A plea for Shohei Ohtani as he returns to the mound: Bring back the almighty pitcher jacket

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It won’t happen now or even soon. The feverish temperatures of summer will not abide it. It will be some time. It may not, perish the thought, happen at all. However, there is hope — hope of a kind that we haven’t had in many pages of the calendar. There is but one man who carries that hope with him. He has crossed intrepid waters, stormed the unyielding plains with a sense of mission as his only sextant. He has bivouacked under starless skies and dry lightning protected by nothing more than our faith in him. 

He is Dodgers phenomenon Shohei Ohtani, and his holy consignment is the possibility, however mere and distant, that a pitcher will once again wear a jacket while running the bases. 

Indeed, Ohtani, one of the best hitters on the planet, will soon resume his side quest as one of the best pitchers on the planet. Ohtani has completed his prudently conservative recovery from a Tommy John hybrid procedure, and on Monday night he’ll see game action on the mound for the first time since Aug. 23, 2023. In the interim, he’s soldiered on as the National League’s best producer at the plate. Last season, he authored the first 50-50 season in Major League Baseball history and became the first exclusive designated hitter ever to win the MVP award. He’s thumping the ball at a customary clip again this season. Now, though, our eyes are on Ohtani’s right arm rather than his bat. 

Speaking of which — and speaking of Ohtani’s work as a pitcher back in 2023, when he was still a member of the Angels — let’s roll it back to April 17, 2023, at Fenway Park in Boston. Come with us, won’t you?

Blessing of blessings, that is Ohtani wearing a jacket on the bases, and it was the last time such a thing happened. Ohtani started for the Angels that day, and it was, as you may have surmised, a crisp day in New England — 50 degrees and cloudy at first pitch. In the top of the first, Ohtani singled to center and, as you saw above, put on a jacket after reaching first base. 

Yes, lest we forget, such a thing is permitted. The relevant part of the MLB umpire’s manual reads: 

“A pitcher may wear a jacket while a base runner. A pitcher may not wear a jacket while batting. No other player is permitted to wear a jacket while a base runner, a batter, a defensive player, or a coach on the baselines. If worn, the jacket must be buttoned.”

As Johnny Cueto learned in 2011, indeed it must be a jacket and not, say, a hoodie. The purpose of this is to keep the pitching arm warm while venturing into the hostile territory of the basepaths. While the medical necessity of such a step may be questioned, time was when it was a commonplace thing. 

How long the practice stretches back into history is not entirely certain. “I did some more research,” sports graphic-design historian and proprietor of SportsLogos.net Chris Creamer told CBS Sports, “looking through old photos, and could find an instance of Don Larsen wearing a jacket while on the bases when Yogi Berra hit his grand slam in Game 2 of the 1956 World Series. Though I’m certain it started before that, this is the earliest photo record I could find.”

Pitchers have been counseled via the printed word to stay warm between innings since at least 1869, which all but qualifies as the “primordial soup” days of baseball history, which suggests it probably does go further back than the 1950s. In any event, after the American League adopted the designated-hitter rule in 1973, pitchers on the bases in jackets necessarily became an NL-only affectation. Then, when the DH became universal in 2022, it went away except for, you know, Ohtani above. 

There are many things to recommend the universal DH rule. To watch a pitcher try to hit is to watch a koala try to rebuild a transmission. Or perhaps that is too cute an image. To watch a pitcher try to hit is to watch an unlikeable toddler try and fail to build a castle not out of sand but rather out of the dung of cryptids. There is novelty there, yes, but novelty once vulgarized becomes pathos. Pitchers are not bred and built for such things, and the occasional lightning strike of success at hitting breeds delusion. Moundsmen who hold themselves in high regard as batsmen are almost without exception lousy at the craft by any sensible standard. Madison Bumgarner, for instance, thought himself a slugger to be feared. He was, in point of fact, stupefyingly terrible at it compared to actual hitters. 

So it is a good thing that pitchers are no longer allowed to defile both themselves and innocent onlookers by trying to hit. For that reason, no one of taste would ever wish to go back to those pre-enlightenment times. The universal DH, however, did come at an aesthetic cost, and that was the loss of the be-jacketed pitcher on basepaths. 

Opinions will vary on what is so appealing about it. It is perhaps the absurdity of it, something akin to seeing someone sprinting down the street in a bespoke suit or heels and a cocktail dress. Perhaps it is the idea of such schoolboy-level care and feeding applied to an otherwise physically vigorous and hardy professional athlete. One imagines a hovering all-purpose mother in the dugout who warns pitchers that they’ll catch cold if they venture out onto the bases without a cozy parka. She brought snacks for after the game. “If you’re a pitcher, you’re supposed to be an athlete, so you ought to act like one,” Mets broadcaster and former big-league pitcher Ron Darling lamented in a 2010 Wall Street Journal piece. “If Josh Hamilton can run the bases without a jacket, you should be able to do it, too.”

Yes, pitchers are athletes, but they are often different sorts of athletes — the kind that, you know, can’t hit. Dignity can prove elusive for the pitcher upon the foreign territory of the bases, and the buttoned- or zipped-up, occasionally billowy and ill-fitting “good boy’s coat” adds to the aura of things — pleasantly so, for the uninvolved observer. 

Let us, for instance, recall that Luis Tiant initially neglected to touch home plate in Game 1 of the 1975 World Series … while wearing a jacket: 

Let us likewise drink deeply of Todd Stottlemyre’s grisly self-abuse via headfirst “slide” during the 1993 World Series … while wearing a jacket: 

And more fundamentally, we have Charlie Morton in 2016 grappling to even put on the jacket in the first place: 

And the pitchers say: buttons >>> zippers. 

Ohtani, though, is quite obviously an athlete whose sporting prowess far exceeds that of a mere pitcher. That is to say, the man who stole 59 bases in a season is unlikely to suffer the pratfalls above (although a zipper is capable of flummoxing even the gods who walk among us). The hasty and skilled Ohtani on the bases is more likely to, say, score from second base on a bunt, which is what reliever Koo Dae-Sung did in 2005 not long after registering the first and only hit of his professional career. He did so … while wearing a jacket: 

All of this circles us back to the foundational question: will Ohtani ever wear a jacket on the bases again and thus become all over again the last pitcher to do so? The first necessary box is checked, as ESPN recently reported that the Dodgers do indeed plan to DH Ohtani on days he’s starting on the mound. 

Next comes the matter of the weather. CBS Sports has confirmed that it is presently June and that the weather is warming in advance of the official onset of summer. So it’s going to be some time until we have a realistic chance of this. 

Looking ahead into the final month of the regular season, the Dodgers visit the rival Giants for a trio of games from Sept. 12-14. Two of those games will be nighttime affairs, and crack internet research reveals that the average low for September in the Bay Area is 56 degrees. So it’s possible, assuming, of course, Ohtani starts one of those two night games and reaches base. The Dodgers conclude the regular season with three games in Seattle from Sept. 26-28. Again, two of those contests will be at night, and expert use of the World Wide Web unveils the knowledge that the average low for Seattle in September is 55 degrees. Mariners, you are charged with doing the morally upright thing and keeping the roof of T-Mobile Park open in the event that Ohtani is starting one of those two night games. Further out, the reigning-champion Dodgers remain heavy favorites to return to the playoffs in 2025, and that pushes us into October. Theoretical northern-clime, open-air postseason opponents include those same Giants, the Mets, the Phillies, and the Cubs. The World Series, which these days can stretch into November? The Yankees or Tigers may be here to help. The 2025 season, it should be emphasized, won’t be our only chance, as Ohtani is signed through 2033 and should continue with his unexampled two-way excellence for much of that span, health permitting. 

Now comes the necessary matter of which jacket, which robes of the sacred order Ohtani should wear when — when, not if, my doe-eyed optimists — he decides the fall or spring chill is too much to bear. Needless to say, this moment should not be limited to things like “official dugout jacket” or somesuch. One is tempted to prescribe a satin button-up in fetching Dodger Blue (color code #005A9C), yes. However, may we humbly submit the following homage, same name on the back and everything: 

Mr. Ohtani, hear our prayers and wear a jacket on the bases. The last time you did it remains cherished, but we didn’t know then what we know now, that the end was nigh. We didn’t know it was time to say goodbye to jackets on the bases. We need that chance again.

Please? Pretty please? A please as pretty as Dodger Blue (color code #005A9C)?    

This news was originally published on this post .

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