Written by Jon Werthheim at FoxSports.com
It is an early March afternoon, hours before a Japan League exhibition game, and Shohei Ohtani can’t find a catcher. So he takes a cart of balls to the outfield, paces off 60 feet and begins throwing into the padded wall. It is baseball’s equivalent of an omakase menu: Ohtani grips baseballs with his right hand, goes into his windup and torques his 6’ 4″, 215-pound frame, much of it muscle. Extending his right arm, he manipulates the balls through the air in precise flight paths that seemingly defy the laws of physics. Mostly, though, he sends them whistling through the air, popping into the wall so that a sound like gunfire echoes through the empty Sapporo Dome.
An hour later Ohtani is back on the field. Only this time he’s a lefty and he has a bat in his hand. He steps into the cage, rakes his front foot like a bear marking territory and begins taking his cuts. Unleashing a swing that is at once violent and elegant, he sends drives searing up both lines. Mostly, though, he unleashes towering shots that sail over the walls in left, right and centerfields and register a mournful doink as they bounce off metal seats.
There are, so to speak, no two ways about it. The most compelling story in baseball is playing out in the city of Sapporo, on Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido. The central character is a modest 22-year-old who lives in a drab team dorm and doesn’t drink alcohol or own a car. And he is about to test baseball’s conventional wisdom in a way Moneyball never did.
It’s not just that Shohei Ohtani pitches and hits—it’s that he has few peers at either discipline. The reigning MVP in Nippon Professional Baseball, the world’s top league outside the majors, he won the NPB’s home run derby last season and threw the fastest pitch in league history, a 102.5 mph heater, topping his own record. “He’s so talented,” says his manager, Hideki Kuriyama, “it’s really tough to use him the right way, with the right balance.”
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