After Shohei Ohtani hit his 100th home run on Saturday, LA Angels fans were ecstatic. He became the third Japanese-born player to hit 100 baseballs out the yard, which was something ALL baseball fans were excited about. Also, he's the first player to collect 250 career strikeouts on the mound and 100 home runs at the plate since Babe Ruth.
Shohei Ohtani is the 2nd player in MLB history with at least 100 HR as a batter and 250 K as a pitcher, joining Babe Ruth.
— ESPN Stats & Info (@ESPNStatsInfo) May 15, 2022
Ohtani joins Hideki Matsui and Ichiro Suzuki as the only players born in Japan to reach 100 MLB home runs. pic.twitter.com/dlfU8B3a90
Former NBC Sports reporter Michele Tafoya, however, was no fan of what happened. She took to Twitter to criticize the Angels broadcast crew for talking about the historic home run. Apparently they are not supposed to talk about the best player in baseball doing something historic in the very game they are calling:
@Angels broadcast… Enough with the @Ohtani baseball chatter!!!@BallySportWest
— Michele Tafoya (@Michele_Tafoya) May 15, 2022
This was a hilariously bad tweet, and it got slaughtered all over the site. Only 157 people liked the tweet, and 2,474 people commented on it. It goes to show how few people enjoyed the comment versus how many people commented to attack it.
Some notable commenters made Angels fans laugh as they dunked on Tafoya, including the Angels broadcasters themselves:
Michele, I’m a big fan, thank you for watching @Angels baseball.
— Mark Gubicza (@Markgubicza) May 15, 2022
Just here for the comments ?
— Patrick O'Neal (@Patrick_ONeal) May 15, 2022
Felt the same way about the Tom Brady coverage. Why spend all that time talking about a player doing stuff no one has ever done before? Jeez! Grab an O-lineman for that first postgame interview to talk blitz adjustments, just to mix it up.
— Buster Olney (@Buster_ESPN) May 16, 2022
I'm a huge fan, Michele. But we love Ohtani. #GoHalos
— Adam Rank (@adamrank) May 15, 2022
Michele Tafoya took two days to come up with the lamest and most pathetic cover-up attempt for her Shohei Ohtani hate.
Michele Tafoya claimed on Monday that she was talking about the "chatter" about the physical "baseball" that Shohei Ohtani hit during the LA Angels' game:
Really? If you read the tweet again, I said enough with the talk about the Ohtani “baseball.” IMHO, the broadcast went overboard showing the actual BALL — maybe more than they showed Ohtani. The home run was fantastic, the coverage of the physical baseball was a little much.
— Michele Tafoya (@Michele_Tafoya) May 16, 2022
It's unclear where to even begin with this absurd response. Nobody is going to believe this to begin with. Also, why did she take two days to respond if that's somehow not what she meant?
Besides, let's pretend she is telling the truth here. It's still a ridiculous comment...Maybe they're talking about the ball because it's going to go down in history? It will, as explained in the beginning of the article, so obviously the broadcast is going to focus on it.
The home run was great, so it was broadcasted. Then, it became time to focus on another element that came with the home run. The history that the baseball represented and how important it would be to the game mattered. Therefore, they decided to talk about the ball.
Considering how many people disagreed with Tafoya, it's clear that nobody else felt the way about it that she did. In fact, there was an astounding ratio on this tweet too. Only 43 people liked it compared to 130 people commenting on it. These were very strange comments from Tafoya.
She certainly won't be rid of Ohtani anytime soon, however. Ohtani looks just as good as he was last year in 2022, as he has hit eight home runs, driven in 27 runs, and scored 27 runs so far this year (he's only played 37 games up to this point).
On the mound, he's been even better. In his first six starts of the year, he's recorded a 2.78 ERA and 2.11 FIP. It's confusing as to why media personalities still choose to attack Ohtani, but as they've learned too many times, attacking Ohtani doesn't seem to affect him at all.