Roughly 70 media members formed a half-circle around a small backdrop at the Los Angeles Dodgers' facility late Friday morning, waiting for Shohei Ohtani to conduct his first media session. About a dozen of them had shown up hours earlier, before the sun had fully risen, just to catch a glimpse of him driving into the players' parking lot.

Ohtani's gravitas has been glaringly obvious through the first two days of spring training, but he's merely trying to conduct himself as the new guy. After six years with the crosstown rival Los Angeles Angels, he sees himself as a "rookie" all over again.