A Los Angeles Times sportswriter wants the Dodgers to trade Shohei Ohtani — the most talented baseball player alive — because he didn't like how October went. The stake for ordinary Americans is simple: the same institutional press that can't leave politics alone can't leave baseball alone either. The referee always makes himself the story, and the game you came to watch gets buried under the referee's opinions.

The Dodgers got swept by the Brewers in the NLCS, failing to reach the World Series for the third straight year. That's a disappointment for a franchise with LA's payroll and expectations. The boring, honest explanation: baseball's postseason is a coin flip. Fox News reported that in Game 4, Milwaukee's expected batting average was .237 versus LA's .296 — the Brewers still scored six runs to the Dodgers' four. The whole Dodgers lineup went cold, posting a .195/.267/.323 slash line and a staggering .116 average with runners in scoring position. They went 5-43 with RISP. That's a team collapse, not a one-man failure.

Enter Bill Plaschke of the Los Angeles Times, who needed a villain and found one in Ohtani. There's a kernel — Ohtani was limited by injuries down the stretch, his chase rate climbed, his swing-and-miss increased. He's 32 with 13 professional seasons on his frame. The question of whether he should keep pitching is fair. Ohtani and the Dodgers have said he'll continue as a two-way player in 2027.

But Plaschke didn't stop at the reasonable boundary. He called Ohtani's two-way play a "detrimental charade" and wrote that if Ohtani "insists on continuing this detrimental charade, they need to seriously consider trading him."

Trading Shohei Ohtani — a generational talent who stole 50 bases two seasons ago, which makes Plaschke's description of him as "lumbering" absurd on its face — is not a serious suggestion. It's a column written to get clicks, to make the writer the story, to generate the controversy that keeps the hot-take industrial complex humming.

Fox News framed Plaschke's take as "bizarre performance art trolling," which is generous. The more honest read: this is what the modern sports press does. It can't just tell you what happened. It needs to tell you what it means, who's to blame, and what drastic action must be taken — the more drastic, the more clicks. The same impulse that drives political pundits to declare the end of democracy every election cycle drives sports pundits to declare the end of a dynasty after one bad week.

Meanwhile, the Brewers and Rays — the two actual World Series teams — built winners the old-fashioned way: getting on base. Sports Illustrated reported that Milwaukee led MLB with a .341 team on-base percentage, while Tampa Bay ranked fifth at .326. Both teams tied for first in batting average at .258. They didn't out-slug anyone — Milwaukee ranked 11th in slugging, Tampa Bay 15th. They just got runners on base and manufactured runs. The Yankees, by contrast, hit the second-most home runs in baseball (223) but had only three grand slams all year — because nobody was on base when the bombs went out.

The story of this postseason is small-market teams beating big-market teams by doing fundamentals better. That's a story about baseball. Plaschke's column isn't about baseball. It's about Bill Plaschke.

The open question: how long will readers keep paying for referees who won't stop talking about themselves?