It’s the final week of the Los Angeles Dodgers’ regular season. The San Diego Padres are in town and a win tonight at Dodger Stadium over their Interstate 5 rivals would secure their 11th NL West division title in 12 years. There’s an excited buzz in the halls, even now, hours before the gates open to the public. The clubhouse is palpably tense: at the end of a season plagued by injuries, the opportunity to earn a first-round bye and bypass the wild-card round could prove invaluable to their ultimate goal of a World Series title. A tall, floppy-haired man enters the room, noticeably more tranquil than anyone around him, armed with a soft smile and a steaming cup of tea, and plops down at his locker. He is almost staggeringly unbothered. One would never guess that he’s a history-making global phenomenon, primed to embark on his first ever trip to the postseason since joining Major League Baseball six years ago with the crosstown Angels. But Shohei Ohtani is not your average superstar.
At this point the 30-year-old’s dumbfounding statistical achievements speak for themselves, hard as they are to comprehend. Even in a season when his unprecedented two-way skillset was forced to take a backseat with his rehab from a second major elbow surgery keeping him off the pitcher’s mound, Ohtani found a whole new way to rewrite baseball’s record books. Only days ago he became the first player in major league history to rack up 50 home runs and 50 stolen bases in a single campaign. By week’s end, he will have finished the regular season having topped the National League in homers (54) and runs batted in (130) with a batting average (.310) second only to San Diego’s Luis Arráez (.314), falling a few percentage points short of becoming the NL’s first Triple Crown winner since Joe Medwick of the St Louis Cardinals in 1937. The eye-watering numbers don’t stop there: 134 runs scored, 411 total bases, a .646 slugging percentage and an OPS over 1.000.
Ohtani’s first season of a record-shattering $700m, 10-year contract with the Dodgers has, somehow, been worth every penny as he led the team to the best record in the majors despite a slew of injuries. But to hear those closest to him tell it, it’s Ohtani’s demeanor outside the lines and in the clubhouse that further sets him apart.
