Photo/Illutration Shohei Ohtani of the Los Angeles Dodgers hits his 54th homer of the season in the sixth inning against the Colorado Rockies on Sept. 27 in Denver. (Kazushige Kobayashi)

Shohei Ohtani of the Los Angeles Dodgers of Major League Baseball finished the regular season on Sept. 29.  

Watching the final game live on TV before dawn, I was blown away anew by his 2024 statistics as a batter—54 home runs, 59 stolen bases and 130 runs batted in.

These numbers almost make me forget that he is still rehabbing as a pitcher.

Ohtani seems indifferent to his own records. Last month, however, when he became the first MLB player ever with 50 home runs and 50 stolen bases in the same season, his remarks left a deep impression.

He said to the effect that his records until then had been compiled against “only a small number of people for comparison” but the 50-50 was “different” in the sense that there were “more people for comparison.”

True, his stats as a two-way player were compiled in the absence of competitors, and he may have felt lonely traveling alone off the beaten path, so to speak. But this year, he had great sluggers of the past to catch up to and overtake.

To me, all his records are equally spectacular. But to Ohtani, each record probably looks and feels different.

In “Battoman ni Eiko wo” (Crown of laurels for the batter), sports writer Junji Yamagiwa (1948-1995) wrote about the loneliness and agony of a ballplayer going for a record—Sachio Kinugasa (1947-2018), the legendary third baseman for the Hiroshima Toyo Carp.

In 1987, Kinugasa broke, for the first time in 48 years, Lou Gehrig’s (1903-1941) record of 2,130 consecutive games played.

In the winter before the 1987 season, Kinugasa visited the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, New York, to which Gehrig, whose record he was poised to break, had been elected back in 1939.

Kinugasa was too modest to even compare himself to Gehrig, but the president of the museum told him that baseball is always baseball, in whatever country and culture it is played.

Ohtani’s extraordinary feat, which has amazed MLB, is also a message to the next generation: If there is no precedent, make it by yourself. Records are meant to be limitless and to be broken.

—The Asahi Shimbun, Oct. 1

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Vox Populi, Vox Dei is a popular daily column that takes up a wide range of topics, including culture, arts and social trends and developments. Written by veteran Asahi Shimbun writers, the column provides useful perspectives on and insights into contemporary Japan and its culture.

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