八胜两负、防御率一点七九，大谷翔平今年不再上场投球：教练说他爱当双向球员，但现在这么做说不通

Today's story is about baseball, but you do not need to understand baseball to follow it.

First, how baseball works.

There are two sides on the field.

One side has a player standing in the middle who throws the ball toward the other side.

The player on the other side holds a stick and has to hit the ball away.

The one who throws is called the pitcher; the one who hits is called the batter.

These two jobs are normally done by two different people.

Why?

Because throwing does too much damage to the arm.

After pitching one game, a pitcher needs several days of rest.

So in American professional baseball, for a hundred years, everyone has divided the work: if you throw, you do not hit; if you hit, you do not throw.

Only one person is not like that.

His name is Shohei Ohtani. He is Japanese, and he plays in America.

He does both.

He is a pitcher, and he is also a batter.

What is harder still is that he does both extremely well.

Ordinarily, doing both means doing neither well.

Not him.

This year, as a pitcher, he has won eight games and lost only two.

As a batter, he has hit thirty home runs.

A home run is when you hit the ball clean out of the park in one swing — the hardest kind.

So every time he plays, the stands are full.

Plenty of people are not really watching the game at all. They came to watch him.

But this July, things changed.

Since 3 July, he has not taken the mound to pitch.

First his arm was uncomfortable.

Then his knee was uncomfortable.

Then one day, while he was batting, his neck and his arm were uncomfortable again.

At the end of August he tried one practice session of throwing.

Afterwards, his arm felt worse.

From that day on, he has not touched the ball.

In between, he also missed four games.

On 7 September, he spoke for himself.

He said: this year, I will most likely not pitch again.

Note that: not "not today", and not "not this week".

Not for this entire season.

His manager spoke too.

The manager said: he loves pitching, and he loves being someone who does both.

The manager said: but doing it right now does not make sense.

The two of them are saying the same thing, in two different tones.

One of them is putting something down; the other is explaining it.

And how does Ohtani himself feel?

He said one thing through his interpreter.

He said: it is disappointing.

But he went on: I want to turn this year into an experience.

He did not say he would stop next year.

He only said: this year, do one of them first.

I think this is worth telling because of the following.

One person can do two things that almost nobody can do well at the same time.

He did it, and he did it for several years.

But whether you can do it, and how long you can keep doing it, are two different questions.

The skill comes in two portions. The body comes in one.

Think about it:

You have two things in front of you. You want to do both, and you can do both.

But your time and your body come in one portion.

Which one would you put down first?