Hi Everyone —
It’s 5:17 a.m. here in London, and all of the UK is buzzing, absolutely buzzing, about the incredible baseball last night.
Ha ha, no, I’m just joking, nobody here cares except maybe for a few JoeBlogs Brilliant Readers. I mean, New Zealand-England cricket is going on in Christchurch, Matthijs de Ligt gave an interview to the Telegraph about the pressures at Man United, and you get the feeling that Chelsea’s entire season is on the line today vs. Nottingham Forest.
Reggie Jackson pretty famously said, “I was reminded when we lose and I strike out, a billion people in China don’t care,” and that feels obvious, and yet it’s always at least a little bit shocking to me that here in London, where everything can feel so American — you know, McDonald’s and Starbucks everywhere, lots of people wearing baseball caps and NFL gear, etc. — the masses literally don’t care ONE BIT that Shohei Ohtani just had maybe the single greatest game in the history of postseason baseball or that Mariners are finally, finally on the brink of going to the World Series. I remember feeling this profoundly during the 2012 Olympics when the U.S. women won the Olympic gymnastics gold, and it was like the biggest story in America, and it was on, like, Page D564 in the local London papers.
Or in 2007, when I went to the Japan series and watched Chunichi Dragons pitchers Daisuke Yamai and Hitoki Iwase combine on a series-clinching perfect game, one of the most awe-inspiring things I’ve ever seen in baseball, and back home in the States, it was literally non-news, I mean, you couldn’t even find a mention of it in the endless 24-hour sports news cycle.
It’s a big world, that’s all I’m saying.
Brilliant Reader Deb sends in her scorecard from the historic Shohei game, and it’s both striking how neat it is and how clean. The Brewers really did go down quietly, didn’t they? Such a shame after such a great year.
Before we get to our short essay about last night, I did want to pass along an intentional walk rule thought from Brilliant Reader Marcus — it’s something I’ve thought about before, but Marcus puts it in a way I had not thought about. He thinks that all four-pitch walks should be two bases.
There’s a simple elegance to this: Most of the intentional walk rules that I’ve heard about or suggested myself tend to break with the order of baseball — you know, a batter should be allowed to turn down a walk or should be allowed to stay at the plate while a different runner goes to first, or should automatically move baserunners one base even if they’re not force and so on. It’s not that I dislike these ideas — I actually like some of them quite a lot — but they do not fit neatly into the rhythms of the game.
But “ALL four-pitch walks are two bases” is simple, easily implemented, and perfectly logical. Why should a four-pitch walk be treated like any other walk? It seems totally reasonable that if you don’t give the batter a single pitch in the strike zone — whether out of wildness or reluctance — the batter should automatically be put in scoring position. This works really well in IBB circumstances, but it also works in regular situations. And the zombie runner extra inning rule already set the precedent; MLB has no problem just putting a runner on second base when it suits their interests.
Anyway, just a baseball thought on this foggy morning in Londontown.
Today’s special weekend post is brought to you free by the Brilliant Readers in The Clubhouse. Their support keeps this place going — and keeps me writing ball at 5:17 a.m., even when visiting our daughter in London. These are challenging times for storytellers of all stripes, and if you enjoy what we have going and want to be part of it, there’s always room for you in The Clubhouse — you can join here.
Shohei. Oh, and check out the expression of Brewers catcher William Contreras. Priceless.
(Rob Leiter | MLB Photos via Getty Images)
You might know my Shohei story from Why We Love Baseball — I wrote a chapter about his awesomeness as any author of a book called Why We Love Baseball would do — I just picked one of his many awesome games. After the book was done and ready to be sent out to reviewers, Ohtani struck out Mike Trout in the World Baseball Classic. I sent a note to my editor, John, asking if it was too late to completely rewrite the Shohei chapter.
It WAS too late, but John, being John, held up the presses so I could write the chapter all over again.
A few weeks later, Shohei had that doubleheader when he pitched a shutout in one game and hit two homers in the other.
I got a note from John the next morning saying, “Too late for this one.”
The point is that Shohei Ohtani will keep on doing impossible things because he’s the most impossible baseball player who has ever lived.
It’s very funny that before his latest impossible thing on Friday night — Shohei the Lightning Bolt Thrower pitched six shutout innings with 10 strikeouts and Shohei the Destroyer blasted three titanic home runs to dispatch the Milwaukee Brewers — I got a text from a friend who would probably prefer to remain nameless, lamenting for the second straight day how much Ohtani struggles in the postseason.
Friend: Ohtani in 120 postseason PA: .202/.336/.384/.720, 1 2B, 1 3B, 5 HR. … We’re up to 120 AB in the playoffs now, and Shohei looks decidedly mediocre.
Me: Meh. I’m still not challenging him.
Friend: I think I am.
Right. In case you’re wondering, Ohtani raised his OPS 128 points in one night, which both highlights the volatility of small sample sizes and the absurdity of ever questioning Shohei Ohtani. He does go into slumps; he is human … but only barely so.
Saying that he hit three home runs, by the way, is like saying that Matisse painted three pictures or saying that the Beatles wrote three songs. Each homer was its own Homer epic.
Homer 1 was a 117-mph, 445-foot heroic poem pulled into the upper echelon of the right-field stands.
Homer 2 was a 117-mph, 469-foot folk story that went over the roof in center field.
Homer 3 was a 114-mph, opposite-field legend.
There are only a few people in the history of our spinning planet capable of hitting ANY of those home runs at any point in their lives.
Then, how many people in the history of our spinning planet do you think could have struck out 10 Milwaukee Brewers in a clinching playoff game — three on 100 mph fastballs, two on gravity-defying sweepers, five on disappearing splitters?
Same guy? Same day? It boggles the mind. It really does. Shohei had done so much. But this, well, I was probably the only person in London whose phone kept blowing up all night with text messages like, “I can’t be the only person texting you to ask if you think this is the greatest single game performance in history?”*
*You’re not. It is.
And messages like: “Shohei Ohtani had three homers in Game 4; the Brewers as a team hit one homer in the whole series. Shohei Ohtani had 10 strikeouts in Game 4; the Brewers’ starters had seven strikeouts in the whole series.”
And messages like: “Question: If you put Shohei Ohtani on a high school baseball team, could that team beat a Major League team?”*
*Probably not but only because of the Intentional Walk. If FORCED to pitch to Ohtani, yes, absolutely the Roosevelt High Lakers or Roosevelt Mustangs or Roosevelt Teddies could beat any team on the day he pitches.
And messages like: "Is this guy even for real?”
I don’t have an answer for that last one. He doesn’t seem real.
On the same day — 1,134.7 miles up the coast — the remarkable-in-his-own-way miles Eugenio Suárez clubbed the biggest hit in Seattle baseball history, an eighth-inning grand slam that beat the Blue Jays and put the Mariners on the brink of their first-ever World Series. There’s work to do; the Mariners still have to go to Toronto and take one of the final two games from the Blue Jays, but the mission is almost complete.
As big as the Suárez blast was, I should say that most legendary home runs in baseball history come with a less legendary home run that set things up. Before Bill Mazeroski’s home run, there was Hal Smith’s. Before Carlton Fisk’s home run, there was Bernie Carbo’s. And before Geno’s slam, there was Cal Raleigh’s towering fly ball that sailed and sailed and plopped in the third row of the left field stands. In any other year, we wouldn’t be able to stop talking about a catcher — a CATCHER — hitting 64 home runs in a season. That sounds fictional, too.
