While players in Major League Baseball are showing up at spring training, 60 Minutes correspondent Jon Wertheim interviews Japanese baseball phenom Shohei Ohtani. Ohtani is being called “Japan’s Babe Ruth” due to his hitting and pitching (he can throw 100 mph).But Ohtani doesn’t want to be compared to Babe Ruth. He tells Wertheim, “[Babe Ruth] is like a mythical character to me. Because it’s such a long time ago and he was God to baseball. I shouldn’t be compared to him.”
Ohtani does have his eye on playing in the MLB. His current team, the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters in Sapporo say they’ll let him negotiate with MLB teams after this season. The catch is: Ohtani would make a lot less money. An MLB team could only play him a maximum of $6 million (due to the salary cap for foreign players under the age of 25). Ohtani says, “Personally, I don’t care how much I get paid or how much less I get paid because of this.” 60 Minutes airs Sundays at 7pm on CBS.
