Thanks, schwarze. Those were fun reads. I'll quote a bit from the second link:
My 10 favorite Ohtani-isms of 2021
HE’S NOT A REGULAR HUMAN! I’m still trying to digest how the same person – by which I mean that Shohei Ohtani person – could possibly have had a better OPS+ than Aaron Judge, a better ERA+ than Gerrit Cole, more extra-base hits than Vlad Guerrero Jr., a better strikeout rate than Walker Buehler and more stolen bases than Billy Hamilton and Jonathan Villar combined. And he’s one person. But it’s apparently possible, because that happened!
HE INVENTED THE 40-20-60-FOOT-6-INCHES CLUB! Think about this: 46 homers, 26 stolen bases and, ohbytheway, this Ohtani guy was also the best pitcher on his team. No need to run through the members of the 40-20 Club among people who also pitched (even once) that season, because that club had admitted no members in history . . . until now. But even if we lower the membership standards to include men who hit 20 homers instead of 40, we’d need a time machine to hold a meeting of that club . . . seeing as how the only guy in it before Ohtani was Buck Freeman (25 HR, 21 SB, 7 IP) – who did it in 1899!
HE’S AN AL PITCHER AND HE HOMERED IN THE FIRST INNING! We should have known something extraordinary was coming way back on April 4, when Ohtani made his first start of the season as a pitcher, hit 101 off the mound to the second hitter he faced and then . . . pounded a 451-foot home run in the first inning . . . while batting second. (Your attention: Pitcher Batting Second Alert!) No American League pitcher had hit a home run in the first inning of any game in over half a century, since Dave McNally bopped a first-inning slam on Aug. 26, 1968. Then came the inventions of A) the DH (five years later) and B) a dude named Ohtani (26 years later). History would never be the same.
HE ALWAYS KNEW WHAT TO DO FOR AN ENCORE! No matter what made you say, “Wow,” one day, Shohei Ohtani always had another Wow moment ready to roll off his assembly line. June 4: Fires up the first 10-strikeout, no-walk game of his career . . . That was cool, but guess what was next? June 5: Mashes a 436-foot home run in the first inning, on the first pitch he sees. No need to even ask about the first inning, because Ohtani was the first human in the modern era to homer in any inning the day after a double-digit strikeout game. Of course.
THE GREATEST SERIES EVER? I want you to consider what Ohtani did from June 17-20, in a four-game series against the Tigers:
Game 1 – Winning pitcher
Game 2 – 2 HR
Game 3 – 1 HR
Game 4 – 1 HR
So how many members of our species have ever had a four-game series like that (won a game as a pitcher, hit at least four homers in his spare time)? Take a wild guess. Ohtani is one. Some old-timer named Babe Ruth was the other. You were expecting maybe Bartolo?
THE MAN OF STEAL: Or how about Ohtani’s routine evening of July 26? Threw a pitch at 99.7 mph. And also stole a base! Wondering about the last AL starting pitcher to steal a base in a game in an AL park? Would you believe the correct answer is Nolan Ryan, on Oct. 4, 1972? Believe it! Good chance Nolan also threw a pitch 99.7 mph or harder that night. But we regret to announce we’d neglected to invent Statcast back then.
NO PLACE (TO STEAL) LIKE HOME: Did you know that in 19 years in the big leagues, Ichiro never stole home? He did pitch once, but let’s not get distracted, because that’s not the point. The point is, on Aug. 31, Ohtani did this.
That’s an American League pitcher seen stealing home. And how many people in the last 50 years have passed through the AL, stolen home and also made at least one start as a pitcher that season? One more time, that answer is nobody . . . except Ohtani.
DINGER AT 8: Then there was that game, Aug. 18 against the Tigers, when the starting pitcher for the Angels also hit his 40th home run . . . which would have been Strange But True enough, except . . . he hit it in the eighth inning . . . while he was still pitching . . . which is not a thing we’d seen an AL starting pitcher do in an AL park in 50 years (since another Dave McNally blast). One of these days, we’ll run out of first-in-half-a-frigging-century Ohtani notes, I’m sure. But it’s sure fun while it lasts.
HE BROKE THE ALL-STAR GAME! Until Ohtani showed up for the All-Star Game, there had never been any such baseball entity as a starting pitcher/DH/leadoff man. Two reasons for that: There had never been any such baseball entity as an Ohtani before. And also . . . that would be illegal! But did Major League Baseball care? It did not. So everyone just agreed to change the rules of baseball for one guy.
Then that one guy went out and hit a 513-foot homer in the Home Run Derby one night . . . threw a 100.2 mph fastball in the All-Star Game the next night . . . and then, just because it seemed like an enjoyable thing to do, became the first player ever to bat leadoff, be the starting pitcher and wind up as the winning pitcher in the same game . . . except not just in an All-Star Game. In any game – regular season, postseason or All-Star . . . Shohei Ohtani, friends. He can’t really be from our planet, can he?
NO SLUG ZONE: And finally, there’s this, my very favorite Ohtani tidbit of 2021 (borrowed from MLB.com’s ever-attentive Andrew Simon). Slugging percentage of the unfortunate batsmiths who had to hit against Ohtani this year: .351. Slugging percentage of Ohtani when he got to slug: .592. And what should you make of that? Oh, only this: When the season ended, if they’d forced Shohei Ohtani to trot out to the mound and he then allowed a home run to the next 33 hitters he pitched to in a row, those opposing hitters still wouldn’t have had as high a slugging percentage as he had!
So one more time, let’s ask: Are we sure this man is a real person?
“He might be a robot – who knows,” the Dodgers’ Max Muncy told me last summer. “He might be a machine. You know, I play with The Machine (aka, Albert Pujols). But he (Ohtani) might be an actual machine. You can’t rule it out. You never know.”
You have to figure Ohtani's 2021 was the most exciting season ever by a player whose primary position was DH. Which reminds me of something jazz great Chet Baker once said about drummers: "It takes a pretty good drummer to be better than no drummer at all." Ohtani is definitely better than no DH at all.