The biggest star in American sports right now, the way Babe Ruth once was, is a baseball player who attended Hanamaki Higashi High School in Iwate Prefecture in northern Japan, and who first played professional baseball for the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters. We are talking about Shohei Ohtani, of course.

Ohtani hits home runs left-handed and throws the kind of 98 mph fastballs he threw at the Red Sox last night right-handed. He has 31 homers and a 4-1 record and a 3.49 ERA, and he will go to the All-Star Game next week as a hitter and as a pitcher.

At a time when there is so much young talent in baseball, Ohtani is the one who has set himself apart, the one everybody wants to see. He really is the biggest star we have in sports right now. And when was the last time that happened with a baseball player?

On Tuesday night, Ohtani knocked in a run with a double against the Red Sox and scored a run, batting second for Joe Maddon’s Angels. Ohtani threw fastballs that topped out at 98 mph and an occasional curveball in the 60s, one that seemed to float to home plate like a frisbee. He got saved in the top of the sixth when Juan Lagares, in center field, made a dazzling play to take a home run away from Xander Bogaerts that would have turned a 3-2 Angels lead into a 4-3 Red Sox lead.

But before that -- with Connor Wong on third base, and after falling behind Alex Verdugo 2-0 -- Ohtani reached back and blew Verdugo away with three high-heat fastballs in a row. It was as if he were reminding the home crowd -- and the Sox -- just who it was they were watching. Arthur Schopenhauer, the philosopher, once wrote, “Talent hits a target no one else can hit. Genius hits a target no one else can see.” That is Ohtani, the Sho Hey Kid.

Last week at Yankee Stadium, Ohtani hit three home runs in the first two games of the series. Then it was his turn to pitch, on that great baseball stage, and he got pounded, giving up seven runs and only recording two outs before Maddon pulled him. On Tuesday night in Anaheim, he came back from that, pitching seven artful innings, giving up two runs on five hits and striking out four batters.

“I wasn’t trying to go for strikeouts,” Ohtani said afterward through his translator. “I was trying to get those quick outs, make them put the ball in play.”

Ohtani talked then about how “stacked” the Red Sox lineup is. He is sure right about that. Boston is deep and balanced, and Alex Cora’s batting order has been as formidable as any in baseball while producing one of the best records in the standings. Ohtani didn’t blow them away on this night. He pitched. He says he is a student of the game and proved it.

"I felt like I had good rhythm, good mechanics," Ohtani said after the Angels won, 5-3. "It was a lot different from my last start.”

In a season when Mike Trout, a four-time MVP and the acknowledged best player in baseball when healthy, has only played 36 games because of injuries, it goes without question that Ohtani has been this season’s MVP, at least so far. He is the one who has carried the Angels to a 42-43 record, even if that is still only good enough for fourth place in the AL West. Everybody knows that Trout has only played three postseason games in his entire career and only had one postseason hit, a home run. But Ohtani gives the Angels hope now about what they can be and what they can look like when Trout is back in the lineup.

“Yeah,” Maddon said last week in New York, “that was just the right way to start his trip to New York, with him hitting a home run.”

Maybe it figures that Maddon is the one getting to manage Ohtani as he is having a season like this. Maddon, of course, was the one managing the Cubs when they won their first World Series in 108 years. Now he has a ringside seat with Ohtani, doing things on a baseball field that Babe Ruth did more than 100 years ago with the Red Sox.

Over the last 12 months we have seen amazing things from older athletes in sports. LeBron James, who has been our biggest star for a good, long time, won another NBA title and Tom Brady, at 43, won his seventh Super Bowl. Chris Paul, at the age of 36, a year older than LeBron was when the Lakers won, is trying to win his first NBA title with the Suns. Big names. Big stuff. But Ohtani continues to hit targets only he can see, while the rest of us get to watch. He just turned 27 this week. Biggest star in sports right now. A ballplayer. The Babe would understand completely.