Sports Illustrated - USA (2020 - Spring)

SPORTS ILLUSTRATED

18

BY TOM VERDUCCI

has seen in a hundred years, granting

his first one-on-one interview since

arriving in the U.S. in December 2017.

Shohei Ohtani, 25, is 6' 4" with a

broad-shouldered, narrow-waisted,

long-limbed physique that hints at

the competitive swimmer he was in

childhood. “But every time baseball

was the most fun,” he says through

his interpreter, Ippei Mizuhara. “So

I fell in love with it.”

Two-plus years after he left Japan

to sign a six-year, league-minimum

contract with the Angels—foregoing

at least $200 million more if he had

waited until this season—Ohtani re-

mains deeply, madly, monogamously

in love with baseball.

“I heard a lot of people say he’s pretty

much just ‘baseball, sleep, baseball.’

They were not wrong,” says the Angels’

star centerfielder, Mike Trout. “He’s

pretty big on writing things down,

taking notes, trying to get better each

and every day. He’s taking care of the

little things. He wants to be perfect.”

“In whatever situation a person finds

himself, he should not abandon his

favorite ways and his special abili-

ties.... A hero should go his own way.”

—Sakamoto Ryo ̄ ma, 19th-century

samurai

ANGEL STADIUM

in Anaheim has been turned into a

grown-up’s playpen. Four thousand

tons of dirt cover the baseball field,

sculpted into giant peaks resembling

a scaled-down version of the San

Gabriel Mountains, in preparation

for a February monster truck show.

Workers on break operate remote-

control versions of the real monsters,

soaring, somersaulting and swarming

the cordillera with comic imprecision.

To see the faces of the controllers is

to understand why the lever in their

hand is called a joystick.

In the luxury suite of Angels owner

Arte Moreno in an otherwise empty

stadium, above it all, is the greatest

two-way baseball player the planet

There is a childlike wonder within

Ohtani, most especially because he

plays major league baseball like a Little

Leaguer: He is a pitcher and he is a

hitter. In volume and skills he does

both like nobody since Babe Ruth.

Last season Ohtani hit the ball

harder than all but four major leagu-

ers (92.8 mph exit velocity). He runs

to first base faster than all but five

(4.05 seconds). In ’18 he threw his

four-seamer harder than all but

three (96.7 mph). Put another way,

Ohtani hits the ball harder than Bryce

Harper, runs to first faster than Trea

Turner and throws harder than Gerrit

Cole. After 210 games hitting and 10

pitching he is, statistically, a com-

bination of Trout and Nationals ace

Stephen Strasburg at those junctures.

“He is a generational talent,” says

a general manager who tried to sign

Ohtani out of high school. “You’re

going to look back 30 or 40 years

from now and say, ‘There was only

one Shohei Ohtani.’ ”

This season Los Angeles plans for

41 / 2 months of full-on Sho Time. He

should begin the season at designated

hitter and join the rotation in mid-May.

Even with two of the four highest-paid

players in history on an average an-

nual basis (Trout and newly signed

third baseman Anthony Rendon),

MLB’s premier defensive shortstop

(Andrelton Simmons) and a new,

curse-busting manager (Joe Maddon),

the Angels need Ohtani to excel at both

disciplines if they hope to win their

first playoff game since ’09. In a best-

case scenario, that would mean about

20 starts and 400 plate appearances, a

workload not even Ruth reached before

he quit two-way duty because it was

too hard on his body.

LABORS OF LOVE

Ohtani returns to two-way duty

despite surgeries on his right

ankle, left knee and right elbow.

The Angels hope for 400 plate

appearances and 20 starts.

PRE

VIO

US

SPR

EA

D: (^) J
AYN
E (^) K
AM
IN-
ON
CEA
/GE
TTY
(^) IM
AGE
S (^) (
PIT
CH
ING
), (^) M
AS
TER
PRE
SS/
GE
TTY
(^) IM
AGE
S (^) (B
ATT
ING
); (^) K
OH
JIR
O (^) K
INN
O (^) (
RIG
HT
)
BECAUSE...
THE GREATEST
SHO ON EARTH
HAS RETURNED
TO TOWN