Dodgers Team President Learned Ohtani Was Signing with the Club One Minute Before World Did
And some more tidbits from the most fascinating free agency process in MLB history.
Hi friends-
A couple items of business before we dive in.
First, don’t forget our December book club book, The Body Keeps the Score, by Bessel van der Kolk. We will discuss the book in the Substack chat app on Sunday, Jan. 7, and over Zoom on Monday, Jan. 8. If you want to get a head start on our January book club book, it’s The Baseball 100 by Joe Posnanski. Joe has graciously agreed to Zoom with us to talk about his book on Monday, Feb. 5.
Our weekly baseball discussions over Zoom will continue to take place through the offseason each Saturday from noon to 1 pm PT, for paid subscribers. To join us (and to access all my stories) you can upgrade to paid here:
I hope you’ve had a chance to read Eric Wahl’s meditation on losing his beloved brother, Grant Wahl. This can be a particularly difficult time of year for those of us enduring grief and loss, and I think what Eric wrote will help people feel less alone. Eric’s piece is free for all to read, so share it widely with anyone you think might benefit from his words. <3
I want to start this post by saying that going forward I promise you that The Long Game is not going to be All-Shohei, All The Time. While he is a transcendent sports figure on par with LeBron James and Lionel Messi—and certainly the biggest baseball story since the home run chase of 1998—other topics continue to exist, and I will write about them with pleasure!
Later today, I’m taping a holiday podcast with Joe Posnanski, Mike Schur, Brandon McCarthy, Alan Sepinwall, Nick Offerman and others, in which we draft ridiculous Christmas gifts. I’m thinking about…. glitter, and a coffin from Costco (so all my bases are covered). I’ll send the podcast link out to you as soon as it’s up.
I also plan to write this week about the B.S.. politically-driven Fox News narrative that has convinced some baseball free agents that anyone who signs with the San Francisco Giants will be stabbed with an AIDS needle by a homeless person on their way to the ballpark and die, which is why the team can’t get anyone to agree to play for them. Should the city of S.F. sue conservative media for false characterization when St. Louis, Cleveland, Milwaukee, Baltimore, Detroit, Kansas City and Philadelphia all have demonstrably higher rates of violent crime backed up by hard data than San Francisco? Maybe!
Anyway, I attended the Shohei introductory press conference at Dodger Stadium last Thursday and was able to speak with Dodgers team president Stan Kasten afterward to ask some questions so I could share the answers with you all. (I was going to publish the interview on Friday, but then Eric and I worked on his essay on Thursday evening and Friday morning, then I spent Friday afternoon taking my mom to a doctor’s appointment, and that evening volunteering at the Hollywood Food Coalition.)
I just wanted to explain the real-life stuff that made my write-up of Ohtani’s press conference a few days late, but here it is! I hope it adds to the conversation before we move on to new things, like what the hell the Red Sox and Cubs are doing this off-season (nothing). So, here goes:
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to The Long Game to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.