78 Time April 25/May 2, 2022
Nippon-Ham Fighters persuaded him to remain in Japan for the years
he’d have to spend in the minors. Among the enticements: the Fight-
ers would let him both pitch and hit.
“I feel like it brings out my unique rhythm,” Ohtani says. Had he
opted to head to the U.S. from high school, “I would have probably been
a pitcher, because most of the teams valued me as a pitcher.” Instead he
spent five years as Japan’s marquee player, then signed with the Angels.
The trajectory appeared set. Ohtani singled in his first at bat, won his
first start on the mound, and was voted 2018 Rookie of the Year. But
then he had elbow surgery; he was off the mound in 2019, and he felt
“pathetic” at the plate. The next season was shortened by the pandemic.
All the while, “the Ohtani rules”—restrictions imposed by the Angels’
then management, which barred him from the lineup on days before or
after he pitched, to rest his body—limited his production.
Those rules were discarded for 2021. It was a bold move in an era
when “load management” is all the rage: managers yanking pitchers
early in games for fear of taxing their arms; basket-
ball teams sitting stars for entire games to preserve
them for the playoffs. But Maddon and Perry Mi-
nasian, the new general manager at the time, say no
one knows better than Ohtani what he’s capable of.
“There’s some guys that have a natural-born
instinct for what they do,” says Maddon. “You get
to pitch as many innings as you want to, throw as
many pitches as you need to. And when you need
a day off, tell me. I’m not going to tell you.”
“I tease him about how programmed he is: ‘I eat
at this time. I stretch at this time,’” says Minasian.
“That’s not just during the season. I think he un-
derstands his work ethic. He’s really, really intel-
ligent, picks things up quick, can make changes.
His awareness is a different level.”
Ohtani was not only gratified to be able to re-
sume the cadence that had become natural to him.
Hitting even on days he pitches “helps mentally
too,” he notes. “Sometimes I cannot hit or pitch
well, but the next day I have an opportunity to
make it up as a hitter, which is a good thing.” Base-
ball even instituted a new rule this season, effec-
tively designed to keep Ohtani on the field as long
as possible. When starting pitchers who bat for
themselves—with the institution of the universal
designated hitter this year, that’s basically Ohtani—are taken out of a
game, they can stay in the lineup as the DH.
Ohtani owns a five-pitch arsenal—four-seam fastball, curve, cut-
ter, slider, and a split-fingered fastball. Batters hit a minuscule .087
against the splitter. At the plate, Ohtani’s blasts are preposterous:
24 of his home runs left his bat at speeds of at least 110 m.p.h., tops
in the big leagues. His feats are so impressive that at a game, almost
everyone wants to see him play—even supporters of the opposing
team. When he came up to pinch-hit in San Francisco last May, Gi-
ants fans booed when he was walked. “I had never seen anything like
that,” says his friend and interpreter Ippei Mizuhara. At the All-Star
Game in Denver, Peyton Manning, Ken Griffey Jr., and David Ortiz
wanted their pictures taken with him. “In sports, we’ve seen a lot of
things,” Arizona Cardinals star defensive lineman J.J. Watt, who in
March watched Ohtani at spring training, tells TIME. “One of the
things that me, personally, and I think this generation, hasn’t seen isSPORTS
much as anything: we’re not talked about as a na-
tional pastime anymore,” Maddon says. “Players
can change that. But you have to permit them to be
charismatic. You have to permit them to be great.”
That’s what the Angels did with Ohtani last
year. He responded by recording 156 strikeouts
on the mound and driving in 100 runs (the 100th
was that 46th homer). He hit eight triples, tied
for best in baseball, and swiped those 26 bases.
No one had ever done all these things in one
season. And Ohtani did them with a quality—a
lightness—that belies his size (6 ft. 4 in., 210 lb.)
while reminding one and all that what’s being
played here is, after all, a game.
“I don’t feel pressure that much,” Ohtani says
of the season ahead. “I feel more excited.”
Ohtani was bOrn and raised in Oshu, a small
city in northern Japan where both his parents
played on sports teams—dad, baseball; mom,
badminton —sponsored by the local Mitsubishi
plant, where his father worked. His father also
coached baseball. “I only played on weekends, and
I really looked forward to weekends,” Ohtani says,
recalling his dismay when teammates took a loss
hard. “I didn’t understand why they were crying,
because I was just having fun. I remember that
clearly... I was not practicing hard enough nor
serious enough to feel upset about losing.”
That would change. By age 18, Ohtani’s fast-
ball had been clocked at 99 m.p.h. and he was
growing into the body of a power hitter like
Hideki Matsui, the star New York Yankees out-
fielder whom he grew up watching. Japan’s top
prospect in 2012, Ohtani was intent on accepting
an offer from a U.S. team when the Hokkaido