Two larger-than-life superstars sharing baseball's biggest stage rarely happens. This is what it took to make this year's confluence a reality.
together, be it fate or kismet or financial might or a lucky draw or some combination therein, understands the power of delayed gratification. For the past seven years, Ohtani and Judge have existed in the same baseball universe, dominating their peers wholly and incontrovertibly -- trains moving faster than everyone, only set on parallel tracks. Never, for anything meaningful, did their paths converge. Neither had reached the biggest stage, together or individually. They were monoliths.
We have no idea what kind of baseball is in store in the World Series that begins Friday between the Dodgers and Yankees, between Los Angeles and New York, between Ohtani and Judge. In no way should that diminish the excitement. The matchup takes something already special -- the first time in 41 years that the Dodgers and Yankees, the two most famous franchises in the sport, battle for a championship -- and infuses it with jet fuel.
Opportunities like this come along only every so often for baseball. The how and the why can be left to the cosmic, the unknowable. All that matters, really, is that they are here.more than 5,000 miles away from Dodger Stadium. For years, he was Japan's secret, its treasure. Maybe the best pitcher in the world -- and he could hit. As Ohtani prepared to leave Nippon Professional Baseball after the 2017 season and join MLB, big league scouts weren't convinced he could do both.
Ohtani chose the Dodgers on Dec. 9, spent spring training weathering all of the attention that came with the marriage of iconic player and organization and navigated the delicate dance of integrating into a clubhouse full of set-in-their-ways veterans while bringing with him the eyeballs of a country of 125 million people.and said he had an addiction.
Ohtani ended his age-30 season with 54 home runs and 59 stolen bases for the team with the best record in baseball -- the essential validation for his free agency decision. What the Dodgers sold him on -- that they would help make Ohtani the best version of himself -- came true. And somehow none of it seemed altogether absurd. Because this is who Ohtani is. Impossible is a goal, inconceivable an aspiration. It is the rarest quality in sports. And there's only one other player in baseball right now who can come close to matching it.nearly 3,000 miles from Yankee Stadium. He was the 32nd pick in the first round of the 2013 draft, a Fresno State outfielder whose size and the lack of comparable players concerned most teams. New York considered this a feature, not a bug.
"Judgy's just such a consistent person," Yankees manager Aaron Boone said. "You can't hide that or fake that. That's what's so impressive about him. You can't tell if he is flying high, which he normally is, or if he's 2-for-14, striking out for a few days." On July 24, 2022, about two months before he would hit his 62ndhome run and break the single-season AL home run record Roger Maris had held for more than six decades, Judge struck out in his first at-bat against Baltimore right-handeron a curveball that nearly hit the ground. He returned to the dugout, looked at Boone and said: "I got you." In his next at-bat, Judge hit a Kremer curve 456 feet. As he rounded third, he extended his index finger and pointed at Boone in the dugout.
All of it came with Judge still not performing like himself in the postseason. He finished the division series 2-for-13 and the ALCS 3-for-18, far from the sort of production expected of Judge by his team and himself. But as when his cold spring gave way to a blistering summer, Judge heats up fast. And if the Yankees can make it to the World Series without him hitting, imagine what they'll look like if he does.
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