Ohtani a special player — but he’s not Babe Ruth
Comparing star to Darvish is more accurate, experts say.
SAPPORO, JAPAN — Ever since Shohei Ohtani of Japan began capturing the attention of baseball fans in the United States, he has elicited comparisons to Babe Ruth, the larger-than-life slugger who strode across the American landscape nearly a century ago.
And why not? Ruth, in the early part of his major league career, was a dominant pitcher with the Boston Red Sox before evolving into an everyday presence in the Yankees’ outfield. No one since then has really done anything like that in the major leagues. Ohtani, who agreed to sign with the Los Angeles Angels on Friday, has both pitched and hit with distinction as a member of the Nippon-Ham Fighters of Nippon Professional Baseball.
But significantly, Ohtani, in Japan, is not perceived as some Ruthian colossus in the making. Yes, Ohtani, 23, is considered a standout player in his native country, and a very popular one. But some of the hype surrounding his feats seems to be a largely American phenomenon.
“First of all, we don’t call him Babe Ruth,” said Kosuke Sasaki, a teammate of the Yankees’ Masahiro Tanaka when they played at Komazawa University Tomakomai High School in Hokkaido. He now manages there. “I never heard anyone calling him Babe Ruth.”
Actually, some younger Japanese baseball fans would not necessarily know who Ruth was. In any case, said the U.S.-born Robert Whiting, who has spent many years in Japan and has written several books about baseball there, comparing Ohtani to Ruth is misleading.
“Ohtani is not going to hit 60 homers,” Whiting said in reference to the single-season major league mark Ruth set in 1927 that stood until 1961, when Roger Maris hit 61. For one thing, Whiting noted, Ohtani — who is listed at 6 feet 3 and 189 pounds by Baseball Reference — does not have the imposing physique of a slugger, at least by American standards.
For another, the most home runs Ohtani hit in any Japanese season was 22, in 2016, although that number came in only 323 at-bats.
“He will probably do better as a pitcher,” Whiting predicted. “Playing both positions is probably too much to ask.”
A more accurate comparison, Whiting, Sasaki and others said, is to measure Ohtani against Yu Darvish, who, like Ohtani, played for the Nippon-Ham Fighters before moving to the major leagues. Darvish made the switch in 2012 and since then has compiled a solid 56-42 record as a member of the Texas Rangers and the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Darvish has never been a two-way player, but he, like Ohtani, began pitching for the Fighters at age 18, in 2005. Over seven seasons, he compiled a 93-38 won-lost record with a 1.99 ERA. Ohtani, in five seasons with the Fighters, put together a 42-15 record with a 2.52 ERA.
Those numbers, similar in how good they are, suggest that Ohtani, if nothing else, should be an impactful pitcher in the United States.
Eishi Yamagata, who has covered the Fighters for Kyodo News, said he thought the American perception of Ohtani was somewhat overblown, but he believed Ohtani would not feel overwhelmed by pressure to live up to the fanfare he will encounter in the United States.
“Even if he gets unfair expectations from American fans, he is a live-and-letlive type of person,” Yamagata said. “He has not changed as a person.”
What has changed, apparently, is the way Japanese players who leave for the United States are perceived by the fans they left behind. Hideo Nomo, who pioneered the first wave of Japanese pitchers coming to the majors, was considered something of a traitor when he departed for the United States for the 1995 season.
But immediate success with the Los Angeles Dodgers quickly led to Nomo’s starts being broadcast on giant outdoor screens in Japan. Fans became enticed with the possibility their homegrown stars could challenge the best players in the world.
That sense of general good will in Japan now extends to the players who have followed in Nomo’s footsteps, like Ohtani.
“There’s a little bit of regret, but also do well,” said Ira Stevens, who runs Scout Dragon, a site that produces data on Japanese players. Of Ohtani, he added: “He’s trying to challenge himself at the highest level.”
Ruth analogies aside, there is little question Ohtani has been the most popular Japanese baseball player in recent years.
He is the face of train advertisements and even appears on billboards at the Tokyo Dome, home of the rival Yomiuri Giants. In sporting goods stores, Ohtani-model gloves are best sellers, going for about $450 each.
Kumiko Konno, who was recently shopping at the Fighters’ team store next to the Sapporo train station, wanted to purchase as much Ohtani merchandise as possible before it went out of stock, since items for former players are not easy to come by. She said she had twice traveled to Arizona to watch spring training expeditions by the Fighters and each time had brought Ohtani some chocolates — his favorite, she said.
“He’s great at pitching and batting,” said Konno, who is old enough to be Ohtani’s mother and showed a cellphone picture of him signing an autograph for her. “But he’s also cute.”
But there is also another word Konno used in reference to Ohtani: “nitoryu,” which refers to the difficult, twosword technique that is credited to a venerated 17th-century Japanese warrior named Miyamoto Musashi. Other fans said the same thing, including Shigeki Sarodo, a research fellow at Nippon Sports Science University in Tokyo.
In other words, being able to both pitch and hit may evoke images of Ruth for U.S. fans but something much different — swords from the 17th century, for instance — in Japan.
“I think that kind of stuff is very familiar to us,” Sarodo said. He said Ohtani was “not the person to compare to Babe Ruth, but a Japanese hero in a more popular way.”