Sho-Time: The Inside Story of Shohei Ohtani and the Greatest Baseball Season Ever Played

The story behind Shohei Ohtani's legendary MVP season as baseball's greatest two-way player-dominant pitcher and outfielder/DH with otherworldly power at the plate-and his path from his early days in Japan to the most fascinating figure in Major League Baseball, with a start-to-finish inside look at his historic 2021 season.

ISBN-13: 9781635769234

Media Type: Paperback

Publisher: Diversion Books

Publication Date: 08-29-2023

Pages: 256

Product Dimensions: 6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.80(d)

Jeff Fletcher has covered Major League Baseball since 1997, including eight seasons on the Los Angeles Angels beat for the Orange County Register, and has covered Shohei Ohtani more than any other writer in the United States. Jeff has also covered the San Francisco Giants and Oakland A's and worked as a national baseball writer. He is a Hall of Fame voter and has served as chairman of the Los Angeles chapter of the Baseball Writers Association of America since 2015. He lives in Los Angeles, California.

Table of Contents

Foreword Joe Maddon xi

Prologue xiii

Chapter 1 A Yakyu Shorten 1

Chapter 2 "He Proved It To Me" 9

Chapter 3 An Unprecedented Recruiting Battle 24

Chapter 4 Blessed and Cursed 42

Chapter 5 "You Have To Give It Time" 52

Chapter 6 "Out of the Gate Better Than Anyone Was Expecting" 64

Chapter 7 A Discouraging Diagnosis 82

Chapter 8 Two Challenging Seasons 93

Chapter 9 High-Tech Diamond Polishing 110

Chapter 10 New Approach, New Hope 127

Chapter 11 The Start of Something Extraordinary 139

Chapter 12 "The Gold Standard" 152

Chapter 13 Star Among Stars 170

Chapter 14 Brilliance Amid Disappointment 184

Chapter 15 "Unicorn" 197

Epilogue 207

Acknowledgments 211

Notes 215

Sources 221

Index 225

About the Author 233

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