What’s It Like to Be Shohei Ohtani? Only Bo Would Know.

NYT SPORT: What’s It Like to Be Shohei Ohtani? Only Bo Would Know.
By Tyler Kepner
Section: Sports
Source: New York Times

Ohtani, baseball’s only two-way player, is largely without precedent. The best comparison may be Bo Jackson, a “mythological” two-sport superstar.

Mark Gubicza has an idea, and he is just the guy to make it happen. As a pitcher in the 1980s and ’90s, Gubicza was a teammate of Bo Jackson on the Kansas City Royals. As a television analyst now, he calls games for the Los Angeles Angels, the team of Shohei Ohtani. His dream pregame show would bring the two players together. “Bo Knows Sho,” Gubicza said this week, by the Angels’ dugout at Yankee Stadium. “I think we’re finally going to get it this year.” Ohtani, the Angels’ pitching and hitting sensation, was born in the summer of 1994, just as Jackson’s celebrated athletic career was ending. Jackson finished as a member of the Angels, of all teams, and played his final game in the very ballpark where Ohtani is forging his own two-way legend. Jackson was a two-way star in a different sense, the only player ever to be an All-Star in baseball, as an outfielder for the Royals, and a Pro Bowler in football, as a running back for the Los Angeles Raiders. Bo didn’t know pitching, like Ohtani, but he could have. “We would joke around: ‘Do you ever think you could close?’ And he’d say, ‘Yeah, if I wanted to,’” Gubicza said. “He could have done it easily, as hard as he threw. It was phenomenal just watching the stuff he did: the speed he had, the power he had. But then I look at Shohei and I could say the same about him: the speed, the power. “I played against Deion Sanders and he was phenomenal, too, don’t get me wrong. But Bo, his presence, his athleticism and that wow factor is very similar to Shohei.”

Published Date: April 20, 2023 at 03:00AM

Read More at: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/20/sports/baseball/shohei-ohtani-bo-jackson.html