Records, home runs, talent and the ability to push beyond the imaginable. Numbers and class to spare, designed by Shohei Ohtani, the Japanese baseball phenomenon who has been driving fans of this sport literally crazy since he played for the Dodgers.
With the Los Angeles team from next October 26th he is expected to be a sure protagonist in the World Series, the Major League Baseball finals.
Highly anticipated match, defined as a kind of derby, against the New York Yankees, before which the champion from the Land of the Rising Sun achieved another record: the ball with which he hit his fiftieth home run of the season – an absolute record for US baseball – was sold at auction for the record sum of 4.4 million dollars, 4 million euros.
Last September 19 in the game against the Miami Marlins, the 30-year-old Japanese hitter for the Los Angeles Dodgers hit his 50th home run of the season and also stole the fiftieth base. The $4.4 million paid by an unknown buyer is the highest price a sports ball has ever achieved at auction.
In addition to being the first Major League player to hit 50 home runs and 50 stolen bases in a single season, Ohtani is also the first in history to be selected to the All-Star Game as both a starting pitcher and leadoff hitter. For him, MLB rewrote some rules and even the codes of the most famous baseball video game, ‘The show’, were rewritten. Not to mention the ten-year contract signed last year with the Los Angeles Dodgers for the monstrous sum of 700 million dollars.
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Translating his exploit into football terms, it is as if Gigi Donnarumma made 50 decisive saves and scored 50 goals. A forced image but one that helps to grasp the idea for those who are not experts in the sport played on the diamond.
In baseball, whoever hits the ball with the bat is the one who plays attack: his task is to move the ball away and then go around the field running around the diamond without the opponent taking possession of his base or the place from which has left or is reaching. The defender, on the other hand, throws the ball to the catcher and must prevent the batter from hitting it by throwing it as quickly as possible. Well, the Dodgers champion is one of the best in both roles. His statistics surpassed those of legendary hitter Babe Ruth or pitcher Joe DiMaggio. A rarity for this sport: pitchers are unlikely to be good hitters, and vice versa. But Shohei Ohtani is different and it is not for nothing that he is the highest paid player ever in the world of baseball. Seven hundred million dollars is a lot even for US professional sport. Before Ohtani, the closest players to reaching ’50-50′ were Ronald Acuña, who stole 73 bases and hit 41 home runs in 2023, and Alex Rodriguez, who hit 42 home runs and stole 46 bases in 1998. And Ohtani’s season isn’t over yet. Now a new challenge awaits Ohtani: the one against the historic rivals of the New York Yankees in the World Series, where the champion will be able to make Americans, Japanese and fans fall in love with him more and more by reaching yet unexplored destinations.
