Cameraman absolutely eats it during Shohei Ohtani interview at Dodgers spring training

Chicago White Sox v Los Angeles Dodgers
Chicago White Sox v Los Angeles Dodgers / Masterpress/GettyImages

In the bottom of the fifth during the Dodgers' Tuesday spring training game, Shohei Ohtani cranked an opposite field home run in a shot heard round the world. No one would've blamed him, necessarily, for a quiet day — after all, it was only his third plate appearance since August 2023 and he's technically still rehabbing from a UCL surgery in September. You can't always get what you want, but sometimes you can, and Ohtani did exactly what everyone desperately hoped to see.

He exited the game after the homer and rushed back to the clubhouse, then resurfaced to face a media scrum just a few minutes later. Ohtani always draws a crowd, but just a few minutes into questioning, all eyes turned away from him for a second as the sound of crunching and reporters stopping to ask if someone off-screen was alright halted proceedings.

Turns out, a cameraman had tripped and fallen at the edges of the scrum. Maybe he was in a mad dash so as not to miss out on getting a glimpse at Ohtani — could anyone blame him for that?

Shohei Ohtani's interview after Dodgers debut interrupted by cameraman stumble

It's not even the first time a Dodger has been interrupted mid-interview during spring training. After his first outing following ACL surgery, Gavin Lux was speaking to media when he was distracted by some loud, unintelligible yelling nearby. Clearly, everyone is excited about these 2024 Dodgers.

The rest of Ohtani's interview contained a few more interesting tidbits, namely when a reporter asked what he thought about San Francisco and the Giants organization during free agency, a bizarre question that was swiftly and appropriately swatted away through translator Ippei Mizuhara. It's unclear when we'll see Ohtani take the field again, but hopefully the Dodgers will loosen the reins on him more as spring training progresses and he'll take the field with the same frequency as the rest of LA's superstars.

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