In dealing with this mess, Ohtani Shohai and his agency team had practically been working around the clock lately, all for one purpose: to separate Ohtani Shohai and Mizuhara Ichirō into two distinct individuals in the public eye, and minimize the damage to the player's own reputation.

Ohtani Shohai neither affirmed nor denied Lin Guanglai's words; after a brief silence, he took the initiative to switch the topic elsewhere: "By the way, how's your injury? What did the doctors say?"

"Barring any surprises, same as you—new season I can only hit, can't pitch," Lin Guanglai answered.

Hearing that, Ohtani Shohai laughed. "Then your Yankees better watch out this season. Our Dodgers are dead set on winning the championship!"

Lin Guanglai laughed as well. He just gave the other man a sidelong glance, then slowly opened his mouth: "Shohei, over these past years, you've said that to me pretty much every single season, but what happened in the end? I've already got four rings on my hand, and you still haven't even played in a single postseason game yet… what exactly gives you the confidence to talk like that?"

Ohtani Shohai fell silent—not because he didn't want to fire back, but because every single word out of Lin Guanglai's mouth was the truth, each syllable hitting right where it hurts, leaving him not the slightest room to argue.

Which team has been the most successful in Major League Baseball these past few years? And which player has been the most successful? Grab any two people off the street in any city in North America and ask them; the answer would be exactly the same—

The New York Yankees, and Lin Guanglai.

After signing Manny Machado in the 2018–19 offseason and putting the final piece into place for their dynasty, the 2019 Yankees were in a tier of their own among the 30 Major League Baseball clubs, whether you looked at roster strength or depth:

Even though Aaron Judge once again missed a good chunk of the regular season due to recurring injuries, the New York Yankees, powered by Machado and a host of role players picking up the slack, barely skipped a beat. They steamrolled to 111 regular season wins and comfortably kept their seat on the league throne.

Come playoff time, the Yankees didn't encounter any particularly serious challenges within the American League:

In the Division Series against the Minnesota Twins, with the Judge finally back from injury, the Yankees exploded for 21 runs over three games—an average of 7 runs per game—leaving the Twins utterly helpless and sweeping them right out of the postseason.

In the ALCS, they ran into their old rivals, the Houston Astros—after the 2017 cheating scandal gutted them, the Astros brought in Joe Girardi, who had managed the Yankees that season, as their new skipper, and built a highly competitive roster around the bat-and-arm duo of Jose Altuve and Justin Verlander. They did, in fact, cause the Yankees some trouble, even jumping out to a 2–1 lead in the series;

But for a Yankees team united from top to bottom in its quest to establish the first three-peat dynasty of the 21st century, that kind of adversity clearly wasn't enough to block their path forward. Led by Lin Guanglai, the New York Yankees rattled off three straight wins and took down the Astros 4–2 in the series, advancing to the World Series for the third year in a row.

Their opponent, fittingly enough, was the Washington Nationals, who stood just one step away from completing a miracle run—Bryce Harper, who had chosen to stay put before the season, really did make good on his word and led the team all the way to the World Series stage.

Keep in mind, by the end of May in the 2019 season, the Nationals were still 9.5 games back within their own division. Forget the World Series—just making the playoffs looked like a pipe dream. Plenty of people even turned this into a punchline to mock Harper.

Yet with their projected title odds sitting at under 0.1%, the Washington Nationals somehow fought their way out of the pack. Not only did they go 93–69 to grab a Wild Card berth, they also knocked off the Milwaukee Brewers, who had reached the previous year's NLCS, the 106-win Los Angeles Dodgers juggernaut, and the storied Arizona Cardinals, champions of the NL Central, to claim the second World Series ticket.

When the World Series finally kicked off, nearly 99% of fans lined up behind the Washington Nationals—after all, with the Yankees having monopolized the hardware for the previous two years, they were naturally cast in the villain's role;

While the Nationals were the brave hero challenging the dragon, not to mention they had Harper, the prodigy "Little Stras," and a wave of young talent led by breakout superstar Juan Soto on their roster.

The roller-coaster narrative of this series was exactly what every fan had hoped to see:

The Nationals played with a nothing-to-lose mentality and actually turned the tables on the Yankees at Yankee Stadium, stealing two straight on the road and jumping out to a 2–0 lead in the series—for the defending champs, that was about as close to a hell start as it gets; 𝙧𝙚𝙚𝔀𝒆𝓫𝓷𝙤𝓿𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝙤𝓶

But then, in the three straight games held in Washington, D.C., the Yankees showed the world what separates champions from the rest: it's that refusal to quit no matter the circumstances. 4–1, 8–1, 7–1—backed up against the cliff, the Yankees erupted, shutting down the Nationals' lineup three games in a row and completely flipping the series on its head;

In Game 6 back in the Bronx, the red‑hot Yankees didn't give the Nationals any more chances: the final score was 7–2, the New York Yankees completed their three‑peat, and the Nationals' miracle run ended one step short.

After the game, the sight of Lin Guanglai and Bryce Harper—close friends in private—embracing on the field was hailed by many outlets, including ESPN, Fox, and TNT, as "the most moving World Series moment of the 21st century."