WORLD BALL

 

               We don’t think about it much but sports haven’t always been part of Planet Earth. They are the product of leisure, which in turn is the product of prosperity. A society that’s worried about where its next meal is coming from doesn’t have the wherewithal for fun and games.

               That little intro sets the stage for the present—in much of the world, at least. Whatever else globalization has brought it also has resulted in a geographic spread of athletic accomplishment that has no historic precedent.  If you believe as I do that genius of every sort—scientific, intellectual, artistic and athletic-- is sprinkled randomly around the globe, needing only opportunity, instruction and encouragement to bloom, you find affirmation every day in the sports pages. While the world might be smaller in many ways, it’s larger in others.

               The Modern Age began with a global setback—World War II. It left much of Europe and Asia in ruins, while Africa and Latin America struggled with technological deficits and the colonialism that sent their resources elsewhere. Triumphant and intact, the USA pretty much stood alone atop the various medal platforms for a quarter of a century, leading many to believe the status was permanent.

               Not so, it’s turned out; the revolution has been quiet but relentless. In the 1948 Summer Olympics, the first after the war, athletes from 23 different countries won gold medals. The last time around, at Tokyo in 2020, that number was 65, almost three times as many, albeit in an expanded schedule.

               Today, the world’s best soccer player is Lionel Messi, from Argentina, or Cristiano Ronaldo, from Portugal, depending on whom you ask. The world’s top track-and-field athlete in this century has been Usain Bolt, the sprinter from Jamaica, and women from that small island finished 1-2-3 in the 100-meter dash at Tokyo.

 In the so-called “country club” sports Iga Swiatek, a Pole, is the top-ranked woman tennis player, and Novak Djokovic, a Serb, tops the men’s chart. There are more Asians (5) than Americans (2) among the current top-10 of women’s golf, and five nations are represented among the top 10 male linksters.

In basketball, a sport we Yanks invented, African-Americans still dominate, but any listing of the world’s dozen best players must include Giannis Antetokounmpo, from Greece, Nikola Jokic, from Serbia, Luca Doncic, from Slovenia, and Joel Embiid, from Cameroon. Touted as the best current young player is 18-year-old Victor Wembanyama, raised in France by a French mother and Congolese dad. He stands anywhere from 7-foot-2 to 7-foot-5, depending on what you read.  

But a couple of other examples of internationalization are more striking, straining credulity. The world’s best baseball player, with skills not seen since Babe Ruth, is Shohei Ohtani, from Japan. And reversing the usual order of ascension the best ice-hockey player is Auston Matthews, raised in Scottsdale, Arizona, a desert burg with a climate closer to that of Timbuktu than Medicine Hat.

Ohtani, born to athletically unremarkable parents in the small northern-Japan city of Oshu, is a kind of unicorn, a combination hitter-pitcher who is not just rare but unique over the last 100 years. Comparing athletes of different generations is a fool’s task because conditions are so different; while great athletes would be great in any era, today’s jocks are so much stronger and better coached than those of the past that they should dominate any imaginary competition. Further, Ruth’s Major League career spanned 22 seasons (1914-1935), while Ohtani’s so far numbers five (2018-22), and in two of those (2019 and ’20) he started just two games on the mound because he underwent reconstructive elbow surgery.  The kid (OK, he’s 28 years old) is just getting started.

But Ohtani bids fair to become the first player to both hit and pitch at a high level in the Bigs over an extended period. Ruth’s career had two, distinct segments: in five of his first six seasons, with the Boston Red Sox, he was a pitcher, and one of the best of the time, but once sold to the New York Yankees in 1920 he became a fulltime position player, making just a handful of foolin’ around mound appearances in his 16 seasons in New York. He seriously combined the two skills in just one year—1919—when he hit a then-record 29 home runs while pitching 133 innings.

After surgical recovery Ohtani has posted two excellent hit-pitch years—2021, when he won the American League Most Valuable Player award after pitching 130 innings with a 3.18 earned run average while hitting 46 home runs and batting in 100, and this season, when he upped his innings pitched to 166 while lowering his ERA to 2.33 and had power numbers of 34 and 95. He probably won’t repeat as MVP this season—Aaron Judge looks likely to get it—but he also might receive Cy Young Award votes. If he stays healthy that’s likely to be an annual occurrence for quite a while.

Auston Matthews was born in California, also to athletically unremarkable parents, and was moved to Scottsdale at age two months. He stayed there until, in hockey’s Dickensian youth-development system, he was packed off at 15 to join a U.S. national age-group team in Plymouth, Michigan. Children who grow up in frosty northern climes can have their own ice rinks in winter if they have a back yard and a garden hose. Most of the ice in Arizona is in drinks, with the flat variety confined to a few indoor venues that charge fees to use.

Young Auston played baseball as well as hockey but found the diamond sport too slow. His innate hockey aptitudes brought him to the attention of coaches. He went from kid phenom to National Hockey League pro, with the Toronto Maple Leafs, at age 19. He was a star from the outset and last season, at 25, scored 60 goals and won the Hart Trophy, the NHL’s version of the MVP prize. Hockey’s equivalent of pitching is catching—that is, playing goalie. He probably could do that, too.