Jeff Passan Just Calmly Destroyed Stephen A. Smith Over His Shohei Ohtani Comments

There is maybe nobody in media worse to have come on your show the day after you royally fucked up than Jeff Passan. I'd rather get yelled at by somebody than have a guy like that just calmly and quietly destroy me with facts.

If you missed it, here's what Stephen A. Smith said about Shohei Ohtani yesterday:

So he's obviously been on an apology tour in the last 24 hours, which concluded with Passan coming on First Take to let him know that he's not mad, just disappointed. And Stephen A. just had to sit there and take it like a kid at a parent-teacher conference.

Everything that Passan said is 100 percent correct. And even if you put aside the reason everyone is upset at what Smith said, it's just factually inaccurate, too. Ohtani already is one of the biggest attractions in American sports right now and he doesn't speak English. Ronald Acuña Jr., another one of the biggest stars in Major League Baseball, doesn't speak much English — at least in the media, he has been getting much better.

I have said in the past that Ohtani wouldn't be able to pitch and hit at an elite level — which through the first half of this year, at least, has been tremendously incorrect — but there is no argument that Ohtani can't be the biggest attraction in baseball in America. If the language barrier is detracting from him at all, it isn't showing.

Go Jeff Go.