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 DH with otherworldly
power at the plate--from his early days in Japan to his historic 2021 season,
the 2023 World Baseball Classic, and more!

Shohei Ohtani of the Los Angeles Angels plays baseball like
no other athlete on the planet--an electric two-way player awarded the 2021
American League Most Valuable Player, the only player ever named an All-Star
Selection as both a two-way dominant pitcher and elite hitter, a member of Time
100's most influential people of 2021, and now the MVP of the 2023 World
Baseball Classic. In Ohtani's first two-way game of the 2021 season, he threw a
pitch at 100 mph and hit a homer that left his bat at 115 mph, a confluence of
feats unmatched by anyone else in the sport. He's racked up eye-popping
achievements throughout his career, but awards and numbers tell only part of
his amazing story.

In Sho-Time, award-winning sportswriter Jeff
Fletcher--who has covered Ohtani more than any other American journalist--charts
Ohtani's path through Japanese baseball to a championship with the Nippon-Ham
Fighters, the recruiting war to bring him to the majors, his AL Rookie of the
Year campaign, subsequent injury-riddled seasons, the historic 2021 season, his
2023 World Baseball Classic, and beyond. Fletcher weaves in the history of
two-way players--including Babe Ruth and unsung Negro Leagues players like
"Bullet" Joe Rogan, Martin Dihigo, and Ted "Double Duty" Radcliffe--and the
Japanese athletes who preceded Ohtani in the majors. With insight from Japanese
and American baseball front office personnel, managers, scouts, athletic
trainers, ballplayers, and more, Sho-Time breaks down the physics of
Ohtani's game, his technologically advanced training, his international fame,
and the role his role leading baseball into a new era.

ISBN-13: 9781635767971

Media Type: Hardcover

Publisher: Diversion Books

Publication Date: 07-19-2022

Pages: 256

Product Dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.90(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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