Who is Tungsten Arm O’Doyle and why is he linked with Shohei Ohtani?
By Ian Levy
If you feel a little lost hearing Shohei Ohtani being compared to Tungsten Arm O’Doyle, you’re not alone. Here’s what you’re missing.
It’s become a morning ritual for many of us — checking out the trending terms on Twitter and then frantically Googling to figure out what the heck is going on and how you got so far outside the loop.
With MLB Opening Day on Thursday, it’s not a surprise that many of those trending terms today were baseball players. And it’s not entirely unexpected that some of those names would be unfamiliar — maybe a young player for a team you don’t really follow, or an outlier debut from a journeyman who had never had reason to cross your fan radar. But Tungsten Arm O’Doyle, who you may have seen popping up, is neither.
Tungsten Arm O’Doyle is a fictional player, who played for the fictional Akron Groomsmen in an alternate reality of the MLB in the early 1920s. He doesn’t really exist outside of our collective imaginations or this viral tweet from 2021.
every time I see an Angels highlight it's like "Mike Trout hit three homes runs and raised his average to .528 while Shohei Ohtani did something that hasn't been done since 'Tungsten Arm' O'Doyle of the 1921 Akron Groomsmen, as the Tigers defeated the Angels 8-3"
— ℳatt (@matttomic) May 18, 2021
Why is everyone talking about Shohei Ohtani and Tungsten Arm O’Doyle today?
The reason he’s trending this morning is that the collective exploits of Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani have made that tweet relevant again. Ohtani got the Opening Day start and struck out 10 batters across six shutout innings. The Angels lost 2-1 to the Oakland A’s.
All things considered this a fairly innocuous example of the phenomenon the tweet was referencing. I mean, Trout went 0-of-3 with a walk. This wasn’t like when Ohtani went 3-4 with two homers and 8 RBI, with Trout contributing two runs and two walks, and the Angels lost 12-11. Or when Ohtani and Trout combined to go 6-of-10 with a pair of homers against the Orioles, only to lose in the ninth to the Orioles, 5-4.
It’s a phenomenon, one that has been pervasive enough that reporters have needed to explain it to their Japanese colleagues.
storytime
— Bradford William Davis (@BWDBWDBWD) March 31, 2023
last year I was chilling Yankees press room, writing my lil stories, when one of my Japanese colleagues asked me to help translate something. bet.
everything seems fine, but then he's like... "what is 'Tungsten Arm O'Doyle'?"
I had to hold back my screams https://t.co/9rxYdzTNyX
As long as Ohtani and Trout keep mashing and the Angels keep losing, the legacy of Tungsten Arm O’Doyle will only grow.
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