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       Los Angeles Angels' Shohei Ohtani reacts after walking New York Yankees' Brett Gardner and allowing a run during the first inning at Yankee Stadium on June 30, 2021.

       Sarah Stier/Getty Images

       On Thursday night, Los Angeles Angels pitcher Shohei Ohtani had his first miserable outing of the year. Seven runs in less than an inning inflated his earned-run average like a dirigible.

       This was bad timing. It almost certainly cost Ohtani his chance of being chosen the starter for the American League all-star team, which will be announced on Sunday.

       Good news, though. If Shohei Ohtani the pitcher is no longer top of class, Shohei Ohtani the designated hitter is already in.

       This guy should be the biggest star in the world. If the NFL had a guy who played quarterback and rush end, and did both things at an all-pro level, ESPN would plant a camera outside his house and broadcast his grass growing 24 hours a day.

       But because it’s Major League Baseball, Ohtani is still bubbling under the public consciousness. This is another in the long list of things baseball can’t do right.

       At this point, there is a wide consensus that the game is structurally compromised. It’s not tipping over any time soon, but it could use some buttressing.

       What’s wrong with it? Just a few little things.

       The games are too long and there are too many of them. But don’t worry, they’ll have the opposite problem soon when they go on strike/lockout again, and there won’t be any games at all.

       The economics of the game are inside out and upside down. All the teams cry poor, but half of them spend like they’ve just had a slots hit.

       The players are all cheaters. Everyone knows they’re cheaters. We can see them cheating. But officials aren’t clever enough to catch them at it. MLB’s enforcement arm makes the cops out of Benny Hill look like the KGB.

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       They might as well change the MLB logo to a still-life silhouette of Max Scherzer attempting to drop his pants on the mound and angrily waving his arms around. That would at least win over the YouTube crowd.

       Some sports need conversation starters. Baseball needs a conversation changer. Ohtani is that special something. He is the first ballplayer since X who has a shot at becoming a crossover, global star.

       I say X because there has never been such a player.

       Think of the best/most famous ballplayers in history – Babe Ruth, Willie Mays, Jackie Robinson, etc.

       They are nobodies outside of North America and a very few other spots around the world where American GI’s exported the game.

       MLB liked to talk about Ichiro Suzuki as a global star, but what it meant by that was that he was a non-North American star. It’s not the same thing.

       The global entertainment business has shifted away from original ideas and creative movements to the stockpiling of intellectual property. Why waste time reinventing many wheels when you can just keep reinventing the same one. You take something people already know and you spin it off endlessly.

       Star athletes are the IP of pro sports. They are walking, talking, clothes- and accessory-wearing brands who come with ready-made, easily-translatable legends.

       Some sports (e.g. soccer, tennis) are good at this. Some (e.g. baseball, hockey) are incredibly, logic-defyingly bad at it.

       They all have the same raw material – young, attractive, physically gifted people. They all start with a built-in audience, an enormous marketing arm, lots of ready cash and a pliant media ready to amplify their message. More than ready. Absolutely desperate to do so.

       Can you imagine if the sports apparatus were available in, say, the construction business? That sponsors, reporters and internet loudmouths who give it away for free were out there just dying to go on and on about the Forklift Operator of the Decade.

       The hard thing in sports isn’t making your IP into a big deal everyone wants to see. The hard thing is failing over and over again to do that.

       Take Mike Trout, who is statistically the best player at his age ever. Think of his face. Try to imagine him without a hat on. Try to remember what his voice sounds like. It’s hard.

       Could you spot him in a crowd at a party? No. Could you spot him if the two of you were trapped together in an elevator? Again, no.

       Try the same trick with Tom Brady. You could spot him standing three fields over at Coachella if he were wearing a Halloween mask. You know everything about his backstory, his family and the products he shills for.

       Trout should be Brady. Instead, unless he is standing on a baseball diamond in his baseball uniform with the words ‘Mike Trout’ written underneath him, he is invisible.

       Ohtani, who is Trout’s teammate in L.A., could be different.

       First of all, baseball doesn’t have to convince him to become an international star. Any guy who had his pick of every team in baseball and chose the Angels – a bad team, but a bad team in L.A. – was already thinking that way.

       Second, and not unlike Liam Neeson, Ohtani has a very particular set of skills.

       People like comparing him to Ruth, but that doesn’t quite fit. Yes, Ruth was an excellent pitcher as well as a hitter. But for the vast majority of his career – the 15 seasons he spent with the New York Yankees – Ruth didn’t pitch.

       When he did do both, he was never simultaneously great at both things. He went from being an excellent pitcher and a decent hitter, to a decent pitcher and great hitter, to a non-pitcher and the best hitter in history.

       Ohtani – the first ballplayer to pull a Ruth in a century – is currently doing both things at all-star levels. That’s new.

       People love the unusual, even if it requires a little explaining. Ohtani is better than unusual. He’s unique.

       Baseball should stop wasting time comparing Ohtani to people no one outside of the United States has ever heard of (e.g. other ballplayers). His peers are the biggest crossover stars in the world – Lionel Messi, LeBron James, Novak Djokovic, et al.

       The biggest obstacle to making Ohtani a global concern is baseball’s parochialism. A sport once enveloped by its pastoral ‘national pastime’ self-image is now being choked by it. There is no such thing as a homespun billion-dollar business, but baseball sure does try. The result is a terror of making the game any bigger than its current national boundaries.

       Ohtani is the person best suited to bust out of baseball’s U.S. borders. But if he’s going to do it, he’s going to have to do so on his own.