WE’VE NEVER SEEN ANYONE LIKE OHTANI — SO, WHY SLUR HIM?
‘Sho Time’ has mushroomed into the greatest individual season in baseball history, yet commentators continue to insult the Japanese phenom instead of celebrating his superhuman, two-way exploits
The Japanese sensation was the rage of baseball. He was effortless, never shy with a smile, better at his craft than major-leaguers who hailed from the sport’s homeland. Wickedly, though, some American media didn’t warm to him right away, including a hillbilly homer in Chicago who assumed it was Open Mic Night and mocked his name.
Three thousand and eighty-nine hits later, Ichiro Suzuki is a vote away from Cooperstown. But 20 years later, society hasn’t learned much.
Shohei Ohtani, Ichiro’s countryman, is producing the greatest individual season ever. No? If the totality of production is the metric, he’s the first two-way performer to truly dominate both specialties for an extended period — and please don’t reference Babe Ruth, who at first was a full-time pitcher, then primarily a slugger, and didn’t approach the scope of Ohtani’s duality demolition. As a slugger, he continues to lead the majors with 40 home runs and a 1.015 OPS. As a starting pitcher, he is 8-1 with a 2.79 earned-run average. Toiling for a franchise that annually underachieves and again slogs without Mike Trout, he somehow is keeping the Los Angeles Angels above .500, which qualifies Ohtani as a leading candidate for Most Valuable Player AND the Cy Young Award in the American League.
The calendar soon will flip to September. Obviously, he is not a fad but a revelation, an unstoppable godsend for a sport that needs oxygen, light and eyeballs.
“Every award that’s gonna be given out this year, he’s in the middle of it,’’ Angels manager Joe Maddon said. “What could you possibly say that has not already been said?”
I am saddened to report that people ARE finding new things to say — bad things. They are slurring Ohtani, unable to accept him as a transcendent 21st-century phenomenon without picking at his Japanese heritage. First it was ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith, the highest-paid talking head in sportscasting history whose name isn’t Tony Romo, lamenting that Ohtani doesn’t conduct interviews in English. “When you talk about an audience gravitating to the tube or to the ballpark to actually watch you, I don’t think it helps that the number one face is a dude that needs an interpreter so you can understand what the hell he’s saying,’’ said Smith, a 53-year-old Black man, who quickly apologized but never will be able to apologize enough.
Now, it’s Hall of Fame pitcher Jack Morris, a 66-year-old White man, who set back booth analysis about five decades with an unconscionable racist slur. Asked by Bally Sports Detroit play-by-play caller Matt Shepard how the Tigers should pitch to Ohtani, he replied with an offensive interpretation of an Asian accent. “Be very, very careful,’’ said Morris, whose forced apology was just as pathetic — “I did not intend for any offensive thing …” — before he was suspended indefinitely by his employer.
Why can’t everyone just sit back and appreciate ‘Sho Time’ for what it is — the one spectacle in sports where we drop everything, make time stop and stare at the screen? What’s with the pained caricatured accent and the insensitive complaints about an interpreter? Here’s a joyful guy, all of 27, who is advancing his sport with implausible ease. He’s routinely double-dipping in the same game, as he did on Jack Morris Night by augmenting eight one-run innings on the mound with a homer in a 3-1 victory. Yet here in America, we can’t celebrate him without a prominent figure dragging him into the gutter with old-man prejudice, if also a hint of the anti-Asian hatred that poisons daily life in this country.
Much as we love the Ohtani experience, we should be even more thankful that he reacts to moronic sound bites with class. Just as he shook off the Stephen A. insult, he wasn’t publicly fazed by Morris’ stunt. “I didn’t take anything personally and I have no say to what the Tigers wanted to do or what they did,” he said through, yes, his interpreter. “He’s a Hall of Famer, he has a big influence in the baseball world. It’s kind of a tough spot.” He was more bothered by the fact he didn’t pitch a complete game.
“I’m never satisfied,’’ he said, “when I don’t go the distance.’’
It’s assumed that Tom Brady, who crashed through a global pandemic at 43 to win a Super Bowl with the Tampa Bay Bucaneers, will be remembered as Sportsman of the Year. But Ohtani’s evolutionary triumph has been so relentlessly overwhelming, he might one-up Brady in the memory bank if he finishes with, say, 55 homers and a 12-1 record. To think he could generate those numbers with a staggering workload — he’s on pace for 25 starts and 600-plus plate appearances — is preposterous. No one, in the history of the sport, has been such a commanding, game-changing threat with his bat AND arm. And he has reached monumental heights after overcoming a series of injuries, including Tommy John surgery, that made him question his two-way commitment. In every way, this is a story for the ages.
“The best baseball player on this planet … ever,’’ said C.C. Sabathia, the future Hall of Fame pitcher.
We’ve yet to hear any of the greats disagree. They grasp the absurdity of it all, the superhuman concept of mastering two disciplines when excelling in one is difficult enough. Such is the blessing of Shohei Ohtani. In a season smothered in darkness — an impending labor impasse, Trevor Bauer’s sick legal case, slower-than-ever games, a sticky-stuff substance scandal, too many injuries and, of course, COVID-19 outbreaks — we haven’t turned away from baseball.
That’s because ‘Sho Time’ is still with us every day, overcoming all the gloom, including the ugly voices who won’t let him be.
Jay Mariotti, called “the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes sports columns for Substack and a Wednesday media column for Barrett Sports Media while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts in production today. He’s an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and radio talk host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects. Compensation for this column is donated to the Chicago Sun-Times Charity Trust.