The question was simple.
The responses were strikingly alike.
How well have the Dodgers gotten to know Shohei Ohtani this year?
Well enough for several of his new teammates to draw a similar conclusion about the superstar’s personality; noticing an unexpected dichotomy at the heart of the 30-year-old’s success.
“[He can] be goofy and playful and look like he’s really having fun playing the game,” said veteran utilityman Chris Taylor. “But then also at the same time be super focused and locked in.”
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“He’s pretty serious,” catcher Austin Barnes echoed. “But he can joke and mess around, too. He makes me laugh.”
“He does a great job of having a child-like joy towards the game,” added reliever Blake Treinen, “but playing it like a grown man.”
“He’s almost like a little kid, trapped in a giant body,” Kiké Hernández explained. “He doesn’t necessarily always show it. But I was surprised by how much personality he has.”
Indeed, for as much as Ohtani has surpassed expectations on the field this season — he’s all but to certain to win a third career most valuable player award with 54 home runs, 59 stolen bases, a .310 batting average and 130 RBIs on a first-place Dodgers team that begins its postseason on Saturday — his acclimation behind the scenes has been equally noteworthy to people around the team.
He doesn’t exactly crack jokes. Or demand attention with showy off-field antics. But, in the first season of the 10-year, $700 million contract he signed last December, he developed a reputation as one of the more jovial characters among this year’s cast of players.
“He’s still a very private guy, but I think he just really wants to be looked at as just one of the guys,” manager Dave Roberts said. “Every day, every interaction, he’s very present and engaged.”
On the morning of the Dodgers regular-season finale last week, for example, Ohtani’s laughter rose about the din of morning chatter in a sleepy pregame clubhouse.
In the corner of the room, he and Teoscar Hernández were cracking up at their lockers. At one point, Ohtani snapped his head back with a high-pitched cackle, giggling with a wide smile planted on his face.
“He’s awesome,” Hernández said of Ohtani’s sense of humor. “And, he’s not that quiet.”
Minutes later, though, Ohtani’s attention shifted to pregame preparation. Sitting alongside first base coach Clayton McCullough, he stoically studied an iPad with the scouting report for that day’s pitcher, formulating his daily plan of attack to try and steal a base.
“Everybody says he’s kind of a private guy, but within the clubhouse and within our guys, he’s been awesome,” pitcher Clayton Kershaw said. “You can obviously see how much he cares about winning.”
It was the epitome of what Dodgers players have come to appreciate about Ohtani this season.
A light-hearted presence one moment. “He’s always got a great attitude, and he’s got a sneaky personality that’s kind of funny,” Treinen said.
Then, single-minded focus the next.
“It’s a special talent to be able to do,” Taylor said. “Being super focused and locked in and having the work ethic he has.”
While Ohtani has long been known for the latter during his MLB career, his open disposition wasn’t evident early in his Dodgers tenure, when he arrived with a notoriously private reputation.
Accompanied by his longtime interpreter, Ippei Mizuhara, at the start of spring training, there was initially a “buffer” between Ohtani and the rest of the club, as Roberts later described it. Many of Ohtani’s early interactions with teammates were limited to on-field workouts, with the slugger seemingly at a distance in the clubhouse. Mizuhara was even known to text fellow players on Ohtani’s behalf, while Ohtani himself rarely engaged in a roster-wide group message.
“It was difficult,” Roberts said of the Dodgers’ initial communication process with Ohtani, when Mizuhara was still around.
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But then, the Dodgers went to South Korea for their season-opening series in late March. Mizuhara’s theft and gambling plot was uncovered after their opening day game. And by the time the team returned home, a new dynamic was taking shape between Ohtani and the rest of the roster — which rallied around their new star addition while never casting doubt about his innocence in the scandal.
“I don’t know if the situation helped him just kind of have no choice but to feel like he’s part of the group, or [if it was] him appreciating how much we had his back, and how much we were supporting him through the probably worst times of his life, of his career,” Kiké Hernández said. “But what I’ve seen from him since — and maybe he was gonna show that regardless — but I’m just surprised by his personality and all that. He’s one of us. He’s one of the boys. And I’m glad to have him in the group.”
Teoscar Hernández, a fellow free-agent signing in his first year with the Dodgers, was among the first to develop a bond with Ohtani, giving him rudimentary lessons in his primary language, Spanish, while Ohtani taught him some basic Japanese.
“It’s been great,” said Hernández, who noted that while their language “classes” have become more infrequent over the season, their friendship has only grown tighter with time. “We try to be really close.”
An early-season rain delay at Wrigley Field offered another peek at the lighter side of Ohtani’s persona, as he toyed around with a cricket bat in the batting cages to the amusement of his teammates.
“This guy’s vibrant, playful, jokes a lot,” strength and conditioning coach Travis Smith said. “Some guys are just always focused. That’s all they do. So [it’s unique] being able to see a guy be light-hearted and play around, and then once he hits the field, it’s go time.”
Reliever Alex Vesia often occupies a seat near Ohtani at the back of the team’s plane, and laughed as he recounted how the famously heavy sleeper will usually sprawl out across an empty row, leaving some of his 6-foot-4 frame occasionally dangling in the aisle.
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“He’s the most down-to-earth, normal human ever,” Vesia said.
Ohtani’s love of Japanese anime has become another point of fascination for his Dodgers teammates. Even on the night he eclipsed the 50-homer, 50-steal threshold with a historic six-hit game in Miami, “we go on the bus and talk about anime shows,” reliever Joe Kelly said.
“For being not only good at baseball, but being a worldwide known face … I don’t ever see him stressed out or anything,” Kelly said. “That’s probably the craziest thing about it.”
That doesn’t mean the celebrity circus that Ohtani attracts — reluctantly — has been without drawbacks for the Dodgers this season.
When Roberts jokingly suggested in spring training that since-released Jason Heyward serve as Ohtani’s unofficial spokesman for the media horde tasked to cover him, dozens of reporters descended upon the veteran outfielder the following day.
Heyward took it in stride, but also noted: “Shohei is the guy to talk about Shohei” — something that has happened less and less this year as Ohtani cut off pregame media sessions midseason.
There was also the Dodgers’ home opener in March, when several players visibly expressed frustration at a clogged up clubhouse, wondering aloud how the presence of so many reporters would impact their new daily reality.
In the six months since, many players and coaches have done more Ohtani-related interviews than they can count, from local L.A. press to international scribes to multi-camera sit-downs for TV specials airing in Japan.
Whatever nuisance that has created, however, has been more than compensated by Ohtani’s on-field production and off-field temperament.
When fellow superstar Mookie Betts was asked during the Dodgers’ final homestand if it felt like Ohtani was carrying the team, he answered, “That’s pretty obvious … That’s why he got 700 million dollars, to carry us, and we just have to support him.”
A few days before that, in the team’s first home game after Ohtani eclipsed the 50-50 mark, Kershaw led an impromptu dugout ovation before Ohtani’s first at-bat.
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“He really, really wants to [win] and gets excited about the possibility of postseason stuff, which is awesome,” Kershaw said. “[We] kind of feed off the energy, for sure, with our club.”
Those moments all trace back to Ohtani’s ability to ingratiate himself with his new teammates this year.
He has razzed them in conversation, with English those around the club have repeatedly complimented as better than they anticipated. Offered encouragement in the dugout. And, with an easy-going outlook belied by his laser focus on the field, been present in the daily rhythms of the season, bridging the gap that once existed between him and his new team.
“I think we’ve gotten to know him enough to know what he’s all about,” Kiké Hernández said. “I’m just glad we’re seeing who Shohei is, and that we can all have a good time.”
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
