What Shohei Ohtani’s World Series Debut Means for Baseball

The key to the 2024 World Series might lie in Shohei Ohtani’s smile. 

Ohtani continues to push the limits of what a baseball player can accomplish. Although injury prevented him from pitching in his first season as a Los Angeles Dodger, he went ahead and became the first player ever to hit at least 50 home runs and steal 50 bases in a single season. Now he’s making his much-anticipated World Series debut, against the mighty New York Yankees.

But if you think he might put extra pressure on himself during the Fall Classic, well, not necessarily, says Joe Maddon, Ohtani’s onetime manager with his former team, the Los Angeles Angels. “At home plate, if he doesn’t like the umpire’s call, he may give him a whimsical look,” Maddon tells TIME. “Him being playful is very important. If he’s lighthearted out there, and he’s showing he’s not pressing, that’s a really good sign.”

L.A.’s matchup with the Yankees is a joyous boon for the game. A resumption of a historic rivalry between two storied franchises, this World Series features game’s biggest superstars on opposing sides: Ohtani on the Dodgers, and Aaron Judge, who hit 58 home runs this season and is in line to win his second American League MVP award, in Yankee pinstripes. Ohtani vs. Judge, in the World Series, is the stuff of Hollywood fantasies.

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For example, NBA fans always thirsted for its two leading lights, Kobe Bryant and LeBron James, to go shot for shot in the Finals. It never happened. 

Baseball’s Kobe-LeBron moment starts on Friday in Southern California. 

The matchup features plenty of other big names (Juan Soto, Gerrit Cole, Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman) as well. Coming off a 2023 World Series, between the Texas Rangers and Arizona Diamondbacks, that was the least-watched in history, America’s pastime has a chance to reclaim its place as the epicenter of sports, for a few weeks at least. 

“If you’re looking for a bump, a Major League baseball bump, this is it,” says Maddon. “You’ve got the two best teams. You have the two marquee names. Ohtani getting to the Dodgers and now being in the World Series has really galvanized baseball on the world stage. If you’re looking to expand your footprint, now’s the time.”  

Ohtani has made his mark during these playoffs. At one point in the National League Championship Series (NLCS) against the New York Mets, Ohtani had recorded 17 hits in his last 20 at-bats with runners in scoring position (RISP): he became the first player since 1961 to have that many hits with RISP in a 20 at-bat stretch. Ohtani hit .364 with two homers, six RBI, nine walks, and a 1.184 on base-plus slugging percentage (OPS) against the Mets.

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Given his track record, Ohtani’s accomplishments come as no shock. But Stan Kasten, president and CEO of the Dodgers, underestimated how much signing Ohtani as a free agent before this season would lift his franchise off the field. “We’re pretty sophisticated about our business, and so we had projections about all the ways it could impact us,” says Kasten. “I didn’t think we were being conservative. But as it turns out, we were being, in some cases, wildly conservative.” Ticket sales and sponsorship revenue beat expectations. Ohtani jerseys dotted Dodger Stadium. More people paid to just visit the ballpark. “There’s not a time of day that I am in this stadium that I will not bump into a crowd of people on a tour all over our stadium,” says Kasten.

The entire sport is reaping rewards from Ohtani’s playoff success. Los Angeles’ Game 5 Division Series showdown with San Diego, which also featured a pair of Japanese-born starting pitchers—Yu Darvish of the Padres and Yoshinobu Yamamoto of the Dodgers—drew a 19.2 rating in Japan, which amounts to an estimated 12.9 million average viewers. It was the most-watched MLB playoff game, ever, in Japan, even though it started around 9 a.m. local time. The Dodgers-Mets NLCS averaged 5.64 million viewers on Fox and FS1, an increase of 20% from last year. The Dodgers-Yankees clash promises to deliver even more robust figures. 

Not that long ago, fans—not to mention MLB execs—fretted about Ohtani’s lack of postseason presence. In his six seasons with the Angels, he never really sniffed the playoffs. The team never even finished above .500. Maddon believes Japan’s World Baseball Classic victory over the United States in March 2023 whetted Ohtani’s appetite for big-ticket wins. Ohtani struck out his then-Angels teammate, Mike Trout, on a full-count slider in a one-run game to clinch it: he threw his hat and glove and could not have been more jubilant. Ohtani then won his second AL MVP award. 

It was time, however, for him to move on to a winning team, and signing with the Dodgers, the 2020 World Series champs who had won their division in 10 of the previous 11 seasons, last December made sense. Ohtani offered to defer $680 million of his 10-year, $700 million contract; he’d get paid $2 million a season through the life of the deal, then $68 million annually from 2034 to 2043. Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman called Kasten as soon as he received the deferment offer. “He and I both said, ‘Yeah, we can do that,’” says Kasten. “‘You bet!’”

“He articulated to us that he wanted us to still have the resources to build the team,” says Kasten. “That’s pretty damn good.” The Dodgers, for example, were able to add outfielder Teoscar Hernández, an All-Star this year, and trade for pitcher Tyler Glasnow from the Tampa Bay Rays and sign him to a five-year, $136.5 million contract extension. Glasnow made his first All-Star team this season, though an injury has caused him to miss the postseason.   

“In fact, on his first day here, on his own initiative, he taped a video for us to send to Tyler as we were trying to get him to come here,” says Kasten. “He was all in from day one.”

A surprise scandal, however, threatened to derail everything. While in Seoul with the team in late March, as the Dodgers started their season with a pair of games against the Padres, Kasten got word, in the middle of the night in South Korea, that media outlets were working on a story connecting Ohtani to payments to illegal bookmakers. “That was like, Oh my God, all these plans we’ve made, are they all going to go away?” Kasten remembers thinking. “Are they all going to vanish? But that was, mercifully, very short-lived.”

Ohtani’s legal team accused his longtime interpreter and confidant, Ippei Mizuhara, of stealing millions of dollars from Ohtani and placing bets with an illegal bookmaker. Federal officials in April said Mizuhara stole $16 million from Ohtani, and a prosecutor called Ohtani “a victim in this case.” In June, Mizuhara pleaded guilty to bank- and tax-fraud charges. Sentencing in his case is set for December. 

Once the Dodgers dismissed Mizuhara, Ohtani started to connect with his teammates. Mizuhara, says Kasten, had acted as a buffer. “We saw a very reserved, protective guy,” says Kasten. “When that changed, and we started dealing with Shohei on a one-to-one basis, he became everyone’s best friend. No question about it. The relationship was night and day. There’s no one in this locker room, in this organization, who would disagree with that.”

Ohtani put the disruption behind him. Elbow surgery prevented him from pitching this season, so he added a new dimension to his game: stealing bases. “He always wanted to run,” says Maddon. “When he was pitching, he wanted to run when he got on base. I’d basically have to say, ‘No, don’t go.’ And I put the hold sign on.” Ohtani slides feet first into bases to protect his arm. That habit, however, never put Kasten at ease as his team’s generational hitter, and (when healthy) pitcher, ran wild on the bases. Kasten says he worried about injuries “only three or four times every effing day.” 

Ohtani swaggered into the 50-50 club in Miami on Sept. 19, when he smacked three home runs (his 49th, 50th, and 51st), stole two bases (50 and 51), and finished 6 for 6 with 10 RBI in a 20-4 rout over the Marlins. Kasten was watching from home. He giggled with joy. 

Maddon, who in 2016 led the Chicago Cubs to their first World Series title in 108 years, gives the Dodgers the slight edge over New York in the series, given the depth of their lineup. Kasten declined to give a prediction, in fear of providing bulletin-board material to the Yankees. 

No two teams have met more often in the World Series. This is the 12th matchup between the Dodgers and Yankees and the fifth since the Dodgers moved from Brooklyn to Los Angeles after the 1957 season. The Yankees hold an 8-3 advantage, though the Dodgers won the last meeting, way back in 1981. 

“I feel a sense of history involved,” says Kasten. “I also feel the sense of New Age drama and excitement. Because these are two stars that could be on our stage for a long time. To have this World Series right now, at a time baseball is experiencing renewed attention, renewed excitement, especially internationally, this is a dream come true for all of us who are involved. And it’s fantastic for all of our fans.”