The query was easy.
The responses had been strikingly alike.
How properly have the Dodgers gotten to know Shohei Ohtani this 12 months?
Properly sufficient for a number of of his new teammates to attract an identical conclusion concerning the celebrity’s character; noticing an sudden dichotomy on the coronary heart of the 30-year-old’s success.
“[He can] be goofy and playful and look like he’s really having fun playing the game,” mentioned veteran utilityman Chris Taylor. “But then also at the same time be super focused and locked in.”
“He’s pretty serious,” catcher Austin Barnes echoed. “But he can joke and mess around, too. He makes me laugh.”
“He does a great job of having a child-like joy towards the game,” added reliever Blake Treinen, “but playing it like a grown man.”
“He’s almost like a little kid, trapped in a giant body,” Kiké Hernández defined. “He doesn’t necessarily always show it. But I was surprised by how much personality he has.”
Certainly, for as a lot as Ohtani has surpassed expectations on the sector this season — he’s all however to sure to win a 3rd profession most beneficial participant award with 54 dwelling runs, 59 stolen bases, a .310 batting common and 130 RBIs on a first-place Dodgers staff that begins its postseason on Saturday — his acclimation behind the scenes has been equally noteworthy to individuals across the staff.
He doesn’t precisely crack jokes. Or demand consideration with showy off-field antics. However, within the first season of the 10-year, $700 million contract he signed final December, he developed a status as one of many extra jovial characters amongst this 12 months’s forged of gamers.
“He’s still a very private guy, but I think he just really wants to be looked at as just one of the guys,” supervisor Dave Roberts mentioned. “Every day, every interaction, he’s very present and engaged.”
On the morning of the Dodgers regular-season finale final week, for instance, Ohtani’s laughter rose concerning the din of morning chatter in a sleepy pregame clubhouse.
Within the nook of the room, he and Teoscar Hernández had been cracking up at their lockers. At one level, Ohtani snapped his head again with a high-pitched cackle, laughing with a large smile planted on his face.
“He’s awesome,” Hernández mentioned of Ohtani’s humorousness. “And, he’s not that quiet.”
Minutes later, although, Ohtani’s consideration shifted to pregame preparation. Sitting alongside first base coach Clayton McCullough, he stoically studied an iPad with the scouting report for that day’s pitcher, formulating his day by day plan of assault to attempt to steal a base.
“Everybody says he’s kind of a private guy, but within the clubhouse and within our guys, he’s been awesome,” pitcher Clayton Kershaw mentioned. “You can obviously see how much he cares about winning.”
The Dodgers’ Freddie Freeman celebrates his dwelling run in opposition to the Diamondbacks with teammates, together with Mookie Betts, proper, and Shohei Ohtani, second from proper, throughout a recreation final month.
(Ross D. Franklin / Related Press)
It was the epitome of what Dodgers gamers have come to understand about Ohtani this season.
A light-weight-hearted presence one second. “He’s always got a great attitude, and he’s got a sneaky personality that’s kind of funny,” Treinen mentioned.
Then, single-minded focus the following.
“It’s a special talent to be able to do,” Taylor mentioned. “Being super focused and locked in and having the work ethic he has.”
Whereas Ohtani has lengthy been identified for the latter throughout his MLB profession, his open disposition wasn’t evident early in his Dodgers tenure, when he arrived with a notoriously personal status.
Accompanied by his longtime interpreter, Ippei Mizuhara, at the beginning of spring coaching, there was initially a “buffer” between Ohtani and the remainder of the membership, as Roberts later described it. Lots of Ohtani’s early interactions with teammates had been restricted to on-field exercises, with the slugger seemingly at a distance within the clubhouse. Mizuhara was even identified to textual content fellow gamers on Ohtani’s behalf, whereas Ohtani himself hardly ever engaged in a roster-wide group message.
“It was difficult,” Roberts mentioned of the Dodgers’ preliminary communication course of with Ohtani, when Mizuhara was nonetheless round.
However then, the Dodgers went to South Korea for his or her season-opening sequence in late March. Mizuhara’s theft and playing plot was uncovered after their opening day recreation. And by the point the staff returned dwelling, a brand new dynamic was taking form between Ohtani and the remainder of the roster — which rallied round their new star addition whereas by no means casting doubt about his innocence within the scandal.
“I don’t know if the situation helped him just kind of have no choice but to feel like he’s part of the group, or [if it was] him appreciating how much we had his back, and how much we were supporting him through the probably worst times of his life, of his career,” Kiké Hernández mentioned. “But what I’ve seen from him since — and maybe he was gonna show that regardless — but I’m just surprised by his personality and all that. He’s one of us. He’s one of the boys. And I’m glad to have him in the group.”
Teoscar Hernández, a fellow free-agent signing in his first 12 months with the Dodgers, was among the many first to develop a bond with Ohtani, giving him rudimentary classes in his main language, Spanish, whereas Ohtani taught him some fundamental Japanese.
“It’s been great,” mentioned Hernández, who famous that whereas their language “classes” have turn out to be extra rare over the season, their friendship has solely grown tighter with time. “We try to be really close.”
An early-season rain delay at Wrigley Subject provided one other peek on the lighter aspect of Ohtani’s persona, as he toyed round with a cricket bat within the batting cages to the amusement of his teammates.
“This guy’s vibrant, playful, jokes a lot,” power and conditioning coach Travis Smith mentioned. “Some guys are just always focused. That’s all they do. So [it’s unique] being able to see a guy be light-hearted and play around, and then once he hits the field, it’s go time.”
Reliever Alex Vesia usually occupies a seat close to Ohtani in the back of the staff’s aircraft, and laughed as he recounted how the famously heavy sleeper will normally sprawl out throughout an empty row, leaving a few of his 6-foot-4 body sometimes dangling within the aisle.
“He’s the most down-to-earth, normal human ever,” Vesia mentioned.
Ohtani’s love of Japanese anime has turn out to be one other level of fascination for his Dodgers teammates. Even on the evening he eclipsed the 50-homer, 50-steal threshold with a historic six-hit recreation in Miami, “we go on the bus and talk about anime shows,” reliever Joe Kelly mentioned.
“For being not only good at baseball, but being a worldwide known face … I don’t ever see him stressed out or anything,” Kelly mentioned. “That’s probably the craziest thing about it.”
That doesn’t imply the movie star circus that Ohtani attracts — reluctantly — has been with out drawbacks for the Dodgers this season.
When Roberts jokingly steered in spring coaching that since-released Jason Heyward function Ohtani’s unofficial spokesman for the media horde tasked to cowl him, dozens of reporters descended upon the veteran outfielder the next day.
Heyward took it in stride, but additionally famous: “Shohei is the guy to talk about Shohei” — one thing that has occurred much less and fewer this 12 months as Ohtani reduce off pregame media periods midseason.
There was additionally the Dodgers’ dwelling opener in March, when a number of gamers visibly expressed frustration at a clogged up clubhouse, questioning aloud how the presence of so many reporters would influence their new day by day actuality.
Within the six months since, many gamers and coaches have completed extra Ohtani-related interviews than they’ll rely, from native L.A. press to worldwide scribes to multi-camera sit-downs for TV specials airing in Japan.
No matter nuisance that has created, nevertheless, has been greater than compensated by Ohtani’s on-field manufacturing and off-field temperament.
When fellow celebrity Mookie Betts was requested in the course of the Dodgers’ last homestand if it felt like Ohtani was carrying the staff, he answered, “That’s pretty obvious … That’s why he got 700 million dollars, to carry us, and we just have to support him.”
A couple of days earlier than that, within the staff’s first dwelling recreation after Ohtani eclipsed the 50-50 mark, Kershaw led an impromptu dugout ovation earlier than Ohtani’s first at-bat.
“He really, really wants to [win] and gets excited about the possibility of postseason stuff, which is awesome,” Kershaw mentioned. “[We] kind of feed off the energy, for sure, with our club.”
These moments all hint again to Ohtani’s means to ingratiate himself along with his new teammates this 12 months.
He has razzed them in dialog, with English these across the membership have repeatedly complimented as higher than they anticipated. Provided encouragement within the dugout. And, with an easy-going outlook belied by his laser concentrate on the sector, been current within the day by day rhythms of the season, bridging the hole that after existed between him and his new staff.
“I think we’ve gotten to know him enough to know what he’s all about,” Kiké Hernández mentioned. “I’m just glad we’re seeing who Shohei is, and that we can all have a good time.”
