Jeff Caplan’s Minute of News: Why is baseball so boring?

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SALT LAKE CITY — Baseball season began on Wednesday, and the national pastime has a couple of problems. The first is that football has become the national pastime. And the second is boring superstars. — eve

The best player in the game *was* Mike Trout. Chances are 50-50 you even heard of him because he’s not “up in da club.” He’s never been charged with domestic abuse, he’s got no beef with other players. He would just show up, knock the stuffing out of the ball, and go home to his family.

And now we have Shohei Otani wearing Dodgers Blue for the first time on Wednesday, the first day of his $700 million contract. He’s the best-paid athlete in the world. In Japan, Otani is bigger than Tom Brady and Taylor Swift combined.

But here? This greatest player ever?

Not if you make up your minds based on this dude.

 

That’s ESPN loudmouth Steven A Smith.

Otani knows about 10 words of barely intelligible English. And even worse for baseball, Otani avoids the spotlight. A couple of months ago he announced, on Instagram, that he got married. He did not name his bride. All he said was that she was a “normal Japanese woman.”

As the season begins, baseball is hoping Shohei hits a hundred homers, learns more English, and if they’re lucky, he’ll wave a gun and get into a fistfight at a strip club.

But don’t count on that. Instead, he’ll probably speak softly in Japanese, and carry a big stick.

Jeff Caplan is the host of Jeff Caplan’s Afternoon News on KSL NewsRadio. Follow him on Facebook and X. 

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