Shohei Ohtani is a superstar that the sport of baseball hasn’t seen in generations. The Dodgers’ ace has the power at the plate to put a ball in the upper deck on any given swing. He also possesses an arm at the pitcher’s mound that shuts down batters with ease. But is the Japanese icon better at baseball than Michael Jordan was at basketball?
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This question came up on the latest episode of the Club 520 podcast. Host Jeff Teague and the rest of his panel looked at Ohtani’s most recent performance in the MLB.
The 31-year-old ballplayer struck out eight batters and drove in two runs after hitting a ball into the bleachers. Somehow, the Dodgers still lost the game, but Teague was more than impressed.
“So, who [do] you compare him to in any other sport?” asked Teague. “I don’t know who [is] doing that.” After a short discussion from the panel, Teague brought up Michael Jordan, as Ohtani’s accolades on the field clearly make the ex-Milwaukee Buck think of His Airness’s unmatched 1988 season.
“I mean, Michael Jordan won MVP, defensive player of the year, and the scoring title. He had the scoring title and the DPOY title in the same year,” Teague recalled. That is extremely impressive by MJ and is widely regarded as an NBA season that can never be matched, no matter how many times players try.
But co-host Bishop B. Henn pointed out that baseball is a game of individual achievement. “A strikeout, you don’t get no help,” stated Henn, who added that, like basketball, baseball is a team sport, but there’s more opportunity for situations like the Ohtani performance.
This prompted Jeff to ask yet another important question. “So he’s more superior than Michael Jordan was in basketball, in baseball?” This made the entire group start talking over each other. But when the dust settled, Teague was able to weigh in.“
“I won’t say he’s more dominant, but I will say he’s more impressive,” added the 2021 NBA Champion. He’s right on the money.
It’s not that Jordan never lost. On the contrary, in the early days of his career, he couldn’t get over the hump. But once he bested that mountain, he began a championship legacy that is hard to top. Going 6-0 in the NBA Finals is a near-impossible feat. Impossible unless your name is MJ.
That said, what Ohtani is currently doing in the MLB is literally unreal. You could play MLB The Show in easy mode and still not manage to come up with the stats that the future Hall of Famer is putting out. At the end of the day, his legacy as the game’s most dynamic player has already been written. Whether he gets as many rings as Jordan remains to be seen.
