Opinion | What Shohei Ohtani and His Magnificent Season Mean for You

On Thursday, Sept. 19, the Los Angeles Dodgers’ Shohei Ohtani became the first player to hit 50 home runs and steal 50 bases in a single season. During his barrier-breaking game against the Miami Marlins, Ohtani also batted six-for-six, hit three home runs and drove home 10. Commentators called it the greatest single game in the greatest single season in Major League Baseball’s 121-year history.

As the end of season approached, Ohtani increased his record to 53 home runs and 56 stolen bases. Adding to the singularity of the moment is Ohtani’s position: He is a pitcher. Not since Babe Ruth has such a great pitcher also been such a great hitter — let alone such a great base runner. Base stealers tend to be lean and fast. Sluggers tend to be big and powerful. And pitchers are usually neither of those things. Ohtani is both.

Ohtani did all this while recovering from Tommy John surgery, a type of elbow ligament repair performed almost exclusively on pitchers. To witnesses, this athletic ability can seem, at first, simply unattainable — a phenomenon out of reach for the rest of us. And yet much as we do with art, nature or other forms of beauty, we can actively engage with this kind of greatness, appreciating it not only for the feelings of awe it elicits but also for how it can inspire even the least athletic among us to accomplish more in our own lives.

Human inspiration has long been a subject of investigation. A study a decade ago co-written by the psychologists Victoria Oleynick and Todd Thrash divided how humans perceive inspiration into two categories: inspired by and inspired to. In layperson’s terms, we can find ourselves inspired by a peak performer like Ohtani, and then we can use that inspiration as motivation to strive for our own goals and get the best out of ourselves.

That means even if we never pick up a baseball, let alone run 90 feet anywhere close to as fast as Ohtani, observing an athlete like him at the height of his ability can take us out of our day-to-day and remind us of what is possible. It’s akin to tasting the creation of a master chef, walking around a celebrated architect’s stunning building or hearing a genre-bending singer’s perfect pitch. In all these instances we feel greatness and we are reminded of an impulse to create, to make progress and to flourish.

Inspiration is a driver essential to humanity. Throughout history, those who were constantly on the lookout for more and better opportunities gained an immense survival advantage. It’s the hard-wiring all of us have inherited. Even for those of us fortunate enough not to be worried about our next meal, that early imprinting on our species hasn’t gone away. It’s why we feel so good when we channel our innate drive for progress into pursuing our own goals, whether it’s starting a business, writing a book or running a marathon.

Another way to think about Ohtani’s greatness is through the lens of self-determination theory. Developed in the 1980s by the psychologists Richard Ryan and Edward Deci, self-determination theory observes that competence or mastery — a sense of concrete progress that can be traced back to the effort you exert — is one of the core needs for humans to flourish.

Self-determination theory helps to explain why we are attracted to greatness in others and why we feel invigorated when we pursue it. It also helps to explain why greatness tends to be most satisfying when it is connected to something larger than ourselves, be it a team, a tradition or a lineage. It is important in this case that Ohtani’s accomplishments are not achieved in isolation. His remarkable season is unfolding as part of a team and in connection with generations of athletes who came before him. Singular as he is, he is also part of something larger than himself.

When someone does something extraordinarily well — or in Ohtani’s case, in a transcendent way — it can serve to reconnect us to our own potential for greatness in ways both large and small. We can both appreciate Ohtani’s singular brilliance from afar — and use the transcendence we experience watching him as motivation to set and chase our own goals much closer to home.

Brad Stulberg is the author of “The Practice of Groundedness: A Transformative Path to Success That Feeds — Not Crushes — Your Soul” and a co-founder of the newsletter The Growth Equation.

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