For the first time in twenty years I have a new favorite player.
Admittedly, it seems silly to still pick favorite players at my age. The period where anyone currently playing on the field is older than me is long gone. Almost everyone who plays these days is “babies” to me, and I know I have almost nothing in common with many of them.
So yeah, Shohei Ohtani is my new favorite player.
1975-1983: Ron Cey
1983-1985: Pedro Guerrero
1985-1994: Orel Hershiser
1995-99: Raul Mondesi
2000-04: Shawn Green
2005-07: Brad Penny
2007-08: Russel Martin
2009-25: Clayton Kershaw
2025-?: Shohei Ohtani
Normally I only select a new favorite player when the previous one is no longer in the team (via trade or retirement). And no, I haven’t downgraded Clayton Kershaw before due to performance issues or personal beliefs. I don’t believe in selecting favorites based on whether their views align with mine. That happens too much among the hyper-online.
I choose players based on what they do on the field and, in general, how they behave as people, i.e. no criminal behavior. That’s it. Sometimes I get disappointed when I find out how a player thinks (gee, he fishes And hunts?). But that’s where it ends. I don’t think I need my players as role models. Never had. Look at Guerrero, Mondesi or Penny. They are ball players, i.e. imperfect people who are paid to play with the ball. In our super-analytical world today, in 2025, it’s too easy to pick them apart. If I wanted to get mad at them, all I had to do was find out what music they listen to and go from there. Just enjoy the game.
So I selected Ohtani a little early based on his crazy skills and also because he seems genuinely nice in that way, always checking on the field that everything is okay. The trolls will bring up the Interpreter gambling scandal or all the money he got from the Dodgers or the fact that he’s even with the Dodgers or whatever. But they look for things to be negative about. I prefer to concentrate on what he shows on the pitch.
Now…
…I expect to be wildly unsuccessful in acquiring cards from my new favorite player, as successful as I’ve ever been.
This happened a bit with Kershaw, but I was lucky enough to get in early before he became nationally known as a top performer and I ended up being priced out of his fancier cards. Still, I have collected more than 1,200 cards of the man.
However, Ohtani is on another level: no one I have selected as my favorite player in the past can come close. Orel Hershiser was the guy for about a year and then there was Kershaw. That’s it. For the most part, I’ve never had a problem landing a Ron Cey card.
In many examples, when collecting my Dodger cards, I ended up with all the cards in the set – insert set, whatever – except the Ohtani card. Here’s a snippet (although not the best example) of what I mean:
Johnny’s trading spot was fun enough to include my first look at 2025 Topps Chrome in Dodger form. These nine cards. (I promise I’ll show the rest of what he sent in the next few days). But Ohtani is not with them. Granted, neither do Snell, Kim, and Sasaki. There could be a lot of reasons for this: Ohtani wasn’t in the lot Johnny found, he needed one for his collection but didn’t have a dupe like these other guys, or Ohtani is a collecting guy.
The simple fact is that Ohtani’s maps are unavailable for many reasons. Luckily, because of his popularity, card companies make a lot of cards of him. TCDB says I have 131 of his cards, which is the 73rd in my collection, not too bad for someone who has been in the league for eight years and I don’t have the money to actually go shopping.
But that’s okay. I’m not a player collector. I pick up Ohtani cards here and there on a whim, and I really don’t care if I don’t have his autograph or whatever hit. Look, I’ll even take this, my latest card from him:
Look at this silly thing. “Gameday drip.” I hate that sentence. But somehow it works for him in a not too annoying way and I wanted it and it didn’t cost much.
From now on, every Ohtani card I draw — that pink, sparkly 2025 Heritage card I showed earlier, given this development, might just turn out to be my draw of the year — will be a great achievement.
It’s been an interesting ride with Ohtani on my team. I admit I didn’t pay much attention when he was with the Angels. I heard all the praise for his legendary achievements, which seemed rather exaggerated to me. I get it now, although I was surprised by how much he pulled off.
It’s nice to have a new favorite player. Kershaw hasn’t let me down and I don’t think Ohtani will either. It’s possible he’s my last favorite player. We’ll see how much I still care about this current game when he’s ready to retire.
I wish we could go back to the days when we weren’t privy to every last thought or action of every player. I think this has ruined many of us’ ability to support these guys, and, I admit, me too. We know too much. But I really try to keep things the way they were when I was younger, basically before the internet.
That’s why I still do childish things like choosing my favorite player.
#favorite #player