Shohei and The Land of 1,000 Bobbleheads

Thursday night was Shohei Ohtani Bobblehead Night at Dodger Stadium, and, what do you know, Shohei smashed two home runs because of course he did — he’s Shohei and Shohei lives to blow our minds every single day if possible.

I mean, what are the odds that Shohei would smash two home runs on his own bobblehead day?

Actually … the odds are probably better than you would think.

When I was a kid, the big ballpark promotion was bat day. There were other cool giveaways — ball day, jacket day, cap day, T-shirt day, I think we did all of them because my father has always believed in getting value for his dollar — but bat day was the big one. I mean, they really used to give full size (well, Little League-size) baseball bats to thousands and thousands of people. Were we a better society then? I mean, that obvious answer is: No. We were definitely NOT a better society then — for about 10,000 reasons. But it was a time when they could give bats to, say, 10,000 or 20,000 people and be confident that people would not use them to beat each other. That’s something.

Somewhere along the way, bats and balls gave way to knickknacks and bobbleheads. The Guardians this year offer two of my favorirte promotions. One is coming up in a few days, May 26, it’s “Mystery Reliever Jersey Day.” The first 15,000 people will get a jersey of a Cleveland reliever … but they don’t know if it will be Cade Smith’s jersey (yay!), Hunter Gaddis’ jersey (yay!) or Tim Herrin’s jersey (yay—?). This is reminiscent of the old bat days; my friend Dan’s first baseball game was bat day at Yankee Stadium in 1966. He obviously wanted a Mickey Mantle bat. He got a Bobby Richardson bat instead.*

My other favorite Cleveland giveaway this year will be on Tom Hamilton day — to honor Tom going into the Hall of Fame*. What they giving out? A “Tom Hamilton commemorative item!” That’s all it says. I hope it’s a path of his clothing like they do with baseball cards.

But we’re getting away from the point here — the point is that Shohei Ohtani hit two home runs on his bobblehead giveaway day, and that’s definitely feels like rare air. And it is … except there are actually FOUR Shohei bobblehead days this year. I mean, you give Shohei four bobblehead days, it’s inevitable he’ll have a two homer game in one of them at least.

That’s right: Four Shohei bobbleheads. In all, the Dodgers have 21 bobblehead days in 2025, more than one-quarter of all their games.

Here’s the list of umpcoming bobbles!

• Vin Scully bobblehead day (this Monday!)

• Will Smith bobblehead day (two days later)

• Tommy Edman bobblehead day (really? yep — June 2)

• Blake Snell bobblehead day (June 16 — with toy scalpel to perform Tommy John surgery on him!)

• Ice Cube bobblehead day (June 21 — he ain’t got no haters!)

• Yoshinobu Yamamoto bobblehead day (July 2)

• Ron Cey bobblehead day (July 18 — Penguin Forever!)

• Fernando Valenzuela bobblehead day (the next day, July 19)

• Teoscar Hernandez bobblehead day (July 22)

• Rōki Sasaki bobblehead day (August 4)

• Kobe Bryant bobblehead day (August 8, wait, Kobe gets one? Who isn’t getting one? Where’s Blake Treinen)

• Blake Treinen bobblehead day (August 25 — oh, there he is).

• Shohei Ohtani bobblehead day (August 27 — his third of the season)

• Shohei Ohtani bobblehead day (September 10 — hit fourth of the seaosn. And that should do it, no, actually, wait …)

• Tyler Glasnow bobblehead day (September 18)

That’s all? Where’s my Manny Mota bobblehead!

Look, I’m actually great with this — the more giveaways for the fans that better.

Thursday’s Shohei bobble was to commemorate his 50/50 season — I think it was supposed to represent the 50 stolen bases part (based on the fact that the bobblehead is of him sliding into a base). So while yes, he did hit two home runs to move into a tie for the homer lead, and yes, he’s hitting .310/408/.673 for the season now and all that. But he stole zero bases on Shohei Ohtani bobblehead day too. Where’s the coverage of that?

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