Shohei Ohtani is overrated.
Worse yet, he belongs in the minors. The Yankees are lucky he joined the Angels out there on the West Coast.
So said some media pundits while the Japanese baseball star Ohtani struggled in the Cactus League, just a few weeks into his training for his debut season in the American big leagues.
Wild pitch, over the backstop.
Ohtani has shown he belongs, as both a pitcher and a slugger. Two weeks into the season _ the real season _ he has set the baseball world on a finger and spun it, Globetrotter-style.
I've served up many dumb opinions about ballplayers. Years ago, I wrote the San Francisco Giants should deal their top pitching prospect for a big-league slugger.
The kid was Madison Bumgarner.
The Ohtani skepticism, though, had a strange effect on me. The more of it I read and heard, the more bullish I became about Ohtani having a good April.
I wondered if Ohtani was pulling an Ichiro.
When Ichiro prepared for his first season in the U.S. big leagues, he looked overmatched at times. He seemed less than confident.
There was, however, a story behind the story.
Al Martin was one of Ichiro's teammates then with the Seattle Mariners.
Months after the 2001 season began, when Ichiro was devouring the American League as a nominal rookie, Al laughed about the perception Ichiro had a rather spotty spring training for someone so acclaimed.
"He was setting everyone up," Al told me.
As Al described it, Ichiro held back a great deal of his considerable talent in the exhibitions. If not a complete ruse, the tepid performances were somewhat calculated _ a conclusion Martin would reach one afternoon when Ichiro and he had a batting session together, in private.
"He hit like five home runs in a row," Al said.
Martin laughed, saying Ichiro duped the baseball world.
I thought of a stoic fictional character, Chief, in the movie (and book) "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." Believed to be incapable of speaking, he drops a line on Jack Nicholson's character, stunning him.
Inspiring a giddy reaction, Ichiro's private hitting display was to Martin what Chief uttering "Juicy Fruit" was to Nicholson's R.P. McMurphy.
Martin was known to tell a tall tale or two. He may have embellished his take on Ichiro. Yet, as Ichiro made the March critics look like dummies, the story rang true.
He amassed 242 hits that season, while batting .350. A suspect in the Cactus League, he became MVP of the American League.
Cerebral as well as sharp-eyed, Ichiro would impress Tony La Russa as the most baseball-smart person on the planet.
Ichiro was 27 that March. He'd won seven batting titles in "Puro Yakyu," Japan's "Professional Baseball" league.
Ohtani, 23, arrived to even more fanfare.
Before he reported to Arizona, I'd like to think Ichiro counseled Ohtani. Until the games count, why put on a show?
