With a matinee-idol good looks to boot. Oh, and a millionaire who will soon become a billionaire. Life maybe unfair but I'm happy that I get to witness this one of a kind super star play in real time⚾🌟🦄
hate comments like this. I’m sure from a physical standpoint there’s plenty of dudes out there of his size don’t mean anything unless your driven to excel in your field though 🤷♂️
watching ohtani...always takes me back to little league baseball...when i was able to pitch & hit in the same game...ohtani is still playing little league...in a grown-up uniform...for the love of the game
I'm french so I know nothing about baseball. But I was recently in Japan and on every news channel, when the sport segment started, it was ALWAYS him the first topic. Made me look into his highlights when I went back home. Looks like he's a homerun machine.
Im for 45 years old and been watching baseball since i was 7. I have to say Shohei ohtani is definitely one of the best player in the leagues that I have whiteness and that's one thing that we all can unanimously agree on. I think it's special to see someone like that come along. Definitely a legend in the making so it's something to really appreciate while he's still here cuz it's something we haven't seen at all like him and probably be another 100 years until we see something like that again. He definitely will be talked about through every next generations.
I hope the Angels and Joe Maddon will be remembered as the team and the manager who helped Shohei establish himself in MLB. It would've been easy for the Angels and Joe to try to convince Shohei to stick with his hitting after his first 3 seasons in MLB in which he underperformed as a pitcher, albeit injuries and a TJ surgery. I remember many people doubted - some even outright gave up on - Shohei's future as a pitcher then. Thank god the Angels and Joe remained patient and kept their faith in Shohei. I highly doubt the outcome would've been the same if Shohei had signed with other teams, especially high-profile big market teams such as the Yankees, Mets, Red Sox, Astros, Dodgers, etc. whose fans can be relentlessly brutal in criticizing players who do not meet their expectations.
The Angels could afford to stay patient at the time becuase Ohtani was making peanuts of a salary and they were not risking much as Ohtani was bringing in more money in Merch sales, International broadcasting rights, baseball tourism and on and off field commercial incomes. The guy is so marketable! Angels made much more money than the paid him.
He gets better every year...2023...now he is the phenom...his swing and pitching style is so amazing that you can't believe it is happening. omg...Ohtani only gets better...like a genius at baseball..im just glad I am alive to watch him do this...
Guy got me to love and watch baseball again. For that - I'm forever greatful. No matter where he goes - that clubhouse will end up being a fan favorite. Because people will follow this dude wherever he goes. Once in a generation player.
Maybe Once in FOREVER player. I'm 71. I played Little League for 3 years and watched Mantle and Maris and all the rest for over 60 years. I've been to many big league games and even saw the 'Iron Man", California Ripken. He was NY all time favorite until now. I saw the Kid, Griffy Jr win the Home Run Derby in Colorado. I hope I get to see Showtime in person. He's great beyond belief AND a good human too!
The 2021 season is incredible and insanely unlikely. There’s one manager in the world that would look at Shohei missing almost 2 full seasons pitching wise with injury and still decide to give him the full work load of a starting pitcher and a full time DH. Thank god that Joe Maddon was the Angels manager because no one else would have tested that. Ohtani is likely the most hyped athlete ever and somehow he’s beaten every expectation
Well done story of Ohtani. You say he became the first player to attend ASG as a pitcher and a Hitter. But in 2022, he did the same AND became the first Player in MLB history to qualify BOTH in ERA (as a SP) and as a hitter! Which just minority of MLB players qualify each season (2022: 5,7% as pitcher and 18,8% as a batter) Aaron Judge may had a historic season, how efficient would his offensive numbers be if he was SP even ONCE…? (Probably not be able to hit for few days…if Judge hit every week, the offensive numbers would be out of the window…thats how unique Shohei is…not comparable
BINGO...By the way, this channel is run by a Yankee homer...just a few months ago he was badmouthing Ohtani's MVP campaign in order to push Judge. I unsubscribed from this clout chaser months ago
@@nestorgarcia9228 haha…many are like that…even Jon Heyman of NY Post, he called Ohtani a “freak show who plays meaningless baseball” and now he weekly speculating Ohtanis FA payout and calls Ohtani “The world greatest player” 😂 It’s a bit embarrassing…
While he did pitch and hit in the 2022 all star game, he was only voted in for his hitting. In 2023, he was voted in on both the hitter and pitcher ballot, so he was selected twice. That was what the video meant.
I didn't realize how many years he fought to become the great player he is today. I didn't go back and try to add it up, but it sounded like 5 years of medium grade play due to injury and new surroundings etc...to finally having the season he believed he could have in 2021. The best move he made was signing up in Japan first. This gave him the lifelong financial stability to weather the years of development and all but remove any doubt that he had already achieved greatness no matter what happened next. It must have removed a TON of pressure knowing that he could pack up at any time and be set for the rest of his life. BONUS: hearing this guy is genuinely nice makes this the kind of story the WORLD needs right now....and forever.
absolutely enjoyed this video and shohei ohtani is truly a unicorn. I predict he will receive a 500M contract in the offseason. he will be the first next year, and soto will be the second to receive that 500M in 2024/25. I would like u to do curt flood (the guy who helped create free agency and made it possible for guys like judge, machado and trea turner to make north of 300M and possibly ohtani and soto making 500M). and of course I’d like a video on juan soto, my fav player.
The Algos gave me this video after Otani was featured in a Seiko Watch ad that used Ichika Nito's music. I'm a guitar prodigy fan, and now I'm watching your baseball mini-documentary because of it. Much love.
The injuries were always pretty overblown. The knee surgery at the end of 2019 was to repair a birth defect. And it's not really fair to say he hurt his arm again in 2020. He was basically making rehab starts at the big league level for his TJ, and had to get shut down for a bit. Happens a lot, but the season was too short for there to be any point at ramping him back up again.
My create-a-player character in MLB The Show isnt as good as this guy is, and definitely nowhere near as fun to watch. To do what this guy is doing, it's unreal. Hes changing the game. So amazing to watch how he makes it look so easy and effortless.
his father was industrial league baseball player in jpn,his mother was badminton player in same company. SHOHEI where he comes from? baseball culture and Mitsubishi company both exist in east asia.
You need to review Babe Ruth's record: He was also the best pitcher and best hitter in MLB baseball before he stopped pitching. As a pitcher he won two games for the Boston Red Sox (the first one a shoutout) to help them win the 1918 world series. His pitching record for that year was also amazing: Ruth, 23, had put together another nice season, going 13-7 with a 2.22 ERA in 20 games on the mound. He also showed off his potent bat during the 1918 season. If Ruth had continued pitching it's pretty obvious that he would have at the very least been as good as Ohtani.
Tbh i feel even if shohei is offered $500M contract, he may turn it down and take a lesser amount so that the team he joins can make a better roster with the paycut. Remember he took like a huge paycut just to play in the MLB earlier, if he waited until his contract with his NPBL team was over he could have asked for a $200M contract instead he asked to be posted early thus making his contract just above 3M.
5:15 if NPB players get paid $15 million USD annually as rookies, you'd see way more American amateurs head overseas, maybe even professionals. Think you might mean yen, since I believe Masahiro Tanaka is currently Japan's highest paid baseball player at a little over $8 million USD, or 900 million yen+
What was Judge’s ERA? I saw 5 other players do what Judge did in my lifetime. You can sprinkle steroids on a Bonds or a Sosa and get those numbers. You can’t sprinkle steroids on Bumgardner or Mike Hampton or Maddux and get Ohtani’s output. What Ohtani did is objectively more special than what judge did. They got it wrong.
Does swinging lefty help obtani as he isn’t using his right arm for both pitching and hitting? Or does it not matter? If it does matter, it makes sense how he is able to be so damn good at both without wearing himself out during a game.
That little tidbit about the NPB draft caught my attention. Sounds like it could be the solution to the tanking problems that American sports leagues have.
翔平くんの軌跡を取り上げてくれてありがとう。 数字や実績はもちろんですが、どこにいても変わらず日本人の持つ美徳を体現してくれていることも嬉しいことです。彼は日本で言うところの「野球小僧」であり続け、努力を怠らず、大変頭の良い方であることは言うまでもありませんよね。 そして当時の日本ハムファイターズの監督と首脳陣の尽力のおかげで私たちはいま翔平くんの今を見ることができています。 他の選手にも大変興味があります。是非たくさんの方にスポットライトを当ててください。 I know and understand what u said in the video, but very hard for me to express my feeling clearly in English.
The 2-way player is highly consuming for the player. It is detrimental to the player, as it works toward shortening his longevity as a player. However, from the team's perspective, if a 2-way player can function as well as Otani, they can strengthen their pitching and hitting core with only one reinforcement at the same time. Also, if a player is sluggish in either pitching or hitting, he can still be used as a player in the other role, and the short time period of players due to attrition will also promote player turnover. In these two ways, a 2-way player is a managerially efficient and risk-averse reinforcement. However, this is conditional on the emergence of a large number of candidates for talent on the same level as Otani. This may be possible in the Japanese school baseball educational environment, but I wonder if it would be possible in the United States. Why was Shohei able to succeed as a 2-way player, something he had not been able to do for 100 years? He is neither a mystery nor an alien. He is a reality that happened on this planet. This is because Shohei Ohtani is not a player who grew up with an American baseball education. It is the Japanese student baseball educational environment that made him emerge. It is the result of the difference in education that Shohei Ohtani received as a child and as a student in Japan. Ohtani is undeniably a great athlete, but if he had been born and raised in the United States with the same DNA, he would not have grown up to be the Ohtani of today. The "Otani of today" is the result of being born and raised in Japan and receiving a Japanese baseball education from an early age. He is blessed with natural qualities and DNA, but it was his own willpower to analyze weakpoint of himself, set his direction, and practice self-improvement that made him as the great player he is today. In other words, even his current well-endowed body is the result of his own training, his own diet, and his own body modification plan which he has spent the past 12 years from 16 building into a large body and his mental strength. Shohei Ohtani is not an amazing genius, but a man of amazing hard work and self-improvement. He is simply a man who has amazing self-analysis and the brains to discover and complete his own weaknesses and ways to improve them.
I disagree with the "we won't see a player like him ever again". With how rigorous Japan's training in baseball from an early age, NPB will slowly allow some really talented high school players a chance to prove they can do what Ohtani does before stepping up to the Majors.
Soon to be richest baseball player ever in history, no one will ever match his level of hitting and pitching, and even if a kid does do what he does they still wont match what hes doing right now,
Isao Harimoto was not born in Korea. He's a second generation Korean-Japanese born and raised in Japan. He is the all time hit king of NPB, although Ichiro would easily surpass his number if his records were combined. BTW, Harimoto is known to be a hardcore conservative and has always heavily criticized pioneering people. In his logic, everything has to be done old school because that was the way he had achieved so much greatness. When Hideo Nomo went over to the Dodgers, Harimoto was one of the first and foremost people to criticize him for being selfish. According to Harimoto, Nomo was selfish for not abiding by the NPB rules to transfer to MLB when, at the time, there was no such rule whatsoever. He basically calls every NPB player who chooses to go to the ML a traitor and selfish. When Ohtani stated he wanted to go straight to America without joining the NPB first, a 72 year old Harimoto openly criticized a teenager on national TV for being "childish". Of course this man would also criticize Shohei for trying to become a two way player. The criticism continued even until Shohei made his move to Anaheim and it was Shohei 's first MVP season that Harimoto finally decided to shut up. Just to give you some perspective, that's the kind of person Harimoto is.
MLB has to put effort in making him as famous a Jordan as Pele, those are the things that attracts fans, give a shit if is Japanese and can’t speak English he doesn’t use his tongue to play.
How many more seasons of this kind of greatness would Shohei have to put up in order to be a first-ballot hall of famer? We literally haven't seen anything like this since Ruth, and Ruth could only play against white guys with full time jobs who played baseball as a hobby. Can you tell the story of baseball without including Ohtani? I say if he does this for 4 more seasons (probably winning 3-4 more MVPs unless someone hits 70 homers) he's a LOCK for the Hall.
He's already a lock for the HOF, even if he played his final season in 2023, since no one has accomplished his numbers in the history of baseball in 2021 and 2022 as a dedicated two-way player, on top of being a MVP in 2021. His extremely unique and rare talents and records, easily places him in the HOF.
@@dltguitar6532 it matters because there were great players in the Negro leagues that Babe didn't get to play against. Ohtani is playing vs the entire world of talent and Babe only got to play vs a limited pool of white guys.
Japanese YAKYU was derived uniquely from American-style baseball and took more than 100 years to achieve. The fact is that on this same planet, there is another baseball that exists in a different spirit than the US style. Of course, the roots of baseball are USA, but baseball that was exported to other countries from US and took root there developed in a different way. This would be a fact. The reason “why Japanese baseball is strong in international tournaments" is not because they have strong members and excellent coaches. It is because they are “not players who grew up learning baseball in the United States". They were “educated in Japan's unique system of baseball education” when they were in high school. Americans don’t realize the importance of "the unique baseball education system" of Japanese baseball. which is the result of “the difference in education” they have received since their childhood and school days. The difference in the educational environment during their school days and the difference in the content of baseball education are the secrets of the source of the strength of Japanese baseball. Ohtani is undeniably a great athlete, but if he had been born and raised in the United States, with the same DNA would not have grown into the Ohtani of today. He was born and raised in Japan and received a Japanese baseball education from childhood, which is why he is the player "he is today". Not only the physical aspect, but also the way he thinks about baseball, his stoicism, and his gentle behavior are the result of his baseball education from his childhood to high school in Japan. and it is Japan's unique baseball education that produced"the monster" Otani. He is "not a unicorn," but merely an honor student of Japanese high school baseball education.
I don't watch baseball but I pay attention to the news etc and I watch basketball religiously. Idk how the fuck I don't know about this guy. My Dad finally I guess decided to drop his name after hundreds of phone calls. Just tonight he goes oh yeah this Ohtani guy making 700 million
