The pitch sequence to Trout:

Pitch 1: Slider low, 88 MPH
Pitch 2: Fastball swinging strike, 100 MPH
Pitch 3: Fastball outside, 100 MPH
Pitch 4: Fastball swinging strike, 100 MPH
Pitch 5: Fastball low, 102 MPH
Pitch 6: Slider swinging strike, 87 MPH

I'm gonna need some kleenex.

All around me
All around me
Better watch that man
See him "ball" in hand
No one seems to see
No one seems to see
Better watch that man
See him "ball" in hand
What you gonna do next
What you gonna do now
Use a Kleenex

#3 Generation X - nice

What a game!!!!!!!!!!

For once, the US got decent pitching, but couldn't get the big hit. And the DP in the ninth just killed them.

That slider was absolutely filthy. I think everyone in the ballpark was expecting the heater there.

Phenomenal tournament though. Great games, great atmosphere, it was so much fun.

Seems like Japanese pitchers threw tons of sinkers. Is there a certain philosophy that makes that pitch more prevalent in Japan?

What a great way for this to end!

Great game, great tournament.

A pity that it was Mike Trout who made that last out, but here's for Mike to have other opportunities to shine in the spotlight.

The pitch sequence to Trout:

Pitch 1: Slider low, 88 MPH
Pitch 2: Fastball swinging strike, 100 MPH
Pitch 3: Fastball outside, 100 MPH
Pitch 4: Fastball swinging strike, 100 MPH
Pitch 5: Fastball low, 102 MPH
Pitch 6: Slider swinging strike, 87 MPH

This is from a man who batted .435/.606/.739 in the tournament. Just let that sink in.

We have never seen anyone like Shohei Ohtani and may never again.

At one point in the telecast, the booth said about Ohtani that "he throws as hard as Gerrit Cole, hits the ball as hard as Aaron Judge, and runs as fast as... Trea Turner."

Now, that's slight hyperbole: He might throw harder than Cole, hit the ball just a tick softer than Judge, and StatCast has his avg sprint speed in the top quartile (though he ranks first among DH, and fifth from home-to-first--an amazing stat considering his size).

All of which is to say... well, I think Casey Stengel said it best when describing the gifts of a young Mickey Mantle: "The kid ain't logical."

Ohtani doesn't make sense. There is no way to really quantify what this man is doing. WAR doesn't do him justice; hell, calling him a "Unicorn" doesn't do him justice.

We're so damned fortunate to be here to see it.

Watching Ohtani is what watching Bonds on PEDs was like - unbelievable. But in this case he appears to be clean. I always add the disclaimer as one can never know for sure on these things, but damn, I really hope Ohtani is 100% clean and keeps it up. Just too much fun to watch. Now, if the Jays could just pony up the $500 mil over 10 years this winter I'll be very happy (Rogers, who owns the Jays, can easily afford it).

From Rosenthal:

Ohtani had the hardest-hit ball of the WBC, 118.7 mph. He tied for the longest homer, 448 feet, and fastest-thrown pitch, 102 mph. For good measure, when he beat out an infield single in the seventh, Statcast measured his speed as borderline elite.

Shohei Ohtani: 29.9 ft/sec sprint speed beating out his infield hit (borderline elite). He went home-to-1st in 4.16 seconds.

As a hitter, Ohtani batted 435/.606/.739 in the tournament, with four doubles, a home run and eight RBIs. As a pitcher, he produced a 1.86 ERA with 11 strikeouts in 9 2/3 innings. No one pulled an Aaron Judge and dared challenge him for MVP.

I didn't realize how fast Ohtani was until he beat out that single in the 7th on a ball hit to the right side of the infield. That was something.

A guy on the Japanese team described Ohtani facing Trout to end the game as something out of a comic book, which sounds about right.

That slider--which recalled David Cone in his prime--is his third-best pitch. It's just beyond the ken.

Ohtani doesn't make sense. There is no way to really quantify what this man is doing. WAR doesn't do him justice; hell, calling him a "Unicorn" doesn't do him justice.

So he's one of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse then.

@15: But that would imply there are three more like him.

There was a clip on Twitter -- looking for it -- of Harold Reynolds talking with Ohtani after a recent WBC batting practice session where Reynolds asked him about how Ohtani got rid of his leg kick after his first American spring training. Ohtani (without an interpreter!) said he copied then-teammate Albert Pujols, made his swing simpler. Was he worried about losing power? "One hundred percent no." Between the last day of a terrible spring training and his first big league game, he changed his entire timing mechanism... and hit three homers in his first week in the major leagues, one of them off defending Cy Young Award winner Corey Kluber.

I love Ohtani so much. If he joins another team next year, I may have to stop watching baseball. I couldn't take that level of heartbreak.

Redacted due to not being sufficiently light-hearted for this thread.

Redacted due to not being sufficiently light-hearted for this thread.

Comedy is hard.

Nah it was sufficiently funny (not a high bar) but the biting social commentary was gonna be a downer. Probably also set off a thrilling discussion among our Biblical scholars.

So I will head the other direction and declare Ohtani the Messiah. Or the Second Coming depending on your preferred irrationality.

Nah it was sufficiently funny (not a high bar) but the biting social commentary was gonna be a downer.

Non-downer comedy is hard.

Stolen from elsewhere --

Once again, Mike Trout’s quest for victory has been squashed by his Angels teammates.

Non-downer comedy is hard.

You might be a redneck.

We have never seen anyone like Shohei Ohtani and may never again.

I seem to remember a time when people questioned whether a player from Japan would be "physically" capable of competing with American athletes. The argument being that since on average they were smaller, that even their elite athletes must be lesser, especially when you add population to the mix. And then we got Ichiro and the argument became "that type of player might thrive, but we'll never have a Bonds type of player or even a Koufax pitcher"... ignoring the fact that the best pitcher in the world at the time was probably Pedro.

The globalization of this sport has brought in so much, and it's funny to see some of the thought process about foreign players being so incorrect, and then seeing the same arguments being made when it comes to female athletes... it only takes one to change things.

I seem to remember a time when people questioned whether a player from Japan would be "physically" capable of competing with American athletes.

I wasn't allowed to play sports as a kid for exactly that reason -- white kids too big, it's not what we do, you don't fit in, no one picks Chinese kids, etc. It crushed me as a kid. In the 30-some years since, the world has changed from Asians being permanent outsiders who are too weak to play ball to American kids wanting to be Shohei Ohtani. If my love of Ohtani seems ridiculous and over-the-top, it's because what he represents goes well beyond baseball.

i remember when ichiro started with the mariners and there was all this He Too Small - rubbish. especially seeing as how plenty of Black and White players were not zackly babe ruth size. it is just a bunch of "Those Peeple" stereotype bullspit.

i also hate how when scouting reports/prospect reports are done, they always compare player X to a player of the same ethnic/racial persuasion. what, a White person can't be compared to Juan Pierre because, WHY??????? a Black player can't be compared to hee sop choi because, WHY??? (they do kind of run into a leeeeetle trouble with Native american players - joba compared to, um, like chief bender? cmon)

i personally love that non-asian american kidz of every other persuasion want to be shohei ohtani. one small step in the fight against the stupid "every race should stick to its own kind" garbage

And then we got Ichiro and the argument became "that type of player might thrive, but we'll never have a Bonds type of player or even a Koufax pitcher"

A problem with Ichiro as an archetype is that he was (pretty much) unique among Japanese players as well. I have read that, when he was young, Japanese baseball coaches tried to get Ichiro to change his style, convinced he could not make it in NPB either. Given nobody has succeeded with Ichiro's apprach since maybe the 1930s, it really doesn't seem a viable way to succeed at baseball.

As to size ... it was certainly true that historically, Japanese men were significantly smaller than "Western" men on average. (The average Japanese soldier in WW2 was 5-3 apparently.) Any genuine concerns on that largely disappeared as Japan/Korea moernized and should have gone out the window with Hideki (listed at 6-2, 210) and Choi (6-5, 235) if not earlier. Ohtani is listed at 6-4, 210 and I hope nobody still clings to the idea that a 6-4 guy of Japanese descent can't develop into as powerful a hitter as a 6-4 "American." But it is still true that, on average, East Asian men are shorter.

From about 1950 to about 1990, the average height of a Japanese male age 17 increased by about 10 cm (4 inches) where it has remained (and I see a recent report suggesting it is declining). American men also seemed to have gained a couple of inches (a quick search didn't turn up a detailed table). This discusses a study of country-level height changes over the last century -- S Korean women apparently have gained 8 inches. East Asian countries were among the biggest growers but they are still on average shorter than Europe/US. Presumably the changes are due to improvements in nutrition and childhood health.

And so yes, with its more global reach, possibly average MLB size would increase (by selecting the biggest/fastest from everywhere). Countering that is the declining birthrates (very, very low in Korea and Japan, even now barely above "replacement" in DR) and the expansion to 30 teams.

I wasn't allowed to play sports as a kid for exactly that reason -- white kids too big, it's not what we do, you don't fit in, no one picks Chinese kids, etc. It crushed me as a kid.

ugh. that's so wrong, but not every parent is born to be a revolutionary.

I'm a lot older than you, and I remember one my my many uncles - he'd have been born around 1915 or so - used to tell stories that while he was a natural left-hander, the nuns would smack his hands with a ruler to force him to do everything right-handed (The word "sinister" comes from a Latin word meaning “on the left side.” And since I am left-handed myself, I felt special resonance in his stories).

As to size ... it was certainly true that historically, Japanese men were significantly smaller than "Western" men on average. (The average Japanese soldier in WW2 was 5-3 apparently.)

I'm 6-feet tall, and so was my father (born in 1918). All my life, I never grasped how tall he was for his era until, when he was age 90, I got him to visit a B-17 plane - like the ones he had flown in as a bombardier for 35 perilous missions over Germany 63 to 64 years earlier.

Many of the roles of the plane crew were "gunners" on various parts of the plane. I was absolutely shocked at how little room there was to fit a human being. Sure, obesity was not really a thing back then, but also for height - there was zero chance my Dad could have fit in any of them, and he was 6-foot, 180 pounds for all of his adult life. Since he was color-blind, he couldn't be a pilot (as he wanted to be) or a co-pilot. so not many options left.

as for typical heights, I have been going into Manhattan for business and pleasure occasionally for 40 years.

it has taken me a small bit of effort not to be struck by how much "taller" I seem today compared to earlier days.

The Asian and Hispanic influx of newer residents and tourists reflects that, of course.

If I'm on a line for a bus or train or whatever, I'm struck by how few people are as tall as me (and officially, I'm not exactly a giant). I can only imagine what is was like for my father to be 6-foot-tall in the 1930s and 1940s.

but yes, the bottom line - as has been noted - is just give everyone a chance to be great and avoid stereotypes (believe me, I do see Asian and Hispanic men taller than me. just not a lot of them.)