which managed to work because it yapped, “What’s next? Here comes my reality check. There’s nowhere higher.” What will he choose in L.A.? Everything he does is subject to perusal, going back to his first news conference, watched by 70 million people.
He treated the bomb threat as another day at the park, even after Major League Baseball made a statement: “MLB, along with the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency and other local officials, will continue to monitor the situation closely and take any appropriate steps throughout the event.” The email came via English language. He let it go in Japanese.
Said Padres manager Mike Shildt: “It’s unfortunate that the threat of a bomb even being a possibility, but I have complete confidence in Major League Baseball and the security here that we feel safe.”
“Just keep working on the baseball game,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “Just a good night overall for Shohei. The bigger picture it’s significant because you’ve got such a generational talent that is on your ballclub in a big market in Los Angeles.”
Here in America, where he’ll make $700 million for 10 years, Ohtani stands alone as the all-time financial winner in team sports while the rest of baseball wants to annihilate the union’s chief labor negotiator. Here we have Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto, objects of a $1.025 billion winter explosion, angering players throughout the major leagues who think Bruce Meyer is partly responsible for lowballing salaries elsewhere. Suddenly, a sport that needs no pain is stuck with a 29-team collusion as an investment man from Chicago, Mark Walter, hands Ohtani a massive payment that he’ll defer for $680 million, allowing the Dodgers a chance to make bigger moves.
Imagine if Ohtani’s deal leads to a massive work stoppage in two years. Explain why eight teams guaranteed less than $15 million to free agents. Imagine the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox paying less than $50 million. Imagine the Scott Boras foursome being smoked, with Blake Snell signing for only two years and $62 million after winning the Cy Young Award. In the end, Ohtani might be globalizing and easing our dissent, reminding many struggling owners why colossal talent is worth money as they contemplate wrecking the sport. “A coup d’etat,” Boras called it.
All I can think about is Ohtani sprinkling us with red-white-and-blue fantasia, responding to whether he likes hamburgers better than pizza. “Hamburgers. In-N-Out,” he said, laughing. All I think about is his new personal logo, with New Balance, showing him rounding first base with hip-hop jazz. He will use it in preparing fresh projects, including more apparel items and more shoes. “In that run, every soul delights,” says the video.
“It celebrates the spirit of the present moment, something I feel passionate about in my career and in my life,” Ohtani said. “When we are living in a world that's future-focused and increasingly uncertain, now is everything. It is a visual representation of my journey in baseball and I am excited to share it with the world.”
Wearing a smile throughout the excursion while accompanied by his new wife, former basketball player Mamiko Tanaka, Ohtani gave baseball a taste of its world acclaim. Give commissioner Rob Manfred this much as he slowly counts his days to retirement. In Asia and most of North America, Ohtani is the world’s biggest athlete, reinforcing his might after signing to play in Anaheim in 2018. But when Tom Brady and other NFL stars went overseas, they had to be marketed to Europeans, who have their own god-like football. And while the NBA has global stars, they were created by our own legends, Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson. Baseball stole Ohtani, then returned him beyond the pond, which is why he said Tuesday in Japanese, “It’s a special opening day, in that we’re playing in South Korea and I’m playing for a new team. I think the degree of my excitement is different.”
It isn’t time yet to focus on the baseball season, when other teams and their fans will grumble about Ohtani remaining in the sunshine. How do Walter and Guggenheim Baseball pull it off, with a certain four million in 2024 attendance and $8 billion in local TV rights, heaving such obscene and unprecedented amounts at two Japanese players? Doesn’t it create a nagging audacity that “GUGGENHEIM” is placed largely on the sides of the famed blue batting helmets? Won’t every game be watched nationally with prayers of losses and injuries? “This year feels different because you’ve got, essentially, the best player on the planet,” Roberts said. “People love beating the Dodgers. This year, it’s more extreme.” For now, we wonder not only how Ohtani slept 11 of 12 1/2 hours on the flight to Seoul. We ask how he can expand baseball when it needs help beyond Dodger Stadium, which has a worst-seat-of-56,000 rate of $305.10 — for two, with parking — when his bobblehead night happens in May against Cincinnati. That is nothing compared to the average resale price on Opening Day next week, at $567. Or the unbelievable number of jerseys he is selling, the largest by far in Fanatics history, surpassing Lionel Messi.
One of his bosses, president Stan Kasten, said Ohtani has the “dimension” to sell tickets the way Jordan and LeBron James have on the continent. That undeniably will thrive in the team’s home park, which has hosted societal eras starting with Jackie Robinson before ranging to Sandy Koufax and Vin Scully and the most recent frame of large spending and October underachievement. Will it work in other cities, where Ohtani can be bigger than MLB in the way Jordan was bigger than the NBA? He understands what’s happening in the wilds, saying via interpreter Ippei Mizuhara, “I appreciate all the attention, obviously. Attention's always great, being a baseball player and being able to play with these great guys next to me, I'm just really excited.” But will Ohtani sell seats beyond Dodger Stadium, the way he has in South Korea and in Japan, where a travel agency is setting up fan trips to the U.S.?
“I just think it speaks to where the game of baseball is globally. The interest, the excitement for Major League Baseball is at an all-time high,” Roberts said. “When you have great players like we have and you see the excitement, I think this is a sign of what’s to come when we go play in other cities. I wasn’t around the Beatles. I wasn’t around Michael Jordan, or the Lakers in the ‘80s. But I think that what we’re coming up upon is going to be close to that. I think it’s great for sports. I think it’s great for baseball. And I think it’s great for the Dodgers. There’s a lot of eyeballs on us.”
“It’s been a lot, but it’s been cool,” teammate Mookie Betts said. “It’s kind of what comes when you get somebody like this, an international star.”
As president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman commented: “I’ve said this a couple times, but our goal is for this period of time to be looked back as the golden era of Dodger baseball. That is an incredibly high bar. But obviously, signing Shohei, and what that potentially means, definitely increases the chances of that.”
At present, he remains charming, including the deft manner he introduced his wife during the trip. They’ll be bonding with their dog, Dekopin, known as Decoy in English. When mountains of media inquired about his relationship with Tanaka, Ohtani wasn’t upset. He is thrilled, for now. His teammates love it, too. “I gotta hear this one. C’mon Sho, don’t be shy,” Freeman said.
“I have one job to focus on and it's baseball,” said Ohtani, adding South Korea is bringing “really great memories for both of us.”
It’s hard to believe Ohtani is beginning his seventh season on our turf. Did the first six not count down there in Orange County? He feels no pressure and probably won’t until autumn, when an indescribable six months turn to a wild postseason, his first in the majors. The Dodgers acquired him to win the World Series a few times, not lose it as they have every season but one since 1988. “We’ve only done it once,” Kasten said. “And we need to do it more often than that.”
The $700 million man knows all about it. “Of course,” he said, “I’ve always imagined myself in the postseason.” Afterward, he told reporters, “I think a team that can come back to win at the end like this is a strong team.”
For now, the purpose is Seoul. Soon enough, we will see Ohtani’s soul, minus police protection.
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.