Culture Society, Identity and Belonging
On Wednesday night Shohei Ohtani hit his first home run of the new Major League Baseball (MLB) season in Los Angeles. Nothing unusual about that: home runs are Ohtani’s highly lucrative business, or at least part of it. He hit an astonishing 44 of them last season for his old club, the LA Angels, before signing a record-breaking deal – an eye-watering $700 million over ten years – with the LA Dodgers. Ohtani is the first baseball batter in a century to be able to pitch at superstar level too, and the 29-year-old has become the handsome face of what used to be called America’s pastime, both in the US and his native Japan, where his spectacular career began. All of which may explain why his entanglement in a betting scandal involving his interpreter has been pursued so gingerly.