Selling Shohei Ohtani: Can Baseball’s Biggest Talent Transform the Sport?

On a warm February morning in the Phoenix suburbs, hundreds of people gathered at the Los Angeles Dodgers’ spring training facility hours before the start of practice. They flanked the path between the locker room and the field, hoping to score an autograph. Kids flooded the team store to shop for jerseys and hats. The site, known as Camelback Ranch, has long been a destination in late winter, when baseball teams get ready for the season ahead. The Dodgers are one of the sport’s most popular clubs—seven-time World Series champions that annually lead the league in attendance—but the crowds this year have been three or four times normal size. “I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anything like it,” says Tim Kurkjian, a baseball writer and ESPN analyst who’s been attending spring training for 44 years. “It was a circus. It was amazing how many people were there, and it was all because of him.”

Him is Shohei Ohtani. The Dodgers signed him in the offseason after his contract expired with the Los Angeles Angels, who’d won the Ohtani sweepstakes when he left Japan in 2018 to come play in the US. The 6-foot-4-inch 23-year-old was the most hyped baseball import in history. Now 29, he’s considered the best player on the planet and one of the greatest to ever step on a field. Ohtani was the American League’s Most Valuable Player last year, the second time he’s won the award in the last three seasons. He could’ve earned the honors based solely on his hitting—he led the league in home runs and several other categories—but he also won 10 games as a pitcher. Professional baseball players simply don’t do both; in fact, no other slugger has had this kind of talent since a guy named Babe Ruth.