SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
It's time for sports.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
SIMON: Shohei Ohtani - unstoppable. Chicago White Sox - appalling. And the Oakland A's - leaving. Howard Bryant of Meadowlark Media joins us. Howard, thanks for being with us.
HOWARD BRYANT: Good morning, Scott. How are you?
SIMON: Fine, thanks. But there's never been anything like Shohei Ohtani.
BRYANT: (Laughter) No.
SIMON: Man's in a league of his own, right? Thursday - 6 for 6, hit three home runs, stole two bases. He is now at 52-52. The first man ever to have hit 52 home runs, steal 52 bases in one season. Season isn't over. He's also a great pitcher. Have we ever seen a talent like him?
BRYANT: Never seen anything like him at all. In fact, I think we've spoken about this before. I just can't stop repeating it. In his rookie year, when he won Rookie of the Year in 2018, the great New York Yankees pitcher CC Sabathia called me and said, this guy's the greatest player of all time. I said, he's been here two weeks. He says, no, he's the greatest player of all time. And the reason he's the greatest player of all time is because he's dominating us. We're world-class professionals. And he's doing things that we did in the eighth grade. You know, he's a great pitcher, and he's a great hitter. And he's not even pitching this year because of an injury from last year, so he hasn't even been on the mound. I don't take a whole lot of stock into the stolen-base numbers simply because baseball changed the rules.
SIMON: Yeah.
BRYANT: So now they essentially give stolen bases away. But the bottom line is that, I mean, here's a guy, he'd never stolen more than 26 bases in a season, and now he's got, you know, over 50. But the talent is ridiculous. And when he starts pitching next year, which I think he's going to, and there's even rumors that he's going to pitch in the post-season, that he's...
SIMON: Wow.
BRYANT: He is a special talent, unlike anything we've ever seen. But here's something really special about Shohei Ohtani, Scott. We've never seen him in October. This is going to be the first year...
SIMON: Yeah.
BRYANT: ...That the baseball world gets to see him on the biggest stage, and that's really special.
SIMON: We will, by the way, note the American League - we'll say the Yankees and the Guardians; National League, as you say, the Dodgers, the Phillies and the Brewers. However, the Chicago White Sox are on what I'll call the ledge of history, aren't they? Just 118 losses, just two short of the worst of all time.
BRYANT: It's an embarrassment, Scott. And you think about just a couple of years ago, this team won 93 games. They were in the playoffs. They'd made the playoffs back-to-back years, and now, over the last two seasons in counting, they've lost 218 games. And Jerry Reinsdorf should be ashamed of himself. Baseball should be ashamed to have - to lose this many games and to not even be competitive is - it really does show that the people who run this sport do not pay nearly enough attention to something that we've seen, the losing on purpose, and they're losing on purpose right now. And the argument that people have given us has been, well, look at the Houston Astros. They went and lost on purpose all those years. They lost, you know, 100 games three years in a row, and now they're a great, great team. But if this is the way you team-build, you are not doing a service to anybody, including - or especially your fans.
SIMON: Yeah.
BRYANT: It really is bad.
SIMON: And they course want a billion dollars to build a new park in the South Loop. Finally, the Oakland A's are going to host the Texas Rangers on Thursday, final home game of the regular season, the last-ever game in Oakland. My gosh, what a tragedy for a city with such rich sports history.
BRYANT: Huge tragedy. And obviously, there'll be finger-pointing for forever about who's responsible for the fact that the Oakland A's have been there since 1968, and they will no longer be. They're moving to Sacramento and then after that, supposedly, Las Vegas. But it's been a complete demolition of sports in Oakland, considering that this is the first, you know, American sports city to lose all three teams. The Raiders are gone. The Warriors are gone. And now the A's are leaving after this season - a proud city, legendary city and just a really, really sad story for anybody who knows that - you know, that knows that history, and especially the folks of Oakland, who did not deserve this.
SIMON: Yeah. Howard Bryant of Meadowlark Media, thanks so much. Talk to you soon, my friend.
BRYANT: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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