MR. EVERYTHING

WHEN SHOHEI OHTANI TAKES A SEAT ON A SHADED BENCH TO await his turn in the batting cage at Los Angeles Angels spring training, the feeling is like a restaurant when a movie star is escorted to a table. Everyone pretends not to notice, but the mood in the room is suddenly giddy.

An All-Star pitcher who hits 46 home runs will do that.

Ohtani is a baseball savant doing what has never been seen in Major League Baseball history. The last player to both pitch and hit at an elite level was Babe Ruth, a century ago. But the Bambino stopped pitching relatively early in his career to concentrate on hitting. And no one ever called Ruth fast. Ohtani, the unanimous American League MVP, stole 26 bases last year.

And look at the guy. Baseball’s savior has the body of a Marvel superhero and plays with the joy of a child. In practice, when Ohtani laughs muffing a grounder, what carries across the infield could be the giggle of a cartoon mouse.

The start of any new baseball season brings hope, and baseball has never needed it more. Opening Day this year, April 7, came as the former national pastime struggles with its declining cachet in America. The game has grown too slow—the average affair runs as long as Gandhi, more than three hours—and a bit stale, with a preponderance of home runs and strikeouts robbing its incremental drama. This offseason was dominated by a frustrating 99-day lockout that threatened to deprive fans of two great attractions: Major League ballparks freed from pandemic capacity restrictions at the start of the season, and a Japanese-born phenom building off a 2021 season that galvanized everyone but him.

“To be honest, I’m not impressed with what I did personally,” Ohtani, 27, tells