The Michael Jordan of baseball, all sinewy skill and cinematic glamour, pulled into second base with a look we have never seen in his five seasons playing Major League Baseball. The helmet was long gone, dislodged somewhere around first base from the ferocity of speed from his 6-foot-4, 225-pound frame. Tufts of his black hair flopped across his forehead. He turned toward his Team Japan dugout, waved his arms with frenzy to coax them into the same excitement he felt, and screamed a long, joyous rally cry.
Shohei Ohtani has never played on a winning team with the Angels. He has finished each of his five seasons at least 10 games out of first place. The most exciting player on the planet and one of the best things to happen to baseball in a hundred years finally had a winning moment on U.S. soil Monday night.
In American translation, it was not quite Ohtani’s Craig Ehlo moment. This was the World Baseball Classic, not the World Series. But the winning moment told you everything about what baseball means to Japan and what it would mean for the rest of us to see Ohtani compete for a championship.
