Toscanini had La Scala. Gielgud had Hamlet. Jordan had the NBA Finals. True greatness seeks the highest ground, the steepest of challenges to scale, to be fully revealed. Seven years into his MLB career, Shohei Ohtani is nearing the summit.
He is the most talented player to ever play the game of baseball—far too soon to say the greatest, but the possessor of the most elite combination of batting, running and pitching skills ever witnessed. He spent his first six seasons with the Los Angeles Angels playing on nothing but losing teams and never playing in a meaningful game of playoff implications.
What he might ever do under the pressure of consequence was, given his talent, always more of a rhetorical question than a slight. But now we have an answer forming.
Across the first meaningful September and October of his MLB career, Ohtani is batting .355 and slugging .702.
He and the Los Angeles Dodgers are one win away from the World Series, having blown out the New York Mets again, 10–2, Thursday in yet another one-sided NLCS game. This one began as do most big nights for the Dodgers: with Ohtani smashing a baseball with frightening power. He crushed the second pitch from Mets starter José Quintana for a home run at 117.8 mph, the hardest hit homer of this postseason and the third hardest hit home run in the past 17 postseasons. He has hit more home runs at least 115 mph this year (nine) than the rest of the National League combined.
SHO 'EM, 17! pic.twitter.com/0Zv1q3FQ61
— Los Angeles Dodgers (@Dodgers) October 18, 2024
After such a scary sight, the Mets walked him three straight times. He turned every one of those walks into a run, including once scoring from first base easily on a double to left field. He has reached base 11 times in the four NLCS games and scored on seven of those trips. He is the single greatest disruptive force in this postseason.
What more is there to say about Ohtani other than to wait to see what he will tell us next about his greatness?
“This is what I think is most impressive of all about Sho,” says teammate Max Muncy, who became the first player in postseason history to reach base 12 straight plate appearances in a single series. “Everyone expects him to do something amazing. And he just keeps doing it. There are a lot of great players across all sports. And baseball is a hard game. The greatest fail, too.
“But it just seems with Sho that we have come to expect greatness from him, and he comes through just about all the time. It’s amazing to watch and we never get used to it.”
In a winning environment, a new Ohtani is emerging: a fist-pumping, bat-flipping, dugout-pointing, top-of-the-lung screaming Ohtani.
“I love it,” Muncy says. “What he is doing is great for the game. It’s the best thing to happen to baseball. The best player is showing emotion. The game really needs that. It really does. You want the best players on the biggest stage. And then it’s just not enough to hit a home run and trot around the bases real calmly. He is calling so much attention to the game.”
Ohtani treats a box score like a Bingo card. He fills it up. His NLCS Game 4 card covered squares for a home run, three walks and four runs. Only one player in postseason history ever completed such a day: Eddie Murray in 1983 ALCS Game 3.
“Simply put, I'm grateful to be in this environment, to be able to play in this playoff environment,” Ohtani said. “Having experienced playing in an away environment, it's been fun being able to experience the passion of the fans. And I hope that I'll be able to perform well tomorrow.”
In 1969, in celebration of the game’s 100th anniversary of organized ball, MLB conducted a poll of writers and broadcasters to name an all-time team and its greatest living player. The results were revealed at the All-Star Game in Washington, D.C., with the astronaut Frank Borman and the writer George Plimpton attending the boffo press event, which happened the day after Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon. Joe DiMaggio was voted the game’s greatest living player, though you could easily have made a case for Willie Mays, an active player at the time.
DiMaggio wore that honor so proudly and so long—he died 30 years later—that it became as indelible as a royal title. Mays, without ceremony, wore the title for the next quarter of a century before he passed away four months ago. Now the title of greatest living player is there for the taking. When you remove those who obtained their greatness inauthentically with PEDs, and you measure it by pure skill set more than a clinical statistical project, it goes to Ohtani.
How fitting that his Bingo game of baseball fell on Oct. 17 here in the states. The 17th of every month in Oshu City, Japan, his hometown, is Ohtani Day, a date selected in honor of his uniform number. Government officials, shopkeepers, everyday townsfolk and especially the official Ohtani oendan, or cheering squad, don their Ohtani No. 17 jerseys in support of their national treasure. Some stop by city hall to shake the gold replica cast of his right hand.
Last week, nearly 13 million people in Japan watched Ohtani in NLDS Game 5, which featured a pitching matchup between Yu Darvish of the Padres and Yoshinobu Yamamoto of the Dodgers. At 9 a.m. in Japan, the game outrated every World Series game last year in America in prime time. The global viewership for NLDS Game 5 exceeded 20 million.
In this NLCS, Ohtani is slashing .286/.524/.714. The Mets have no answer for him. Manager Carlos Mendoza will try David Peterson at the start in Game 5, but Ohtani already has a 116-mph, run-scoring hit off the New York lefty in this series.
On one hand, the Mets can’t allow Ohtani to get Los Angeles off to a lead. The average MLB team wins 69% of the time it scores first. The Dodgers win 82% of the time when they score first (73–16), the best record in baseball. But if you pitch around Ohtani, Mookie Betts is right there behind him to make you pay. Betts followed all three of Ohtani’s walks in Game 4 with a hit.
LIKE WE SAID, 50'S FEELING GOOD. pic.twitter.com/T1C2qvws7Y
— Los Angeles Dodgers (@Dodgers) October 18, 2024
Lather, rinse, repeat. What the Dodgers do with offensive baseball could fit inside the succinct instructions on a shampoo bottle. They are making a mockery of tension in the NLCS.
The numbers are staggering in their brutality. Thirty runs and 31 walks in four games. Three wins by eight runs in the NLCS, matching the 1960 New York Yankees in the World Series as the only teams to roll to three such blowouts in a series. Four wins by eight runs in this postseason, joining the 2007 Boston Red Sox as the only teams with so many routs. It all begins with the greatness of Ohtani.
Seven years into his NBA career—the same juncture where Ohtani is at in his MLB career—Michael Jordan finally made it to the NBA Finals. He averaged a double-double (31.2 points and 11.4 assists) while shooting 56% from the floor and adding 6.6 rebounds and 2.8 steals against the Los Angeles Lakers of Magic Johnson. Like Ohtani, Jordan stood out by playing Bingo against the best players in the world.
Likewise, Arturo Toscanini made his presence known when he came to La Scala. Until then, tradition held that lights remained on during a performance, the better to facilitate socializing. Toscanini, a fiery perfectionist, began the new tradition of dimming the house lights so that all the focus fell entirely on the performers. He ordered women to remove their hats so that all patrons had an unobstructed view of the stage. He banned latecomers from entering the music hall. He changed conducting and music performance.
“Every great artist,” Toscanini once said, “is a rebel at heart.”
That, too, is Ohtani. He is a true gentleman who picks up gum wrappers in the dugout because he is so fastidious. “Watch him when he starts the game,” Muncy says. “He bows to the umpire. When he is around older Japanese players, he bows deeply. He did that to Darvish. He is the most respectful person you will find who never does anything directed at the other team.”
But in spikes, Ohtani is the gentlemanly disruptor. He worries managers and scares pitchers. He is a rebel at heart, showing a level to his game we never had seen before because of what is at stake. Ohtani is one win away from the World Series. Dim the house lights, and ladies, remove your hats. The moment is almost here: the greatest player on the greatest stage.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Shohei Ohtani Is Reveling in Excellence on Baseball’s Biggest Stage.
