As Shohei Ohtani comes for his home run record, a Jewish Dodger legend is in awe with the rest of us
Shawn Green, left, hit 49 home runs in 2001, a Dodger record that stood until Shohei Ohtani broke it Thursday. Photo by Tannen Maury/AFP via Getty Images (Green); Sam Navarro/Getty Images (Ohtani)
By Louis Keene September 19, 2024
The Jewish slugger Shawn Green has been sanguine in recent days as he contemplated the likely fall of the record he has held for 23 years for hitting the most home runs in a single season by a Dodger.
On Thursday, en route to the Dodgers’ 20-4 rout of the Miami Marlins, it finally happened. Shohei Ohtani, the Japanese designated hitter, swatted his 49th, 50th and 51st home runs of the year — the first to tie the record Green set in 2001, the second to break it and the third just to show off.
Green, 51, wasn’t watching — he was busy dropping off his youngest daughter for her freshman year at Stanford. But his phone blew up when Ohtani hit number 49.
“I think we were tied for like 10, 20 minutes,” he said in an interview Thursday night. “It’s humbling to be in the same conversation. From my perspective, Shohei Ohtani is the greatest player who’s ever lived.”
Only seven years into his career, Ohtani is definitely a contender. An ace pitcher who is currently rehabbing after elbow surgery, Ohtani also became Thursday the first player in MLB history to hit 50 home runs and steal 50 bases in a single season — and by the end of the night, was the first to post 51/51. And the Dodgers still have nine games left in the regular season!
Green, a left-handed outfielder famous for giving his white batting gloves to a fan after every homer, might have cracked 50 himself back in 2001 if he hadn’t sat out on Yom Kippur. The holiday fell in the middle of the Dodgers’ playoff hunt, and ended Green’s consecutive-games played streak at 401 — then the longest in Major League Baseball.
“It’s something I feel is an important thing to do,” Green said at the time, “partly as a representative of the Jewish community, and as far as my being a role model in sports for Jewish kids, to basically say that baseball, or anything, isn’t bigger than your religion and your roots.”
Ohtani has long been expected to break Green’s franchise record. But no one expected him to also challenge Green’s other historic achievement, the most prolific single-game offensive performance, on the same day.
But challenge it he did. In addition to the three homers — over the right-field fence in the sixth inning, an opposite-field shot in the seventh and a moonshot two innings later — Ohtani, 30, also hit two doubles and a single, stole two bases, scored four runs and had 10 runs batted in. All in one game! That’s never happened before.
The Dodgers play-by-play announcer, Joe Davis, called it “the greatest day in baseball history.”
That’s how some had described May 23, 2002, when Green led the Dodgers to beat the Milwaukee Brewers 16-3 at home by hitting four home runs, a double and a single; scoring six times; and batting in seven runs. His record of 19 total bases that day still stands — “barely,” Green said with a chuckle.
That is, unless you count Ohtani’s stolen bags — in which case, they’re tied.
Green, who has never met Ohtani, was as awed by him today as Jewish fans were of Green in his heyday.
“We thought we’d seen the impossible with someone who can pitch like he has and hit like he does,” Green said. “But then, you take the pitching away for a year and he does something equally amazing by going 50/50. I’m just waiting for him to throw on a football uniform or go play for the Lakers or something, because it seems like he can do anything he wants.”
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