The definition of an anomaly is something that deviates from the standard. In life, we sometimes see humans who reach heights that may seem inhumane to others. Shohei Ohtani is just another example of this.
Ohtani has been nothing short of legendary ever since coming over to the United States and playing in the MLB for the Los Angeles Angels. The 6-foot-4 phenom had already beaten the odds when he made his major league debut on March 29, 2018, as he became just the 57th Japanese-born player ever to play in the league. However, he did it in an amazing fashion as he was baseball’s first prolific two-way player — a player who has the ability to start games as a pitcher while also being utilized as a full-time hitter by the team — since the 1900s. He would also go on to win the American League Rookie of the Year award after hitting 22 home runs and striking out 63 batters in 51 innings.
That alone right there was incredible in itself.
In the year 2018 — a time when baseball had advanced so much that many hitters and pitchers have devoted much time to their craft and evolved by using new technology and advanced analytics — Ohtani showed his unique talent and skill level by hitting 22 home runs off professional pitchers while also stepping onto the mound as a starting pitcher and striking out other professional hitters at an elite rate.
However, three years later in 2021, he made his incredible 2018 rookie season look ordinary.
Ohtani reached astronomical heights on the field in 2021 after hitting a career-high 46 home runs, which was the third-highest in the majors. He also chipped in 100 RBI and 26 stolen bases. And as a pitcher, he won 9 games for the Angels while collecting 156 strikeouts to go with an above-average 3.18 ERA. He also became the first player ever to be selected into the all-star game as both a pitcher and a hitter. If it wasn’t already obvious, Ohtani took home the American League Most Valuable Player of the Year in 2021.
Jeff Fletcher, an author and award-winning baseball writer who covered the San Francisco Giants and Oakland Athletics for most of the 2000s, has covered the Angels for the Orange County Register since 2013. He has covered and seen the likes of Barry Bonds, Mike Trout, and Albert Pujols on a daily basis.
However, in 2018 Fletcher started to cover and watch Ohtani play for the Angels.
“You know, I definitely don’t take it for granted,” Fletcher said. “These are just not people that come around all that often, so it’s pretty special.”
Fletcher became so interested in Ohtani when he came over to the Angels that he decided to start writing a book about him that same year in 2018, but the book “Sho-Time: The Inside Story of Shohei Ohtani and the Greatest Baseball Season Ever Played” wouldn’t be released until July of 2022 due to the struggles Ohtani faces before his big breakout year in 2021.
“I want people to see what the whole journey was because I think a lot of people just heard Otani was a big star, but his first few years in the league it didn’t really all work,” Fletcher explained. “It wasn’t until 2021 that we got to finally see this full-formed superhero that we imagined.”
That is a huge factor in the Ohtani MLB story — the resilience he showed in 2021 after a myriad of struggles following his rookie campaign — that could speak to a lot of people in general, but especially Asians who might feel they don’t have a path to be successful in the United States due to preconceived notions or stereotypes.
Additionally, Asians have been the targets of hate and crime here in the United States ever since the COVID-19 pandemic began. According to a report by Stop AAPI Hate, between March 2020 and March 2022, more than 11,400 hate incidents against Asian Americans have been reported across the United States.
The other factor that makes Ohtani unique is the fact that he is an Asian player dominating a professional sport in America. Asians rarely see themselves represented in professional sports in the United States. According to a 2022 report by The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport Asians accounted for 0.2% of players in the NBA, 0.1% of players in the NFL, and just under 2% of players in the MLB. For this reason, a lot of Asian children might not feel they have a path to make into their desired sport, but Ohtani is living proof that this is not the case.
For Ethan Phan, freelance photographer and co-founder of the clothing brand Rêvasser, Ohtani has been someone who has inspired him through the continuous work ethic he has displayed in his rare public appearances.
“You can tell how much he cares about his craft just by watching,” Phan said. “It’s been beautiful to see his rise to stardom, especially because I feel like I can relate to him.”
Before the 2021 season, Phan claimed he hadn’t attended a baseball game in over 10 years. However, seeing a fellow Asian make leaps into superstardom in a sport drew Phan into the sport as he had never been before.
“I went to over twenty games last season and made it a point to attend whenever Ohtani was the starting pitcher in Anaheim,” Phan claimed. “I even started to go on Reddit regularly to read up on what the Angels fans were discussing. Ohtani reignited my interested interest in baseball in a way I didn’t think was possible at this point in my life.”
From World War II to 2018, before Ohtani made his MLB debut, only two players had reached 10 games pitched and 200 batting plate appearances in a single season: René Monteagudo of the Philadelphia Phillies in 1945 and Willie Smith of the Los Angeles Angels in 1964. While that was impressive for both of those gentlemen, Ohtani hit the same number of home runs in a single season in 2021, 46, as Smith and Monteguado hit combined for their entire careers.
While Ohtani was playing professional baseball in Japan, he was known as “The Babe Ruth of Japan” as Ruth is notoriously remembered as the original two-way player in baseball. However, what Ohtani is currently doing has been argued to be more impressive than what Ruth did in his career.
“He’s doing this at a time when players are much more talented,” Fletcher shared. “Relief pitchers sometimes come late into the game and will hit triple digits on the radar gun or have nasty movement on their pitches… that wasn’t happening back in the days when Babe Ruth played.”
Fletcher also shared that Ohtani is doing the two-way playstyle at a time when baseball has advanced to new heights as players have found new ways to develop their games through the use of advanced analytics and technology. Ruth did it back at a time when the game was still relatively young and the talent level across MLB players would be night and day compared to players in the league now. Additionally, Ruth was playing at a time when Blacks, Latinos, and Asians were not allowed to play in the MLB as the league had not been integrated yet.
In addition to his play on the field, Ohtani is becoming a star on social media. Before the 2023 World Baseball Classic started on March 7, Ohtani had 1.5 million followers on Instagram. Then, a month later in April after the conclusion of the WBC, Ohtani reached over 5 million followers after his electric play. This meteoric rise made him the first MLB player to eclipse 3 million followers on Instagram despite creating his account in 2020.
This was a notable feat because baseball, especially in recent years, has been a sport that hasn’t reached the younger demographic like it once did. According to a 2017 survey by the Sports Business Journal, MLB had the oldest fan base amongst American professional sports at 57.
And while his social media presence, generational skillset, and eye-opening statistics are tangible and speak to the diehard baseball fans of how impactful he is for the game of baseball, Ohtani means so much more to the Asian community around the world. He symbolizes hope for the people, but especially the athletes, who continue to feel marginalized in professional sports in the United States.
Dr. Rev. Mustumi Wondra, who was born in Japan, is a resident minister of the Orange County Buddhist Church in Anaheim, which is very close to Angel Stadium where Ohtani takes the field. She isn’t interested in baseball at all, but in 2021 during Ohtani’s breakout year, she became inspired to create and deliver a dharma message called “Shohei Mandal” to the children at her Dharma school. In the message, she talked about the work ethic and explained the particular method Ohtani applied to himself in high school in order to become the best baseball player he could be, with the additional goal of being picked first overall in the Nippon Professional Baseball league in Japan, which he would also accomplish. The name of this method is called the Harada method, a personal-growth technique created by Takashi Harada, a former middle-school teacher in Japan.
One of the habits that Ohtani tried to instill during his teenage years was cleanliness, which he still displays to this day at Angel Stadium whenever he sees trash on the ground. Wondra noticed this and instantly became interested in creating a dharma message devoted to Ohtani.
“I was on YouTube and I clicked on a video showing Ohtani in the dugout and it showed him picking up trash from the field at Angel Stadium,” Wondra said. “I was very touched, he wants to work not only on himself but his inner core self and I felt that was very connected to Buddhism as well.”
In addition to being a Buddhist, Wondra is also from Japan and notices the impact that Ohtani has made within the Asian community during his five years with the Angels. One attribute that Wondra feels plays a role in this from Ohtani is the humility he displays despite being one of the best players the game of baseball has seen in over a century.
“He never acts like ‘I’m great, I am the one who won us this game,’” Wondra said. “He always appreciates his teammates, and his coaches and I feel that his spirit is something that draws people to him.”
On top of being a transcendent baseball player, a beacon of hope for the Asian community, and a humble human being to the public, Ohtani is also a huge financial boost for the Angels and the city of Anaheim.
Debra Gunn Downing, executive director of marketing for South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa, originally claimed in an LA Times article that the shopping mall felt the “Ohtani effect” with Japanese tourists during his rookie year in 2018. However, despite it now being five years later 2023, the spectacle of Ohtani hasn’t faded away.
“We still see a rise in the number of Japanese tourists when baseball starts in April and periodically throughout the summer,” Downing said. “It’s incredible to think how impactful and influential one player from a different country can be to their people.”
Impactful and influential is very accurate, but there might not be any words that can measure the impact Ohtani has made in the last five years for Asians. One athlete that peaked at the level Ohtani currently is to the casual fan in a major sport was former Chinese NBA point guard, Jeremy Lin.
During the 2011-2012 NBA season, in the months of March and April in particular, Lin would become one of the most popular players after going on a scoring that included dropping 38 points and getting eh victory against the Los Angeles Lakers and Kobe Bryant. Fans would even start to call the former Chinese point guard “Linsanity.”
However, now that it has been a decade since that run, Lin shared that during his run he had to deal with stereotypes and people ready to take him down at any time due o the fact that there is a lack of representation in American sports.
Ohtani has also had to deal with being the target of rude comments as well. In 2021, during the All-Star week when he was getting ready to become the first player in history to both start the All-Star game as a pitcher and bat leadoff, ESPN personality Stephen A. Smith came out on his show First Take and claimed that Ohtani could not be the face of baseball due to the fact that he needed to use a translator to communicate with the media. However, the majority of baseball fans disagreed with Smith and he would later go back on his comments and apologize to Ohtani later that same day.
Ohtani is an example of the potential Asians can have when the work is put in, but also when the opportunity is given. He’s carried himself well and prioritizes his work ethic.
He may very well be the most talented player to ever step on a baseball field. However, due to the fact that Asian hate in the United States has recently risen over the past few years across the country, he also might be one of the most important Asian athletes in American sports history.