The Los Angeles Dodgers have been rolling ever since winning the final game of their latest series with the division rival San Diego Padres.
Since then, they’ve won another three straight games and built up a two game lead in the National League West.
But that win against the Padres might be better remembered for a surprising moment from superstar Shohei Ohtani than for sparking the win streak.
After hitting his 45th home run of the season during the game, Ohtani stopped on his way back to the dugout to high-five a fan wearing a Padres Fernando Tatis Jr. jersey.
Following the game, manager Dave Roberts said that the fan had been heckling Ohtani relentlessly up to that point, though the decision to acknowledge him was a surprising one.
“Very annoying, as he’s in my right ear the entire game,” Roberts said of the jeering fan, per Sonja Chen of MLB.com. “But it was out of character from Shohei. He was wearing him out the whole game. … It was good for Shohei to show his personality.”
That decision from Ohtani, who is usually relatively stoic during games, raised questions about what exactly the fan had been telling him to elicit such an unusual and demonstrative reaction.
And now his superstar Dodgers teammate, Mookie Betts, has revealed that the insults were pretty straightforward.
“He was letting Shohei have it,” Betts recalled during a recent episode of his “On Base” podcast. “‘Shohei, you’re 0-10, 0-11!’ He said, ‘Don’t worry, just throw it down the middle!'”
It’s likely that Ohtani has heard worse than that from opposing fans in the past, so perhaps it was the persistence and volume of the insults rather than their specific nature that solicited the reaction from him after his home run.
Whatever the case may be, the Dodgers are probably hoping that other fans won’t take this as a sign of how to get attention from the two-way star.
