Stephen A. Smith tossing out hot takes is not a surprise.

But a July 2021 comment about Shohei Ohtani caught us a little off guard:

“But when you talk about an audience gravitating to the tube or to the ballpark to actually watch you, I don’t think it helps that the No. 1 face is a dude that needs an interpreter so you can understand what the hell he’s saying, in this country.”

Surrounding backlash aside, baseball has always been a sport that unites rather than divides. It represents over twenty countries across nine languages. The only one language that represents the game is the language within the game itself… And a few of the sport’s all-time greats agreed with us enough to lend us their own stories to prove it.

As picked up by The Drum.