Ohtani’s hits and runs propel him into baseball history

For $1.46 million you can get a four-bed home in Echo Park within walking distance of the Los Angeles Dodgers stadium. Or for the same price you can get one standard-grade baseball hit by the team’s phenomenon, Shohei Ohtani. That’s the current winning bid for the ball that Ohtani leathered into the stands to become the first player in baseball history to hit 50 home runs and steal 50 bases in a season. This feat came a few days ago in an astonishing performance that the Washington Post called the single greatest day in the history of baseball, and GQ called the best day any athlete has ever had. On Saturday the Dodgers start their postseason as favourites to win the World Series. That’s down to Ohtani, who is on course to be a generational star akin to Tiger Woods, Serena Williams, Michael Jordan and Babe Ruth. Back in Japan, Ohtani is known as kanpeki no hito – the ‘perfect person’.

When Ohtani signed a $700 million contract with the Dodgers last November, some doubted whether he could ever justify that price tag. Few have doubts now.

The ultimate all-rounder. There’s a reason it’s taken 121 years of major league baseball for someone to enter the “50-50 club”: normally players are either strong enough to hit the ball 450 feet or agile enough to fly between bases. Ohtani is both. He ended the regular season with 54 home runs and 59 stolen bases; he also led the league in runs scored and runs batted in.

Oh and… he’s one of baseball’s best pitchers with a fastball that exceeds 100 mph.

It’s just not cricket. Ian Botham and Freddie Flintoff aren’t the right comparisons, because a batter-pitcher in baseball is considerably rarer than a batter-bowler in cricket. It’s more as if Lionel Messi, football’s best ever forward, was also an amazing goalkeeper.

Nate Silver, who was a baseball nerd before he was a political forecaster, told Tortoise that “if baseball lasted for another 1,000 years, I’m not sure we’d ever see something like this again”.

Better than Babe? Ohtani has only played seven major league seasons so he has yet to match Babe Ruth, another freakish all rounder, over an entire career. But as of July 2023, even before Ohtani’s mega-season, their numbers were pretty much identical. Silver pointed out that Ruth, unlike Ohtani, played in an era before Black, Latin or Japanese players.

History in real time. All this helps explain not only why Ohtani’s 50-50 baseball is up for auction for nearly $1.8 million, but also why the seller is facing two lawsuits from fans who claim it’s rightfully theirs – including one who was celebrating his 18th birthday at the game.

However his lawsuit turns out, the fan will probably remember that day on his 50th. Ohtani, whose surname means “grand valley”, is operating on a higher plane than the rest of us.