ANAHEIM, Calif. — With the Yankees in town and trade rumors swirling around Shohei Ohtani, Japanese reporters were hard at work in Anaheim earlier this week.
For much of the group, Ohtani — not his Angels — is the beat. That means covering and writing about every little thing he does. That can be more challenging on some days than others, as there are only so many ways to describe Ohtani’s greatness without sounding stale. And even the two-way sensation has quiet games, which can leave Japanese reporters without much to say while racing against inconvenient deadlines in their home country.
But the impending free agent’s future has dominated the baseball landscape recently, and the Yankees series provided several storylines. Even though the pinstripers seem like an unlikely landing spot for Ohtani for several reasons, Japanese reporters still made it a point to question visiting Yankees writers about the theoretically possible pairing.
