TORONTO — One game, and everything changed.
One game in which he struck out 10 batters and smashed three homers, and the atmosphere was entirely different.
There was nothing unusual about the scene at World Series media day Thursday from the wall of people in front of Shohei Ohtani to the microphones dangled over his head by television reporters stuck in the back of the herd.
Here’s what had changed in the last week: Ohtani wasn’t fielding any more inquiries about how pitching could negatively affect his hitting.
Rather than serve as an inquisition of Ohtani as a two-way player, this World Series against the Toronto Blue Jays is shaping into a celebration of the most singular act in modern baseball.
The questions over him playing both ways have subsided, if not disappeared entirely, which speaks to how much Ohtani looked as if he were back in Little League in Game 4 of the National League Championship Series as he dominated the Milwaukee Brewers from the mound and bludgeoned them from the batter’s box.
Ohtani shut up his skeptics.
At some point in the future, however, the suspicions will return. They always do, and that’s why it’s important to remember Ohtani’s NLCS performance.
Remember what it was like to see him make baseballs vanish into the October night the next time there are whispers about how the Dodgers might be better off with Ohtani focusing entirely on hitting. Remember what it was like to see him overpower the Brewers with his fastball and sweeper when questions start about him being too old to withstand the workload of a two-way player.
Games like the one Ohtani played against the Brewers are what makes sports worth watching. An athlete pushing the boundaries of what’s humanly possible are what make games interesting.
So enough with this nonsense about what he might not be able to do. Imagine what he can do, and let the dreamer continue to dream.
Baseball needs this. Ohtani wants this.
Ohtani said earlier this postseason about wanting to remain a two-way player: “No. 1 is that I think I can do it. That’s my personal color, and I think that’s my strength. If I can be a plus for the team as both (a pitcher and hitter), I think that’s a role only I can fulfill, and I think doing that is my job.”
Shohei Ohtani is applauded by teammates after being awarded NLCS MVP.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
The concerns about Ohtani pitching didn’t materialize out of nothing. He was, in fact, a worse hitter on days he pitched and on days after he pitched.
In this particular situation, the Dodgers couldn’t afford to drop him from their postseason rotation. There was a significant dropoff from Ohtani to the next starter, whether it was Clayton Kershaw or Emmet Sheehan.
But the probing of Ohtani’s diminished offensive production early in the postseason carried a subtext with which the three-time most valuable player was intimately familiar: Should he even be playing both ways?
The question has followed Ohtani throughout his career.
When Ohtani signed with the Nippon-Ham Fighters, the Japanese baseball establishment accused him of being disrespectful for thinking he could pitch and hit as he did when he was an amateur. When he was preparing to move to the major leagues, the assumption in the United States and Japan was that he would eventually have to pick between pitching and hitting. When Ohtani was returning from his first Tommy John elbow reconstruction, even some of his most fervent backers wondered if he should give up pitching.
In his early days with the Angels, Ohtani didn’t play the days before and after his starts. He didn’t hit in games in which he pitched. So when the Angels informed him that he would be in the lineup every day at the start of the 2021 season, Ohtani assumed they were trying to force him to become either a full-time hitter or full-time pitcher.
In each instance, Ohtani responded by doing something spectacular. The 10-strikeout, three-homer game was the latest example of that.
“I don’t think anybody’s going to do that again,” Kershaw said, “unless it’s him.”
Unless it’s him.
So why impede him?
Ohtani is 31. In the next year or two, there will once again be questions about whether he should remain a two-way player, or perhaps whether he should scale down his workload. Maybe Ohtani will agree. But if he doesn’t, remember this: His performance against the Brewers was possible not because he listened to conventional wisdom. It was possible because he defied it.
Now, he will have a chance to extend the boundaries of reality once more, to do what was once believed to be impossible on the sport’s greatest stage.
