On Friday, we got a double-barreled dose of the American exceptionalism that MLB promotes wholeheartedly.
A day before the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego Padres opened Game 1 of their NLDS, Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto were asked about their feelings ahead of their “first” postseason games.
Ohtani, who came to MLB as a sixth-year pro and a former MVP, was a veteran of 13 major league postseason games between the ages of 19 and 21. In those, he went 2-2 with one save in five games as a pitcher with 29 strikeouts and a 4.38 ERA. During those years, as a part-time DH, Ohtani slashed .262/.311/.381 with one RBI.
Asked if he felt pressure ahead of his first postseason game, Ohtani said, “Nope.”
Credit to Juan Toribio, writing on the Dodgers website, for spelling out that this in not Ohtani’s first rodeo, a point that is lost on the drones blindly following MLB’s lead that the only major leagues are those anointed by MLB – even if the website’s headline writer missed the point.
Yamamoto arrived in L.A. as the highest-paid pitcher in MLB history after three years of leading the Pacific League in strikeouts, wins, and winning percentage, winning the MVP and the Eiji Sawamura Award as Japan’s most impressive starting pitcher, and starting Game 1 of the Japan Series.
In his postseason career, Yamamoto is 4-2 with a 2.97 ERA and 74 strikeouts in 57-2/3 innings, with almost all the damage coming in three of his last four starts. His last postseason outing, was a 14-strikeout gem in an elimination game that became one of his career highlights.
One reporter recognized that he had indeed pitched in big games before and asked if that would help in his MLB postseason debut, while another aske, “Are you looking forward to playing in the postseason for the first time?”
Yamamoto said he’d like to think his past experience was a positive but that the point was to just trust to the process and concentrate. As for the other question, he gave the answer most Japanese players do, “While I’m in a game, it’s not fun, although I hope it will feel like it after it’s done.”
Reporters covering two of the world’s numerous major leagues toed the official line like drones in questioning Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto about how it felt to playing in the postseason for the first time in their careers.
