Back in July, ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith went on a rant about why he doesn’t believe Shohei Ohtani can be the face of the MLB. His criticism of Ohtani was ridiculous to say the least.

“This brother is special, make no mistake about it,” Smith said. “But the fact that you’ve got a foreign player that doesn’t speak English, that needs an interpreter—believe it or not, I think contributes to harming the game to some degree, when that’s your box office appeal. It needs to be somebody like Bryce Harper, Mike Trout, those guys.

“I understand that baseball is an international sport itself in terms of participation.