Shohei Ohtani’s 2025 is off to a roaring start, as his fifth-inning longball for the Dodgers was deemed a very controversial home run, as the live broadcast did not give conclusive evidence to where the ball landed.
Ohtani made perfect contact on a 99-mile-per-hour fastball from Chicago Cubs reliever Nate Pearson, sending the ball quickly toward the right-center field fence at the Tokyo Dome.
The ball appears to carom off the top of the wall or near it, and bounce back into the field of play, leading some to believe his swing should have been ruled a double, not a trot around all four bases.
The Japanese erupted with the smack of Ohtani’s bat hitting the ball, with the crowd going into pandemonium with the apparent sight of a home run, which was not overturned.
A replay shows Ohtani’s blast getting 99 percent of the way over the wall before a fan in the front row reaches out over the wall and misses grabbing it, causing it to fall back into the field of play.
Fan interference from someone in the front row of the outfield stands is rarely called a home run in Major League Baseball, with the trajectory of the ball unclear. MLB fans made it clear where they stood on the issue on social media afterward.
Shohei Ohtani’s fifth-inning longball in Japan was deemed a very controversial home run
The Japanese erupted with the smack of Ohtani’s bat hitting the ball for the home run
‘Are we not calling fan interference there because it was in Japan, it’s Ohtani, it’s the Dodgers, or all of the above?’ one fan said on X.
‘Extremely clear that it was not a home run – fan was reaching way over – but this whole thing is in the bag for the Dodgers and Ohtani, so whatever. MLB gets what it wants,’ a second on social media stated.
‘I don’t think that was a home run, but there would have been civil unrest if they took that away from Shohei Ohtani,’ a third concluded.
The home run was Ohtani’s first of the season as part of the MLB World Tour: Tokyo Series, with the Cubs and Dodgers each featuring Japanese stars.
There is no bigger baseball star in Japan or around the globe than Ohtani, with a jam-packed crowd in Tokyo possible likely due his living-legend status.
The decision to keep Ohtani’s blast a home run comes in contrast with the opposite decision, which also went the Dodgers way during Game 1 of last year’s World Series against the New York Yankees.
It was a Gleyber Torres hit to left field where a Dodgers fan reached over the wall and grabbed the ball, with Los Angeles’ Teoscar Hernandez immediately pointing to the fan.
The umpires immediately ruled the play a double, putting the go-ahead run on second base, instead of on the scoreboard, with the championship opener tied at 2.
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