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Stephen A. Smith Attempts To Clarify His Awful-Sounding Shohei Ohtani Take

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ESPN personality Stephen A. Smith is now trying to explain his Shohei Ohtani comments after receiving heavy backlash on social media

ESPN personality Stephen A. Smith is under heavy fire on Monday after making some questionable comments about Shohei Ohtani and his inability to speak english.

Smith basically seemed to insinuate that Ohtani was not the right face of baseball because he, “needs an interpreter so you can understand what the hell he’s saying.”

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After receiving heavy backlash, Stephen A. Smith took to social media to try to clarify his comments on Shohei Ohtani.

“My segment on Ohtani this morning, on First Take, people are misinterpreting what I’m saying,” Stephen A. Smith said on Twitter. “I’m not talking about the state of the game, baseball itself. Baseball’s a great game, a great sport. And some of the greatest players in the world are foreign players. … Ohtani is the second coming of Babe Ruth, okay?

“That’s not what I was trying to say. I’m talking about the marketability and the promotion of the sport is exactly what Sports Illustrated essentially alluded to in their article last month when they talked about 28 percent of the players in Major League Baseball are foreign players.

“A lot of them need translators. You know Spanish, it could be Mandarin, Japanese. The list goes on and on. If you are a sport trying to ingratiate yourself with the American public the way Major League Baseball is because of the problems you’ve been having to deal with, in terms of improving the attractiveness of the sport, it helps if you spoke the English language.”

It’s fitting that Stephen A. Smith didn’t offer an apology to Shohei Ohtani, but rather danced around the fact that what he said could be offensive to a whole bunch of people all over the world.

This week, Shohei Ohtani will take center stage during the All-Star Game festivities at Coors Field in Colorado.

On Monday night, Ohtani will compete in the Home Run Derby. And on Tuesday, Ohtani will be the starting pitcher, while also hitting in the lineup for the American league.

It will be a lot of fun to see Shohei Ohtani’s once-in-a-generation type of talent on full display this week. Just keep Stephen A. Smith away from it.

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