Dodgers Ballboy Nonchalantly Saves Shohei Ohtani’s Face (Life?) From Line Drive Foul Ball

Spectrum SportsNet LA

Shohei Ohtani’s incredible debut season with the Los Angeles Dodgers could have taken a dramatic turn in the wrong direction if it weren’t for the quick thinking, and reaction time, of a Los Angeles Dodgers ballboy.

During the Dodgers’ 4-0 win over the lowly Chicago White Sox on Wednesday night, a line drive foul ball came rocketing toward Shohei Ohtani’s face/head, only to be intercepted by a ballboy wearing the number 94.

The ballboy didn’t just get in the way or redirect the ball’s trajectory, but he caught it bare-handed.

Looking at the video frame by frame — I was doing so while trying to take a screenshot for the image in this article — I found that the instantaneousness of the ballboy’s reaction is pretty remarkable.

Whereas Ohtani immediately begins to duck for cover, the ballboy locks in and actually leans slightly *towards* the incoming spherical missile as he prepares to catch it.

Ohtani (ALLEGEDLY, ALLEGEDLY, ALLEGEDLY — WE’RE JOKING! SATIRE!) already knows a thing or two about being in debt, so it’s safe to say that he should feel indebted to this ballboy for protecting him from getting beamed in the grill with a butterfly effect-causing baseball.

In his debut season with the Dodgers after signing a 10-year, $700 million contract in the offseason, Ohtani is batting .322 with 25 home runs and 61 RBIs, putting him on track for 50 home runs and 123 RBIs if he continues at this pace.

As for the ballboy, it got me thinking that the ballboys of the world deserve more respect. The problem? Ballmen almost sounds worse. But what if we capitalized Ball Boy? You know, treat it like a superhero’s name — Superboy, Beast Boy, the Boy Wonder, etc. Hell, even the Beach Boys, Beastie Boys, .