Baseball isn't hard enough for Shohei Ohtani

Bored without being able to pitch this year, the Japanese slugger-sprinter has become the first ballplayer to hit 50 homers and steal 50 bases.

You don’t see baseball box score lines like this too often:

They really need to add another skill to baseball to give Shohei Ohtani more of a challenge. Say … during the 7th inning stretch, each team sends one player already in the game out to perform gymnastics feats on the pommel horse, and the winner scores a run for his team.

I know which Dodger would spend the offseason practicing.

Ohtani is of course the first player since Babe Ruth in 1918-1919 to regularly pitch and bat on his off days. Even Ruth gave it up after two years to concentrate on hitting. (Plenty of pitchers have been part-time pinch-hitters, though.)

This is partly made more feasible by the Designated Hitter that allows Ohtani to bat while not playing the field. (The DH bats instead of the pitcher.) But the DH has been around in the American League for 51 years, so it’s not like nobody else had the opportunity. It’s just hard to do both.

But Ohtani blew out his pitching arm last August, requiring a second Tommy John surgery. But he could still swing the bat.

So this year after signing with the Los Angeles Dodgers, he has merely been their DH. Feeling unchallenged, he decided to become a better base-stealer, especially after he moved into the lead-off spot when Mookie Betts got hurt.

Ohtani has always run freely on the bases, with lots of stolen bases and triples for a slugger, much less a pitcher. But like Babe Ruth, who was faster than he looked but not as fast as he thought, Ohtani got thrown out a lot.

But not having to worry about pitching until next season, in 2024 Ohtani became a student of base-running.

So this year Ohtani has only been thrown out four times in 55 attempts (although he got picked off recently and that should really count as a caught stealing). The only player in the big leagues with more stolen bases is the superfast Elly De La Cruz with 64, and he’s been caught a perfectly reasonable 16 times. (Ohtani is second to the mighty Aaron Judge in home runs.)

So, today, Ohtani became the first ever player with 50 homers and 50 stolen bases in one season (currently 51-51), by stealing two bases and then hitting 3 homers in 20-4 victory over the Miami Marlins.

There are two potential shadows over this remarkable season.

The first 40-40 homer-stolen base season was Jose Canseco’s in 1988. And that didn’t turn out well for baseball’s reputation in the long run.

Second, Ohtani’s translator got arrested at the beginning of the year for embezzling from Ohtani to bet.

Obviously, Ohtani hasn’t been throwing games like the 1919 Chicago Black Sox: what would he be doing, having a 60-60 season?

But you can get in huge trouble with baseball, like Pete Rose did, just for betting even if you aren’t betting against your own team.

Guys tend to like to bet, especially ones as competitive as Rose or Ohtani, so it’s not inconceivable that Ohtani was getting in on the action.

We shall see.

Announcement: I’m doing book tour appearances in Chicago next week: dinner on Thursday evening September 26th downtown and a speaking event on Friday night September 27th on Chicago’s north lakefront. See Passage Press’s website for tickets.