But Shohei also loves LA for a different kind of hardware. The kind you drive. LA is the driving capital of the super car enthusiast, and he is one of them. He never drove in Japan because it’s too long a process to get a license, and he never felt like he needed one.
By Yoko Morita
TOKYO — Los Angeles Dodgers fans, please stop being so insecure. Of course, Shohei Ohtani loves being a Dodger. The record $700 million, 10-year contract was a nice sweetener, but the story here in Tokyo is that he might’ve gotten more elsewhere. And isn’t that Monopoly money anyway, with Shohei deferring all but $2 million of his $70 million annual salary until after the deal is completed?
Where else could he have gone or sign in the future? And I know you’re going to say the usual suspects: San Francisco, Seattle, Toronto, and of course, back with the Angels in Anaheim. But six years there, not to mention, no rings or even a playoff berth, got to be a bit too much.
And none of those cities is Los Angeles. If you were reading the Japanese newspapers, or listening to sports on Japanese television, you would’ve known why. Shohei loves L.A. He may have been playing in Anaheim, but his heart has always been in Los Angeles.
But I get it. I studied and lived in Los Angeles. I know how overly dramatic Angelenos can be about almost everything in life. It’s what makes all of us who come there fall in love with you and with the city. There is drama in everything you do. You are the heart of the entertainment business, after all.
And Los Angeles has something no other American city can match. It has the largest Japanese population of any city outside Japan.
There’s also this. Ohtani is a historian of baseball, Japanese and American. He knows he has proven to be the best, right up there with the great Babe Ruth, and, well, he is too modest to say it, up there as today’s Babe Ruth, Shohei Ohtani.
And isn’t Shohei bigger? At 6-foot-4, Shohei the Pitcher has pitched the ball 165 kilometers an hour, more than 102 miles an hour. Did Babe Ruth the Pitcher ever throw one that fast?
And Shohei the Hitter. In this Age of the Reliever, he regularly faces three or more pitchers in every game each throwing close to 100 miles an hour, never able to groove into a piitcher he will likely see on the mound more than once in a game. In the 1920s, Babe Ruth was batting against the same pitcher four or more times each game.
Oh, yeah, but you know all that.
And Shohei doesn’t turn 30 until next July 5.
So, before the age of 30 he redefined modern baseball. No one can match his simultaneous achievements at the plate and on the mound, not to mention having become one of the most marketable athletes in the world. Which means? Aw, shucks ,are the Dodgers going to raise their ticket prices again?
Shohei was a unanimous American League MVP in 2021 and 2023 — he finished second in 2022 — and won again this year despite injuring his elbow in late August and an oblique muscle in early September.
But Shohei loves LA for a different kind of hardware. The kind you drive. LA is the driving capital of the super car enthusiast, and he is one of them.
Did you know that before Ohtani moved to the United States from Japan in 2018, he could not drive? He never drove in Japan because it’s too long a process to get a license, and he never felt like he needed one. But once in California, he got his driver’s license and set about choosing his first car.
Ohtani went electric, choosing a Tesla Model X that costs around $100,000.
The story is that Tesla creator Elon Musk showed his appreciation on Twitter when a photo appeared of the baseball hero arriving at Angels Stadium in his new wheels. Replying to a tweet that alerted Musk to Ohtani driving a Tesla, he responded with a heart emoji along with a small Japanese national flag icon.
That was just the start of Ohtani’ obsession with cars, which has included an endorsement deal with Porsche. He teamed up with Porsche in Japan to test-drive a $122,000 911 Carrera T, confessing it was the first time he had been behind the wheel of a luxury supercar.
Ohtani also owns a $330,000 Rolls-Royce Wraith equipped with a massive 6.6-liter twin-turbocharged V12 petrol engine and has a stop speed of 155mph; a $200,000 Bentley Continental GT, which can reach 207mph; a $205,000 Aston Martin DB11, the Hot New James Bond-Inspired Aston Martin; and a $170,000 Mercedes-Benz S63 AMG.
And with his new deal, no telling what else he will buy.
“This is a unique, historic contract for a unique, historic player,” Ohtani’s agent, Nez Balelo of CAA Sports, said in a statement. “He is excited to begin this partnership, and he structured his contract to reflect a true commitment from both sides to long-term success.”
Ohtani’s total is 64% higher than baseball’s previous record, a $426.5 million, 12-year deal for Angels outfielder Mike Trout that began in 2019.
His $70 million average salary is 62% above the previous high of $43,333,333, shared by pitchers Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander with deals they struck when signing with the New York Mets. Ohtani’s average salary nearly doubles the roughly $42.3 million he earned with the Angels.
But that’s just more runs, hits and errors, isn’t it?
Besides, in Japan, we all knew it was the Dodgers who had the most to gain by landing Shohei.
They want to be the greatest organization in baseball history, period.
And they have taken a major step in becoming that.
LAへようこそ、翔平。おかえりなさい
LA e yōkoso, Shōhei. Okaerinasai
Yoko Morita, who studied at UCLA and has lived in Southern California, writes the column Letters from Tokyo for LA monthly.org. She can be reached at lamonthly@lamonthly.org
