Shohei Ohtani: How the LA Dodgers' humble normcore megastar reached baseball's biggest stage Shohei Ohtani

IIt's the final week of the Los Angeles Dodgers' regular season. The San Diego Padres are in town and a win tonight at Dodger Stadium over their Interstate 5 rivals would secure their 11th NL West Division title in 12 years. There is a lot of activity in the halls, hours before the gates are opened to the public. There's palpable tension in the clubhouse: At the end of an injury-plagued season, the opportunity to secure a first-round bye and avoid the wild-card round could prove invaluable to their ultimate goal of a World Series title be. A tall, floppy-haired man enters the room, noticeably calmer than everyone else around him, armed with a gentle smile and a steaming cup of tea, and settles himself at his locker. He is almost surprisingly undisturbed. You would never guess that he is a global phenomenon who has made history and is primed to make his first trip to the postseason since joining Major League Baseball six years ago with the crosstown Angels. But Shohei Ohtani is not your average superstar.

At this point, the 30-year-old's astounding statistical achievements, as difficult as they are to understand, speak for themselves. Even in a season in which his unparalleled tackling skills had to take a back seat as rehab from a second major elbow surgery kept him away from the pitcher's mound, Ohtani found an entirely new way to rewrite baseball's record books. Just a few days ago, he became the first player in Major League history to hit 50 home runs and 50 stolen bases in a single season. By the end of the week, he will have finished the regular season having led the National League in home runs (54) and runs batted in (130), with a batting average (.310) that trails only San Diego's Luis Arráez (. 314) and is 1,000 behind and is just a few percentage points away from becoming the NL's first Triple Crown winner since Joe Medwick of the St. Louis Cardinals in 1937. The jaw-dropping numbers don't stop there: 134 runs scored, 411 total bases, a .646 slugging percentage and an OPS over 1.000.

Ohtani's first season with the Dodgers on a record-breaking $700 million, 10-year contract was somehow worth every penny, as he led the team to the best record in the majors despite a series of injuries. But if you listen to the people closest to him, it's Ohtani's demeanor outside the lines and in the clubhouse that further sets him apart.

“I mean, the way he carries himself, he knows there's a lot of attention on him and you don't even notice it,” said third base coach Dino Ebel, who worked with Ohtani in his first year with the Angels before They reunited with the Dodgers this spring. His face immediately lights up when I ask what Ohtani is like, and he echoes the sentiments I hear again and again when I ask people across the team about him. The word “modest” comes up in every conversation. He just wants to be one of the boys is another common refrain. “He’s Shohei Ohtani,” Ebel says, smiling and shrugging his shoulders. “He’s just a genuine, great person.”

Even as he breaks records with astonishing regularity, Ohtani, who speaks only Japanese during tightly controlled media availability, has built a celebrity that extends beyond baseball. He is very handsome, but in a boyish, wholesome way. His immaculately groomed, impeccably trained Dutch Kooikerhondje named Decoy threw out the first pitch before a game in August. The Los Angeles City Council has already passed a resolution declaring every May 17th as Shohei Ohtani Day for the duration of his Dodger career. He's a perfect modern superstar: almost as if he was tailored in a lab to sell baseball jerseys. Not to mention the numerous Japanese sponsors his presence has brought to the Dodgers, who have seen a sharp increase in attendance at both road games and ballpark tours led by Japanese-speaking tour guides.

Perhaps for these reasons, many who believed Ohtani's squeaky-clean public image was too good to be true almost seemed so relieved A supposed “gotcha” moment came during spring training when he found himself at the center of a theft and gambling scandal involving his close friend and longtime interpreter. But even there, the truth was disappointingly innocuous for those who had been waiting for a soap opera whirlwind. According to a comprehensive federal investigation, Ohtani was found to have been the victim of a betrayal (described by U.S. Attorney Martin Estrada as “deep and comprehensive”) by one of his most trusted confidants, who was accused of stealing $16 million from the star in illegal gambling debts settle.

Such a troubling experience might have derailed other players, particularly those who played under the pressure of a $700 million contract and were hailed as the saviors of a sport in danger of becoming stale and outdated. But not Ohtani. Could it be that this GOAT candidate really could just be nice and funny and, for lack of a better word, Normal?

It is, in all likelihood, a testament to Ohtani's greatness and his remarkable poise in equal measure that he has managed to recover enough from a potentially explosive scandal for this to be nowhere near the defining story of his season. It's said that Ohtani's calm and respectful nature is a result of Japanese culture, and while that's probably at least partially true, I'm also impressed by his ease and comfort. For a competitor of its caliber, these are rather unusual properties and characteristics that cannot really be traced back to geographical origin.

“He’s a little kid in a grown man’s body,” Dodgers third baseman Max Muncy tells me. “He doesn't like to take things too seriously, he likes to have fun. He's always smiling and always trying to joke. You definitely wouldn’t suspect he was the guy he is – if you knew nothing about baseball and had never seen him before – you wouldn’t think his behavior was a big deal.”

Dodgers left fielder Teoscar Hernández, also in his first year with the club and who has developed a close friendship with Ohtani despite their language barrier, agrees. “He’s one of those guys. When you sit next to him and talk to him, he's always fun. He makes a lot of jokes and you know, he’s a good guy,” Hernández said. “Everyone sees him as a quiet, serious guy, but I think he's the opposite. I only think if he is Here“He points to the field, “he’s focused.”

Ebel has a similar hypothesis, pointing to Ohtani's famously meticulous preparation habits: “When he's inside (the clubhouse), you see Shohei. When he comes out (on the field), to me it's more like he's going to I’m focused now, that’s my job.”

It's not uncommon for stars to have personalities on and off the field. But staying so down-to-earth and laid-back behind the scenes in the face of international megastars is certainly not the norm. Ohtani has been a household name in Japan since his time at Hanamaki Higashi High School, where as an 18-year-old he made headlines at Summer Koshien by throwing a fastball at a record 160 km/h (99 mph), the National High- School baseball championships that thrill the entire country, similar to March Madness in the United States.

His prominence only rose during his brilliant five-year stint with the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters of Japan's Nippon Professional Baseball, where he won a championship in 2016 before breaking into the MLB with the Angels two seasons later. And that number has grown exponentially in recent years as debates on sports talk shows about whether he is the greatest of all time have become more commonplace.

I ask shortstop Miguel Rojas if Ohtani's down-to-earth demeanor was a surprise given the immense hype surrounding him and the magnitude of his fame. “Absolutely 100%,” he says. “Because I played with other stars in the game who are different and needy. At some point they need a lot of people around them because they are superstars. They can't live a normal life like all the other players who can actually go out and do things. But for me, for Shohei, this place is a kind of refuge from a lot of things.”

Rojas says he found it surprising, “how normal and how normal.” naturally” Ohtani was in Los Angeles as soon as he arrived. “He’s always laughing, he enjoys getting to know his teammates. (He) is interested in what you like, and he also wants to express what he likes. He’s a completely normal, down-to-earth guy.”

Longtime Dodgers manager Dave Roberts describes Ohtani as “professional” and says he is “very respectful, very humble” and “treats everyone equally.” “Honestly,” says Roberts, “he is very present and engaged every day and in every interaction.”

As the Dodgers prepare to open their postseason against the same Padres in the best-of-five National League Division Series on Saturday, Roberts says Ohtani's enthusiasm and excitement for his long-awaited debut on baseball's biggest stage be contagious and grateful. “I think what I see with Shohei is that this is all new to him. And that's what, you could argue, he's been waiting for his whole life: to play in the big leagues in the postseason,” Roberts says. “So you see his focus, his excitement, his joy and his energy. And that's what I want from every single player, whether they've played 50 playoff games or haven't played a playoff game yet. I think that’s part of the recipe for success.”

In my conversation with Ebel, I share some of the anecdotes I've heard throughout the clubhouse about Ohtani, like Hernández mentioning that they swap stories about his native Dominican Republic and Ohtani's Japan and that everyone I talk to has a real one He seems to have affection. It's hard to imagine them describing one of the world's most famous athletes, and I ask Ebel if he thinks that's who he is real Shohei. He leans forward. “That's him. Really, deep down, someone who cares. And he just wants to be the Shohei Ohtani person.”