Baseball superstar Shohei Ohtani is holding his breath in the US and Japan.
The most awaited protagonist of the most awaited match in US sport, and not only that, the baseball World Series between his Los Angeles Dodgers and New York Yankees, was injured in game 2 of the title match, risking missing the next match with the Californian team already ahead 2-0 and therefore only two victories away from triumph.
A twist in the MLB finals which traditionally catalyze the interest of the whole nation but which on this occasion are an event of historic value.
The misdeed occurred on the Italian night at Dodger Stadium, during the seventh inning: in an attempt to steal second base, the Japanese suffered a trauma and left the field holding his left arm close to his body and an initial examination confirmed a subluxation, a partial exit of the left shoulder.
The frost descended on the stands, even if the positive result, 4-1 after the 6-3 comeback achieved in the first match, calmed things down a bit.
Now we will have to wait for more in-depth tests to understand how serious the injury is, although manager Dave Roberts said he was encouraged by the fact that “both the range of motion and the strength of the shoulder seem good”. However, time is short, because the Yankee Stadium in the Bronx already awaits on Tuesday the third match of the clash between two of the most famous sports teams in the world, even among non-baseball fans, and divided by a historic rivalry. It is the twelfth time in the history of Major League Baseball (Mlb) that the Dodgers and the Yankees face each other in the World Series, a record, but the last one dates back to 1981 and this has raised the anticipation to paroxysm, even in a time when the USA is about to choose its next president.
And theirs is not just a rivalry between teams, but also between the dominant metropolises in the USA, this since 1957, when the Dodgers who were born in the Big Apple, in Brooklyn, moved to California. If before then the derby atmosphere gave further spice to the confrontations, dominated by legendary figures such as Joe DiMaggio and Yogi Berra for the Bronx team or Jackie Robinson and Roy Campanella for Brooklyn, the move to the West of the Dodgers has fueled new reasons for antagonism .
The current one is thus the fifth final match in MLB which also involves the two cities (in basketball it has happened three times and once in the NHL hockey final, the Stanley Cup) and for the occasion sees many stars on the pitch, starting with the MVPs of 2024: Aaron Judge for the Yankees, author of 58 home runs, and Ohtani, record holder in history with 50 home runs and 50 stolen bases. If the Yankees have won eight times in the previous eleven, the Dodgers are closer to closing the gap, given that the teams that have won the first two games of the World Series so far have prevailed 77 times out of 92, but now the injury in Ohtani it creates uncertainty and new expectations.
