Part 1: The Gloves

Pure joy. The peal of wedding bells. The spring sonata of a songbird. And this. Elementary schoolchildren at play.

Shohei Ohtani is listening to and watching them smile and shriek in the delight that only the innocence and wonder of youth allow. The world will teach them anxiety, duplicity and cynicism. Not now. Not here. This is the music of joy.

“It had a special feeling to it!” gushes one boy in Japanese. “It had a signature on it! I was happy to touch it!”

Ohtani is watching a three-minute video on a phone. He is seated in the bedroom of a suite on the 47th floor of a midtown New York City hotel, the spires of St. Patrick’s Cathedral below and the Hudson River due west. He is wearing a moto-style black leather jacket over a white silk T-shirt and a pair of dark indigo jeans. He is listed at 6' 4" and 210 pounds and projects even more size up close. But like an Italian sports car, even at rest his angularity and aura connotate agility and speed. The power is all under the hood.