For Ohtani, that’s one World Series title down and ‘nine more’ to go

NEW YORK — When Shohei Ohtani was a sophomore in high school, his baseball coach at Hanamaki Higashi High School introduced him to a method of self-improvement called the Harada method.

Named for Takashi Harada, a former physical education teacher in Japan, the method found its way to the high school through Hiroshi Sasaki, the school’s meticulous and venerated baseball coach. It included five stages — goals, purpose, analysis, plan and action — and the way Sasaki saw it, it offered his players a blueprint for their futures.

The players were asked to write down their goals and a list of strategies to achieve them. When Ohtani filled his out, he wrote of matters philosophical and practical. He wanted to have a “tenacity for victory” and “a cool head and hot passion.” He wanted to read more books, pick up after himself, gain weight and “get rid of uneasy feelings.”

Ohtani wrote of wanting to throw a baseball 99 mph and become a top baseball prospect. But another box seemed to encapsulate his mission: “Have clear goals and purposes.”

Ohtani eventually left high school, but he never stopped making goals. He wanted to play in Nippon Professional Baseball as a pitcher and a hitter. So he did.

He wanted to do the same in MLB, upending a century of conventional baseball wisdom. So he did.

He won two Most Valuable Player Awards for the Los Angeles Angels as perhaps the most singular talent in baseball history, starring as a pitcher and a hitter. He signed a $700 million contract with the Los Angeles Dodgers and deferred $680 million of it for 10 years. And when a second Tommy John surgery left him unable to pitch this year, his first with the Dodgers, he set a goal to be the first MLB player to hit 50 homers and steal 50 bases. He did that, too.

The latest goal he achieved came late Wednesday night, in the moments after the Dodgers beat the New York Yankees to win the World Series, four games to one. Amid a euphoric celebration, with music blasting and beer pooling into puddles on the floor of the visiting clubhouse at Yankee Stadium, Ohtani ran into Andrew Friedman, the Dodgers’ president of baseball operations.

When the Dodgers recruited Ohtani last winter, the club’s chair, Mark Walter, mentioned the team’s checkered October past. The Dodgers had been the class of the sport for a decade, but had just one World Series championship in 2020 to show for it. Walter labeled it “a failure.”

On Wednesday, as one championship became two, Ohtani had a message for Friedman. “All right,” he said, “nine more, nine more.”

The “nine,” in this case, was World Series championships, which corresponded with the nine seasons that Ohtani has remaining on his Dodgers contract.

“In his first year, he won a championship,” Friedman said. “He’s like: ‘This is easy. We’re just going to do it again nine more times.’”

One can assume, of course, that Ohtani was joking. Maybe it was the Champagne talking. But considering everything else he has accomplished in his seven seasons in the major leagues, maybe it was just one more goal to chase.

“We were able to get through the regular season, I think, because of the strength of this team, this organization,” Ohtani said in a news conference after the game. “And the success of the postseason is very similar to how we were able to pull it off during the regular season. Again, the strength of the organization. Extremely honored to be a part of this.”

On the field, Ohtani’s first World Series had not gone quite to plan. He was just 1-for-8 at the plate before sustaining a partial dislocation of his left shoulder in Game 2. He returned for Game 3 in New York, wearing tape to keep his shoulder in his place, but he hit just .105 (2-for-19) with two walks for the series. If Ohtani was more injured than he let on, even Friedman was not sure.

“He was playing with one arm in the postseason,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “So most guys would probably tap out, but he was going to not be denied at playing and posting and being in the lineup.”

It did little to mute Ohtani’s excitement inside the winning clubhouse. He sprayed Friedman in the face with Champagne. Three minutes later, he got Walker Buehler, surprising the starting pitcher who had come on in relief and closed out Game 5. As Ohtani moved about the room, he seemed to tilt the gravity of the celebration, a wave of Japanese reporters in his wake.

Major League Baseball had granted nearly 180 credentials to members of the Japanese media, another number that helped measure Ohtani’s impact on baseball and the Dodgers. Nearly 16 million people in Japan tuned in to the Dodgers’ victory in Game 2.

When Ohtani most likely collects his third Most Valuable Player Award this offseason, he will be just the ninth player in MLB history with three MVP Awards and a World Series ring — and just the third to have also made his debut within the last 50 years. The other two recent examples are Albert Pujols and Alex Rodriguez, and the rest of the list is dotted with inner circle Hall of Famers: Stan Musial, Yogi Berra, Mickey Mantle, Mike Schmidt, Roy Campanella and Jimmie Foxx.

If you believe Friedman, Ohtani has the opportunity to pass them all.

“I think there’s a legitimate argument that he’s the greatest player to ever play the game,” Friedman said. “So obviously all this does is help further that.”

The case is statistical: In seven seasons, Ohtani has hit 225 career home runs while posting a career .945 on-base plus slugging percentage, nearly 57% better than the league average. Over that same period, he has a 3.01 earned run average across 86 starts.

The case is also historical: The World Series has been played for more than a century. Nobody has quite broken the sport the way Ohtani has.

“What Shohei’s done to our ballclub, the Dodger fan base domestically, globally, I just don’t think you can quantify,” Roberts said.

As the celebration raged, the team’s president, Stan Kasten, did not try to quantify the expanding fan base overseas. Instead he spoke of the enduring Dodgers brand.

“We’re Jackie,” he said. “We’re Sandy. We’re Fernando. And on and on and on.”

Soon enough, he will add Shohei to the list.

In one corner stood Mookie Betts, a three-time World Series champion, including twice with the Dodgers. And somewhere was Freddie Freeman, the World Series MVP and two-time champion. But in the middle of the room was Ohtani, spraying Champagne onto his teammate Yoshinobu Yamamoto. At one point, he saw Kasten. The team president offered three words: “Good choice, Shohei.”

Ohtani would tell reporters that he felt honored to play for a team like the Dodgers. The World Series championship itself, he said, was a “tremendous honor.” He was, at last, a World Series champion. He clutched a bottle of bubbly in his arm. As in his days at Hanamaki Higashi High School, he had chased a dream and accomplished it. Now it was on to the next one.

Nine more?

A reporter asked Roberts about the promise.

“I don’t want to get to pressure yet,” Roberts said. “I’ve dealt with pressure quite a bit. I’m going to enjoy this one. But once we get to spring training, that’s certainly going to be the goal, yes.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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