When LeBron James spoke publicly for the first time as a Laker, he attracted a crowd that looked as if it was half the size of this.
Shohei Ohtani’s introductory news conference on Thursday was unprecedented in scale, with more than 300 journalists packed shoulder-to-shoulder in Dodger Stadium’s center field plaza.
There are instances that fundamentally transform a franchise, and this was one of them.
Similar to how the Dodgers were redefined by the emergence of Fernando Valenzuela and similar to how they established a new identity by trading for Adrian Gonzalez, they entered a new era when they officially signed the 29-year-old Ohtani this week.