Shohei Ohtani may very well be the most popular baseball player on the planet.
If the World Baseball Classic wasn’t proof enough of that, then maybe the postgame scene at the Los Angeles Angels-Boston Red Sox game at Fenway Park on Sunday afternoon is.
While the Red Sox won Sunday’s game 2-1 and Ohtani went o-for-4, he had hundreds and hundreds of fans waiting to watch him get on the team bus.
There are few — if any — athletes worldwide that would draw a crowd of fans comparable to that of a pop star or a movie star. That level of influence that Ohtani has will likely come with him, as he’ll carry his fanbase with him to whatever city he ends up in after the end of the 2023 MLB season. Ohtani is due to be a free agent at year’s end and as each day passes by, the likelihood of him returning to the Angels becomes slimmer and slimmer. It’s likely that he’ll command the richest contract in the history of the sport, with the New York Mets and Los Angeles Dodgers reportedly likely to get into a bidding war for his services.
This is not just a one-time thing. Despite him being on the same team as Mike Trout, this seems to happen everywhere Ohtani goes. He’s a global megastar, who is universally beloved. The video posted by Erica Weston, the Angels beat reporter for Bally Sports West has gone viral with over 218k views on Twitter. That’s the type of influence Ohtani has. If he’s there, people will come. Perhaps the Angels were the last team to learn that.