I don’t watch Major League Baseball, or affiliated baseball altogether really, all that much anymore. This isn’t going to be a rant about affiliated baseball, my thoughts on that machine are well-known. The point is that I don’t make time for affiliated baseball like I used to and I don’t see that changing anytime soon. Sure, I’ll occasionally check in on some players I like, but watching an at-bat here or there is as far as I’ll take my affiliated baseball watching. With one glaring exception, Shohei Ohtani.
Everyone who watches baseball of any sort knows about Ohtani, I’m not hoping to rewrite the book on him or tell anyone reading anything they don’t already know. However, it occurred to me the other day, while watching him create the 50 home runs/50 stolen bases club, that the collective hasn’t truly grasped what we have in Ohtani. He’s a unicorn in every sense of the word, but most importantly watching him play baseball is unlike any other experience I can think of in our beloved game.
We’ve had great players before, both locally and globally. I was a big affiliated baseball fan during the days of Barry Bonds. We may never see another hitter like him, but context is important. Bonds was special, but, he was a product of his era. He was part of a group of big bombers who were reshaping the way the sport was played. Bonds was better than every single one of them, but as hard as it may be to wrap one’s head around, what he was doing felt more like an extension of his baseball era rather than something truly different.
Different is perhaps the best word to describe Ohtani. Outside of a very small number of folks who may have been alive during the Negro major leagues, no one has ever seen a player like him. Someone who is an elite pitcher and hitter, who seemingly gets better year after year. Every time Ohtani does something, anything, the natural reaction is to let out a wow, drop your jaw, and stand there knowing that you are witnessing something and someone who is unlike anything or anyone you’ve ever seen play the game of baseball.
This isn’t an argument about Ohtani’s place among the all-time greats. I have my thoughts on that based on his, as of this writing, 12 years spent playing in the major leagues. In fact, this isn’t an argument at all, merely a recognition of that special feeling one gets when watching someone play in a way that we haven’t been able to witness previously. There’s nothing quite like the feeling of watching Shohei Ohtani play the game of baseball. It’s a feeling I never want to go away but at the same time, I know that when he does retire I’m going to spend the rest of my baseball-watching days yearning for what was and dealing with the empty feeling he’ll leave behind in every person who watches baseball and understands why Ohtani is special. This isn’t meant to be another fawn-fest over the world’s best baseball player, but really, what can you do for a player like Ohtani other than fawn and crave that loving feeling over and over again?
Lead photo courtesy of Marta Lavandier – Associated Press
