Tim Kewen, how far have you gone to try to understand Shohay Otani over the years?

You know Israel, I think I've probably gone farther than I have with any other athlete and not just in distance including a trip to Japan but just in the

amount of psychic space he has taken up in my mind over the past six years with

multiple long features I've done on him.

Just been fascinated by him as so many are.

When he first signed with the Angels in 2018 that spring I took a trip to Japan and

spend some time with his high school coach around his high school team I went to games that hit the Nippon Ham fighters played.

Talk to some people who played with him and coached him there.

I have put a lot of effort into this. I think he is sort of a

seminal figure in baseball and not only for our time but perhaps but definitely for all time so yeah I have I feel like I've I've put in the leg work

Before we break down the transition of Otani from the angels to the Dodgers, I just want to sort of lay out the plot line we're discussing here because it's not more insight into the betting scandal. Otani is sort of baseball's LeBron James and then some, right?

He's known he's had this skill set to be labeled the goat if he follows his current path and

he wants it really badly.

But now the guy who wakes up every morning trying to be the best

baseball player on the planet is entering, like you mentioned Tim, probably the most pivotal

time of his career if he's going to reach that sort of mythical goat title and he's kicking it off with a betting scandal where he has to prove he's not a criminal who should be banned from the sport and has to do it with his ultimate security blanket now gone in I pay his seemingly best friend

also who literally speaks for him Tim and he's doing all this while adjusting to

this new super team in the heart of Los Angeles. That to me is not just a

compelling story for this year, but one of the most compelling stories in

baseball probably since the steroid scandal. I agree Israel and I think the abruptness of this how quickly it happened and how

jarring it must be for show hey to be I don't want to say cast Cast Adrift, but again, that's the phrase that comes to mind

when I've seen this in action for so long and seen just how much E-Pay has controlled

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