OHTANI HITS, PITCHES WAY TO AP MALE ATHLETE OF YEAR
Most of the time in professional sports, it’s easy to think it’s all been done before.
With so many finetuned athletes constantly pushing each other to the peak of human potential, we can experience unprecedented demonstrations of sporting brilliance every week of our lives. But it’s truly rare to witness anything that isn’t fundamentally just a better, more prolific version of something we’ve already seen.
That’s why Shohei Ohtani’s astonishing redefinition of modern baseball captured the world’s attention so vividly in 2021 — and that’s why the Los Angeles Angels’ two-way superstar is the winner of The Associated Press’ Male Athlete of the Year award.
The unanimous American League MVP put together a season with no analogue in the past century of his sport. Almost no one had been an everyday two-way player for many decades — and nobody has been both one of baseball’s top power hitters and one of its best starting pitchers since Babe Ruth starred at the plate and on the mound for the Boston Red Sox in 1919.
“He’s doing something we haven’t seen in our lifetimes, but he’s also doing it at the very highest level of hitting and pitching,” Angels manager Joe Maddon said late in the regular season. “He’s doing more than other players, but he’s also doing it better than almost everybody else on that field, and those are the greatest players in the game, his contemporaries. He’s playing their game, but he’s also playing a different game.”
Ohtani hit 46 homers and drove in 100 runs with a .965 OPS while playing in 126 games as the AL’s best designated hitter, as evidenced by his Silver Slugger award. He finished third in the majors in homers after leading the sport for much of the season.
Ohtani, 27, also started 23 games on the mound, going 9-2 with a 3.18 ERA and 156 strikeouts over 1301⁄3 innings as the Angels’ ace and one of the AL’s top right-handers. He has a 100-mph fastball, but his splitter might be the best pitch in baseball, with movement that resembles a ball rolling off the edge of a table.
The 6-foot-4 star also was among the fastest baserunners in the majors while stealing 26 bases and scoring 103 runs.
He even led the league with eight triples — and he
also played a little outfield when asked.
Skiing
French giant slalom specialist Tessa Worley finally returned to a women’s World Cup podium after 11 months, winning the last GS of the calendar year in the absence of Olympic champion Mikaela Shiffrin and world champion Lara GutBehrami. Racing in flat lights on the Schlossberg course in Lienz, Austria, Worley held onto her firstrun lead to beat defending overall champion Petra Vlhova by three-tenths of a second.
Soccer
Losses for Liverpool are about as rare as penalty misses by Mohamed Salah. Both happened on Tuesday and, even at the halfway stage of the season, it could cost Jurgen Klopp’s team the Premier League title.
Liverpool was beaten 1-0 by a patched-up Leicester team and could find itself nine points behind Manchester City heading into the new year, if the leaders win at Brentford today.
It’s a cushion that might prove to be insurmountable given City is on a nine-match winning streak in the league and is looking unstoppable, scoring 17 goals in its last three victories.
Liverpool also will soon be without its two star forwards, Salah and Sadio Mane, who are heading to the African Cup of Nations next week.
Hockey
The San Diego Gulls have had another pair of American Hockey League games postponed, with games against the Tucson Roadrunners at Tucson Convention Center on Friday and Sunday pushed back due to COVID-19 protocols affecting the Gulls.
• The pandemic disrupted a pair of top events in international hockey Tuesday, with the two top women’s teams in the world calling off their final preOlympic tune-up games and the defending champion U.S. men forfeiting a game at the world junior championship.
Hockey Canada announced the final two rivalry series games against the U.S. were canceled because several players and staff on Canada’s women’s national team are in COVID-19 protocol.
Sailing
Super maxi Black Jack crossed the finish line early
Wednesday morning to win line honors at the Sydney to Hobart race.
The Monaco Yacht Clubbased Black Jack finished at 1:37 a.m. (1437 GMT Tuesday) in 2 days, 12 hours, 37 minutes, 17 seconds.
College basketball
No. 1 Baylor 104, Northwestern State 68: James Akinjo scored a career-high 27 points and Baylor extended the nation’s longest winning streak to 18 in a row by beating visiting Northwestern State. Baylor (12-0) scored the game’s first 13 points.
No. 4 Gonzaga 96, North Alabama 63: Julian Strawther scored 15 points, Rasir Bolton added 14 points, and host Gonzaga (11-2) beat North Alabama (7-6) to extend the nation’s longest home winning streak to 59 games.
No. 17 Texas 78, Incarnate Word 33: Dylan Disu had 14 points, 11 rebounds and five blocks in his longest appearance of the season for host Texas (10-2), which beat Incarnate Word.
No. 25 Texas Tech 75, Alabama State 53: Davion Warren scored 15 points, and Texas Tech (10-2) rolled over visiting Alabama State in the final Big 12 tuneup for the Red Raiders.