World Series: Within 48 hours of Shohei Ohtani's return

NEW YORK – On the bus ride to the airport after their win in Game 2 of the World Series Saturday night, Los Angeles Dodgers players felt their phones start buzzing. A new message had appeared in their group chat. It was from Shohei Ohtani.

Earlier in the night, Ohtani jammed his left shoulder while sliding into second base during an attempted steal. He immediately left the field holding his arm. Both the dugout and Dodger Stadium became quiet. At first glance, coaches feared the injury was serious. At that point on the bus, none of his teammates knew what to think. Until they read the message.

“Nice game guys,” Ohtani wrote. “Last time, Bellinger’s shoulder was dislocated. This time my shoulder was dislocated. That’s a good sign for a world champion.”

The news invigorated the Dodgers players. In 2020, the last time they won the World Series, star Cody Bellinger dislocated his right shoulder when he hit teammate Kiké Hernández with his forearm for a game-winning home run in the National League Championship Series. Bellinger played in the World Series. And after their phones rang again and they saw another message, Dodgers players were convinced Ohtani would continue to do the same thing.

“I will do my best to play the day after tomorrow,” Ohtani wrote. “See you in New York.”

Ohtani played in Game 3 on Monday night, a 4-2 win over the New York Yankees that left Los Angeles one win shy of the World Series. As hairy as those first moments looked – Ohtani lay on the floor in pain and said he had injured his non-throwing shoulder – the Dodgers' $700 million star was confident he would overcome the pain within minutes would.

Immediately after holding the pitch by his shoulder in Game 2, Ohtani was taken to the X-ray room next to the Los Angeles dugout. Dodgers employees gathered in the area and prayed for good news. They got it with the initial diagnosis of a subluxation, or partial dislocation, similar to Bellinger's — an injury the Dodgers believed Ohtani could play through.

When the team flew to New York that night, Ohtani stayed behind. The next morning he received further imaging confirming the diagnosis, and once confirmed, he embarked on a cross-country flight on Sunday. Ohtani arrived at Yankee Stadium around 8 p.m., just as the Dodgers' buses were pulling away from practice. Only a few people remained: Ohtani, manager Dave Roberts, hitting coaches Aaron Bates and Robert Von Scoyoc, game planning coach JT Watkins, orthopedist Dr. Michael Banffy, head athletic trainer Thomas Albert and assistant athletic trainer Yosuke Nakajima.

They began their work around 8:45 a.m. with a simple goal: to make sure Ohtani's shoulder could withstand the swing. The 6-foot-tall, 220-pound Ohtani generates tremendous force with his momentum, and a broken link in his kinetic chain could cause the entire apparatus to fail. They had to be safe. Instead of having Ohtani hit by a machine—that was too intense for this stage of their observation—they threw him somersaults and watched him hit a tee shot. A blast sensor on the button of his racket measured his swing speed. A pocket radar recorded the approximate speed of the balls he hit.

Ohtani was by no means at full speed. The Dodgers feared that if he did, he might wake up in even more pain on Monday, the day of Game 3.

“You're testing the oven to see how hot it is, so you touch it more lightly,” Bates said. “He didn’t want to let it go completely because he didn’t want to be sore. But he’s so strong and so explosive that he doesn’t have to completely let it go to be good.”

The Dodgers players, who were on their way to a team dinner, received the good news from the stadium: Ohtani had passed the final tests with flying colors. All he had to do was wake up Monday morning and feel good and he would be in the lineup.

The next day, trainers applied kinesiology tape to Ohtani's shoulder to stabilize it. Ohtani went through his standard routine at the stadium, going into the batting cage about 20 minutes before the game to make his front throw and tee shot. Out of an abundance of caution, he again refrained from hitting a machine, a typical part of his routine.

When the lineups were released, Ohtani was there, batting in the lead as usual.

The Dodgers were concerned about the long pregame introduction periods and the cold weather causing problems. When Ohtani entered the field, he was wearing what appeared to be a sling but was actually a heat pack to keep the joint loose. He dropped the heat pack before his first plate appearance against Yankees starter Clarke Schmidt, who made it easy for Ohtani by not throwing a ball into the strike zone. As he took the lead at first base, Ohtani supported his left arm as if supported by an imaginary sling.

“It was a little bit like what (Edwin) Encarnacion used to look like when he hit a home run,” Bates said of the longtime slugger, who ran the bases with his arm tilted at a 90-degree angle and parallel to the ground, ready for one imaginary parrot perch on it.

Ohtani wouldn't spend long at first. Freddie Freeman, himself plagued by injuries this postseason, gave the Dodgers a 2-0 lead with a home run to right field.

“I mean, there's no point in saving our bodies now,” said Dodgers super utility man Tommy Edman, who suffered a dislocated shoulder in high school and eventually had surgery to repair it . “We do everything we can and then we have four months in the offseason to recover. That's the whole reason we play. We work all year to be able to play in the World Series and that's what we're doing. “I'll do whatever it takes to be out there.

For Ohtani it looks like a bit of luck – a right shoulder injury like Bellinger's would have been far more problematic – and also a bit of courage.

“He’s tough, man,” said Dodgers second baseman Gavin Lux, himself playing with a lingering hip injury. “This guy is superhuman. So you have no doubt that no matter what happens, he will find a way to be in there.”

In his second plate appearance, Ohtani rolled over a high sinker and landed on second base. In his third outing, he completed a seven-pitch at-bat before striking out on a low Nestor Cortes cutter. Left-hander Tim Hill blocked Ohtani on his next at-bat, resulting in a popout to third base. And then a 92-mph Luke Weaver-cutter injured the top of his foot in the ninth as the Yankees scored their first runs on a two-run home run by Alex Verdugo.

Although he finished scoreless, Ohtani was happy with the outcome of the game and the way his shoulder felt at the end.

“The pain subsided,” Ohtani said, “so I felt pretty good about it.”

At times, Ohtani would flinch while swinging, which was a cause for concern. He thought nothing of it, and neither did Roberts. It's October. It's the World Series. It is, as Ohtani himself said, championship season for the Dodgers with dislocated shoulders. And a few grimaces won't keep Ohtani out of the lineup.

“It's kind of pointless for me to even think about it,” Roberts said, “because he's going to be in there tomorrow.”