What Shohei Ohtani did for the Dodgers on Friday night is a performance we can talk about in 25 years

Dear Gossips,

I live in a city, country really, that is baseball crazy right now. If we’re talking about baseball, though, there is one player who is bigger than any team, not just the crown jewel of his own sport but all sport. Like, how does anyone even describe Shohei Ohtani?!?!?

What he did on Friday night, it’s one of those performances that we can talk about in 25 years as not just a consolation but a point of gratitude for being old enough to have watched it when it happened. The youth can enjoy whatever it is that youth will be enjoying a quarter century from now (if there’s any enjoyment to be had by then) but what we have is the memory of what the greatest baseball player of all time did on a Friday in October. Pitching six inners, 10 strikeouts, and being his own f-cking run support with three monster homeruns? Social media was fun that night if your algorithm is set to MLB because the reaction was hilarious. There was a whole thread of equivalents, like for example comparing what Shohei did if it was an NFL player: five touchdowns for over 500 years, then going on defence and sacking the QB twice, plus two interceptions, something like that.

I’m going to try not to be salty today because positive vibes are critical right now, so I’m not going to bitch (for too long) about how I feel like as famous as Shohei is, here in the west, he’s still not as famous as he could be. Please don’t argue with me on this point, I was just in a meeting where someone had never heard of him. And I’m not trying to shame that person, it’s not their fault, since western media had not blown him up the way they would if he were from the west. But they should because Shohei is having a bigger impact on the United States that goes beyond baseball statistics.

It was reported last month that the US “stands to lose about $30 billion in international tourism this year”. Meanwhile Los Angeles is experiencing a surge in Japanese tourism. You may have heard over the weekend after Shohei’s historic game that the Dodgers made back the $700 million contract they gave him in just one year through merch and sponsorship deals and broadcasting etc etc etc. The Dodgers as a team aren’t the only ones benefitting – it’s also the entire city, and the state. Because Japanese tourism has exploded, “more than 90% year over year from 2022 to 2023, rising to 230,000 visitors, and in 2024, forecasts project nearly 290,000 Japanese visitors, making Japan one of LA’s top international markets”. And it’s not like, especially with all that’s happened just this year, LA doesn’t need the financial support.

This is the immediate impact, we don’t even know the future effect Shohei will have in terms of legacy and the young players who will emerge because they were inspired by him – and from where they might come – to further change the complexion of the sport, who plays it and also who watches it. And, hopefully, how they play and watch it.

Because in addition to how he pitches and how he hits, you know what else makes Shohei a unicorn? This, literally: