Modern Day Babe Ruth — Baseball Bench Coach

My favorite page in the morning newspaper is the one that shows the current MLB standings, the pitching matchups for the games to be played that day, and the box scores of games played the day before. I sometimes spend a half hour digesting the information, the box scores in particular. I love to follow how some of my favorite hitters fared or the pitching lines for the top hurlers in the league. And now every fifth day or so when the Los Angeles Angels are in a box score, a name appears twice, Ohtani!

A week ago in Boston, Shohei Ohtani posted some remarkable numbers as his Angels routed the Red Sox, 8-0. His pitching line read 7 innings pitched, no runs allowed, 11 strikeouts, and 0 walks. A pretty good day by any measure, but that’s only half the story. Batting as the designated hitter, Ohtani was 2 for 4, 1 run scored, and 1 RBI. The side story of the two hits added a little color to the box score. His first hit was a 389-foot single that was a foot shy of a home run. Ohtani followed that with a drive in the eighth inning that hit the Green Monster at Fenway Park, literally knocking his # 17 out of the pitcher’s slot on the scoreboard. Shohei is clearly the Modern Day Babe Ruth.

Over 100 years ago, a name often appeared twice in a box score, Ruth. In fact, the box score for the fourth game of the 1918 World Series, also played at Fenway Park, shows a pitching line in Boston’s 3-2 win over the Cubs as follows – Ruth, 8 innings, 2 earned runs, 7 hits, winning pitcher. Babe Ruth, who most deem the greatest MLB player ever, batted sixth in the Red Sox lineup that day. He added most of the team’s offense, a 2-RBI triple and a sacrifice bunt. Although Babe had won 23 games as a pitcher for the Red Sox in each of two seasons, he wanted to be an everyday player and full-time hitter. Indeed, this 1918 game was his last MLB start on the mound; he was sold to the Yankees in the offseason. 100 years later, in 2018, Ruth would receive posthumously the Presidential Medal of Freedom as baseball’s all-time slugger.

In 1919 Ruth broke the MLB single-season home run record. It was the beginning of a string of 15 years with the Yankees where he led the New Yorkers to seven AL pennants and four world championships. There are so many wonderful stories around the legend of Babe Ruth, the most famous being the “Called Shot” in the 1932 World Series. In the third game, at Wrigley Field, Charlie Root, one of the winningest pitchers in Cubs history, was on the mound as Ruth stepped into the batter’s box in the fifth inning. Ruth took two strikes, and then stepped out of the box, gesturing toward the outfield fence. He stepped back in and launched a 490 foot home run into temporary seating beyond the centerfield bleachers. Root would throw only one more pitch in the game, a home run ball to Lou Gehrig, who batted cleanup in the game’s box score. The Ruth-Gehrig twosome formed the core of the “Murderer’s Row” of Yankee baseball in that era.

The legend of Shohei Ohtani is a work in progress. This is only his fifth year in major league baseball. From 2013 to 2017 he starred in the Japanese Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) League as a pitcher/hitter for the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters. During his time in the NPB, his fastball was recorded at 102.5 mph, the fastest in Japanese baseball history. In 2018 he signed with the Angels and easily won the American League Rookie of the Year award. Last year Shohei was named the AL MVP. In announcing the award, MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred called Ohtani’s season “historically significant” and a “major impact on the sport”. Indeed, this past week Shohei received the Commissioner’s Historic Achievement Award.

There was another first for Ohtani this week. In the Angels’ 11-3 win over the Tampa Bay Rays, he hit his first grand slam as a professional. Ironically, he had a little help in the win as his teammate, Mike Trout, also homered. Trout, the 2012 AL Rookie of the Year and a 3-time AL MVP winner, is Ruth’s Gehrig to Ohtani. The Angels can only hope that they have formed their own “Murderer’s Row” leading to a championship or two in the near future.

Baseball author Stanley Cohen, in his wonderful 1981 book, “The Man in the Crowd”, said this about box scores: “The box score is the catechism of baseball, ready to surrender its truth to the knowing eye.” In today’s box scores, Los Angeles Angels pitcher/designated hitter Shohei Ohtani will certainly catch your eye.

Until next Monday,

your Baseball Bench Coach