We've gone from MLB denying players access to interpreters to condemning once-in-a-lifetime players for using interpreters to avoid being misconstrued by the same media condemning them. Any take on Shohei Ohtani concluding he's anything but great for baseball is just uninformed.
It's hard for many to accept that we live in a global society, but we do, and that's as true in sports (perhaps truer) than in any other industry. Esp in a sport like baseball, that has a global presence but does itself no favors in projecting a limited and myopic Americanness
It's super interesting that these comments about Shohei Ohtani come in the same year that baseball marks its return to the Olympic program. Baseball and softball were removed in the first place because of the notion that they're not global sports (ie too singularly American)
Which is obviously only the case if you ignore Korea, Japan, Taiwan, the Netherlands, Sweden, and, oh, all of Latin America. But that misconception is furthered by saying the face of the sport has to be a native English speaker
The NBA hasn't exactly suffered from a global image that includes star players who aren't fluent in English
Also, as Americans we are decidedly made fun of in the rest of the world for not being multilingual. It makes us seem uneducated and incurious, if not isolationist. We clutch at the English language to our own detriment.
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