Sports

The gap-year road trip that healed an Ivy League hoops star

Published

8 months ago

March 16, 2024

The gap-year road trip that healed an Ivy League hoops star

NEW YORK — She stopped working at the sushi restaurant, laid two mattress pads in the back of her Jeep and drove away from Florida with her new girlfriend, bound for a small town in the Cascade Mountains that looks like Christmas. She brought a basketball only out of habit. Abbey Hsu had to see what else there was. Anywhere else seemed like a good place to start.

This was an impossible couple of years. She tore the anterior cruciate ligament in her right knee near the end of her junior season of high school. On that Valentine’s Day in 2018, she hobbled to a parking lot while others ran from the deadliest mass shooting at a high school in history. A pandemic cut short her freshman year at Columbia, and shortly after her coach sent everyone home, her father got sick. Dr. Alex Hsu became the first medical professional in Florida to die from complications related to COVID-19. It was two days after his youngest daughter’s birthday.

Instead of returning to Columbia in the fall of 2020, with contact athletics canceled, Abbey Hsu stopped. For once. Then she changed directions.

It’s been a long time since she crammed her 5-foot-11 frame into the back of a Jeep to sleep roadside during that trip, taken on a gap year from school. Two weeks of hiking and skiing and hot springs and a visit to that charming Bavarian village named Leavenworth, Wash. So much more to do, she realized then.

She’s now in a film room as a fifth-year senior, with more than 2,000 points behind her and Columbia’s first-ever NCAA Tournament appearance in sight. She’s also pouring a hydration packet into a water bottle; she’s caught the bug ransacking her team. Felt weird all weekend. She was nauseous when she woke up. But she’s here.

“You just mostly feel lucky,” Hsu says. “You’re still standing today.”

Basketball has been the easy part. After years of whisking five older children from this to that and back, Theresa Hsu decided her two youngest would pick one sport and try to be good at it. As it happened, a cousin in Massachusetts got her picture in the local newspaper, playing hoops for her high school. A copy made its way to the Hsu (pronounced SHOO) household in Parkland, Fla. Abbey, the last of the seven siblings, decided that was cool. She wanted to do that.

So Abbey Hsu started in a rec league where no one kept score. She was maybe 7. “And I loved it,” she says, “even though it was terrible.”

Her station has improved. Her 2,071 career points rank fourth in Ivy League history, and she’s hit a conference-record 363 career 3-pointers. (She set the league single-season mark for 3s with 108 as a sophomore … and then broke it with 112 as a junior.) She’s averaging 20.6 points and 7.1 rebounds in her final season and, on Tuesday, that earned her league player of the year honors. She’s also on watch lists, for the Naismith Trophy and the Ann Meyers Drysdale award, which recognizes the nation’s top shooting guard, and a tall guard with a consistent, mechanically flawless stroke will be at least intriguing to WNBA franchises. “If you were to watch her shoot any random day of the week and come back and watch three months from now, you’d see the same exact shot,” Columbia coach Megan Griffith says.

Columbia, meanwhile, hosts the Ivy League women’s tournament starting Friday with an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament in reach – and a decent chance to earn an at-large spot.

There are happily-ever-afters. And then there is deliverance. “That’s what I came here to do,” Hsu says. “It would become almost fulfillment for me and my career here and then leave a legacy behind. That’s the new standard.”

It’s a stubbornness of purpose. It always has been.

The moment Abbey Hsu felt a tooth loosen as a child, she wiggled it until it was out, so she could get the dollar under her pillow and put it in the drawer where she stashed all her money. She remains proud that the local library recognized her middle-school team for a district championship. Around the same age, she and a friend would spend hours at nearby North Springs Park, waiting obstinately to be chosen for pickup runs with middle-aged dudes. “Even if we weren’t difference-makers,” Hsu says, “I think we definitely earned respect.”

Pursuing results, and getting them, matters. “I always just liked being good at stuff,” she says.

Once upon a time, Hsu grew tired of the youth basketball grind and was considering giving it up for flag football when she was invited to be a guest player for an AAU team competing at a tournament in North Carolina. She performed well enough to get noticed by Dartmouth coaches. Word traveled to her parents, who quickly disseminated it. “With just that little bit of praise, that notoriety, she was getting up at 5 or 6, going to work out,” Theresa Hsu says. “She just got more and more intense. And never looked back.”

She didn’t want to stop even when she was forced to stop. Hsu was a prospect with multiple mid-major Division I opportunities when she went up for a layup late in her junior year at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. Physicality from opponents was nothing new. But this time, on this shot attempt, she doesn’t think the other player meant anything by it. It’s all semantics, though, when a torn ACL diagnosis arrives. “Basketball was my whole personality,” Abbey Hsu says. “My whole life. So without it for like eight or nine months, I was pretty destroyed.”

It was about two weeks later when she heard strange sounds from the direction of Building 12 on the Stoneman Douglas campus.

Because it was Valentine’s Day, she assumed someone was popping balloons. Then the fire alarm went off. Her teacher instructed everyone to leave class and head for the stairs. I have an elevator pass, Hsu responded flippantly, noting the crutches she was using to get around. She was directed to a stairwell anyway. When she saw her schoolmates running, she thought they were goofing off during a fire drill. She limped to a Walmart parking lot west of campus while the police cars and helicopters arrived.

Eventually, Hsu reached a friend’s house. There, she saw the news on television. A former student took an Uber to Stoneman Douglas, walked into Building 12 with a rifle and opened fire.

The attack lasted six minutes. Seventeen people were killed and another 17 were injured.

“It felt like a movie,” she says. It didn’t feel real even as she and her classmates returned to school after a two-week hiatus to emotional support dogs and staffers handing out roses. She didn’t stop feeling intensely guilty about it – Why not me? Why was I a lucky one? – until she was long removed from it, having transferred to St. Thomas Aquinas High School in Fort Lauderdale for her senior year and then moving more than 1,200 miles away for college. “I think it just made me realize, be grateful,” Hsu says. “I could still go on the court and play basketball. I still have that chance. I’m still living.”

Despite the ACL tear, Columbia’s interest never waned. “We went all in,” Griffith says. Nor did the Hsus’ interest in using basketball to attend an Ivy League school, scholarship or not. One of Griffith’s first recruiting calls to Abbey Hsu became a four-person conference, with mom and dad on the line, too; the coach immediately understood that all decisions here were family decisions. Alex Hsu never played, but basketball had become something more for him. No one else’s parents sat in the stands as their daughters practiced, silently enjoying the view. Alex Hsu did.

To a teenager, this was so embarrassing. “I was a big brat to him,” Abbey Hsu says. “Looking back, it was so stupid.” Her dad was busy. How he spent his free time was a quiet gift, for him and her.

A simple man, is how Abbey Hsu describes her father. Her favorite memories with him are ordering dim sum and watching television. Usually he was on the couch first, after a long day of work. He always made room for more, though, in every sense. Dr. Alex Hsu gave patients his personal cell number, so they could avoid going through a service. No insurance? Didn’t matter. He took care of his own, and was revered for it. “He was, like, famous,” Theresa Hsu says. “Everywhere we went, they seemed to know him. And we got red carpet treatment, for sure.”

His youngest daughter was a lot like her dad. Hard-working and even-keeled. Always worrying about everyone else. Content with quiet, too. Abbey Hsu’s favorite part of New York is Columbia’s campus, since it walls off the clamor of the city. “I don’t do too well with all the noisiness,” she says. Her dad loved that she was there, though, and playfully pestered Griffith not to leave while his daughter played for the Lions. (Griffith, an alum, assured him she was going nowhere.) The team was on the verge of a postseason bid when the pandemic shut down her first season of college basketball. Like others, Hsu went home with only an abstract concept of what the world was enduring.

Her father, who’d practiced medicine for more than three decades, fell ill soon after.

Alex Hsu was in the ICU when he died on March 24, 2020. No one was allowed by his side.

From afar, Griffith and the Columbia staff made it clear to some players in Florida at the time: Go to Abbey. Talk to her. Immediately. It was all they could do. It was nevertheless unimaginable. “I did anything I could to not think about it,” Abbey Hsu says.

The news spread and found its way to Lia Sammaritano. She was a junior basketball player when Abbey Hsu started at Stoneman Douglas – “She immediately was the best,” Sammaritano recalls – and eventually enrolled at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York. The two had kept in touch when Abbey wound up at Columbia. They always said they should find a way to connect. It never happened.

In a moment of tragedy, Sammaritano reached out to Abbey Hsu again. They began to talk regularly. They were back in Florida and started hanging out instead of only discussing it. “From the outside, we’re so different,” Sammaritano says. “You’re not going to get much out of her, she’s not super talkative, where I’m a little more extroverted. … We just found this balance.” In May, Hsu decided to take a redshirt and a gap year instead of returning to Columbia. (The Ivy League eventually shut down all sports for 2020-21 anyway.) The idea of a cross-country road trip simmered; Sammaritano and Hsu got caught up in a social media trend of turning vans into mobile living units. Not having a van was a bit of a hangup. But Hsu’s boxy Jeep seemed like a suitable alternative. Poking around for potential stops, Hsu had discovered the charm of Leavenworth, Wash., and thought it could be a good target point. Her mother had moved back to Kansas City the previous August, providing a natural stopover midway.

So in March of 2021, while college basketball tried to figure out how to finish a season in a bubble, Sammaritano quit her job as a receptionist and Hsu left her gig with Bluefin Sushi. And they hit the road.

“The best decision we made,” Sammaritano says. “It was super healing for both of us.”

They visited Moab. They skied in Colorado. They saw hot springs in Idaho. They found their way to Leavenworth. “It feels like you’re in a Christmas story when you’re in there,” Hsu says. The concept of living out of the Jeep gave way to stealing a few nights at hotels. But where Abbey Hsu was? It was less important than where she was headed.

“What really helped me during that year is finding who I was outside (of basketball),” Hsu says. “I found out I liked hiking a lot. I like the outdoors a lot. I could still enjoy life without basketball being there 24-7. That just gave me a little reassurance. I still love basketball, but once the ball stops bouncing, I won’t be lost.”

She’d created a version of herself that could exist with the sport, not because of it. But Abbey Hsu does like to be good at stuff. On the return leg of the road trip, the pair stopped again in Kansas City and Hsu found her way into a gym with a shooting machine. She went to work.

Many months later, near the end of the 2022-23 season, Griffith brought her team together. She asked each player why they believed they could win the program’s first Ivy League championship.

Before Abbey Hsu’s turn came, she thought about her gap year. And all the time after that. And who she was and what she decided she had to do. She found her answer there.

“I know,” she told the group, “because I would shoot so much that my fingers bled.”

Abbey Hsu, left, and Lia Sammaritano crossed the country in Hsu’s Jeep on a “super healing” adventure. (Courtesy of Lia Sammaritano )

February and March are hard. Griffith and her staff check in on their star guard a little more this time of year. A conversation between Griffith and Hsu, diving into the enormity of all of it, is almost a rite of late winter. “You’re like, ‘Are you carrying this on your own too much?’” Columbia’s coach says. “I just try to help her process it. Otherwise, it sits with her.”

Abbey Hsu still doesn’t feel free of the burden Parkland heaped upon her and the hundreds of others who escaped that day. She’s still not sure she fully grieved her father, and she knows there’s no end to that process, anyway.

There’s only moving ahead.

She can identify triggers. She knows how to deal with them better, she says, because she knows herself better. Every good cry is another step.

“If I complain about all the stuff that I’ve been through,” she says, “I’m kind of taking away from the great life I got to live.”

She has ideas for other big trips, including one to Hong Kong, to see where her father grew up. But before that? Maybe she sees where basketball takes her this time, no roadmap required.

(Illustration: Daniel Goldfarb / The Athletic; photos: Vera Nieuwenhuis, Isaiah Vazquez / Getty Images)

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Sports

Ravens say they aren’t pondering a kicking change, but Justin Tucker is cause for concern

Published

3 hours ago

November 21, 2024

Press Room

Ravens say they aren’t pondering a kicking change, but Justin Tucker is cause for concern

Citing a lack of consistency in the kicking game, Baltimore Ravens general manager Ozzie Newsome announced that the team was releasing young kicker Stephen Hauschka, who hours earlier missed a 36-yard attempt against the Cleveland Browns on “Monday Night Football.”

Hauschka was just 9-of-13 on field goal attempts through nine games, and all of his misses were from under 50 yards. The Ravens replaced him by signing free agent Billy Cundiff, who was working at a venture capital firm at the time.

That transaction occurred in November 2009. That’s the last time the Ravens made an in-season, performance-based change at typically one of the most volatile positions in the sport.

Ravens coach John Harbaugh made clear Monday that he has no plans on making another one, even as his longtime kicker, Justin Tucker, is mired in the most difficult stretch of his 13-year career.

“There’s no thought to that,” Harbaugh said. “You have to find that competition first if you’re going to be blunt about it. Where is that competition? That would be one thing. The best option right now is to get Justin back on point, because he’s fully capable of doing it. (We) certainly haven’t lost any confidence in Justin Tucker.”

Harbaugh’s comments came a day after Tucker missed two kicks in an 18-16 loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers at Acrisure Stadium. After entering the season as the most statistically accurate kicker in NFL history, Tucker has missed 6 of 22 attempts this year, along with a point-after try. Two of the misses came from inside 50 yards, where Tucker had made 90 percent of his kicks over his first 12 NFL seasons. His extra-point miss was just the seventh of his career.

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“It’s certainly frustrating, especially when we know that these games come down to the wire, like this one did, that I let a couple get away,” Tucker said after Sunday’s game. “But, like I’ve said before, the only thing that we can do is just get right back to work and focus on making the most out of our next opportunity.”

Considered one of the most unique weapons in the league for over a decade and the Ravens’ most reliable performer since he entered the league in 2012, Tucker — and by extension, the team’s field goal operation — has suddenly become one of the reasons Baltimore is losing games.

It’s harsh and it feels uncomfortable to say or write about a guy who has been the gold standard in the sport at his position for many years, but the numbers are hard to ignore. The Ravens’ four losses have come by a total of 17 points, and Tucker missed a field goal in each of them that factored prominently in the defeats.

Tucker “needs to make kicks,” Harbaugh said after Sunday’s frustrating loss in Pittsburgh. “He knows that. He makes them in practice, and he made the long one (54-yarder) later, which was good to see. He’s still very capable. Kick them straight, we’ll be good.”

Missing seven total kicks through 11 games would get plenty of other kickers a pink slip. That’s just the nature of the position in the NFL and the fine line between winning and losing. Kicking issues are omnipresent around the league, and Tucker is hardly alone among proven veterans having a tough time this season. The New York Jets have had four different kickers in as many weeks.

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For the Ravens, however, kicking stability has been a constant. Matt Stover, nicknamed “Money Matt” for his accuracy, was the team’s kicker from 1996 to 2008. Cundiff replaced Hauschka in 2009 and was the team’s kicker for three seasons before his crushing late miss in the AFC Championship Game loss to the New England Patriots in January 2012. Tucker arrived on the scene as an undrafted free agent several months later, beat out Cundiff for the job and hasn’t missed a game in 13 seasons.

Just the idea of making a kicking change in Baltimore seems blasphemous, given Tucker’s well-earned status. Before the two misses in Pittsburgh on Sunday, Tucker’s career field goal percentage (89.7) made him the most accurate kicker in NFL history and put him on a Hall of Fame track.

His clutch kicking as a rookie in 2012 was instrumental in the Ravens winning their last Super Bowl. He’s been selected to seven Pro Bowl teams and named an All-Pro on eight occasions. Time and time again when the Ravens needed points, particularly late in games, Tucker stepped up, performed his tried-and-true pre-kick ritual and calmly delivered. He’s previously been the highest-paid kicker in the sport, and for good reason.

Tucker’s kicking brilliance, along with his charisma, outgoing personality and multitude of talents, made him one of the faces of the team and one of the most popular and recognizable athletes in Baltimore. Tucker’s No. 9 jerseys are not hard to find when you’re scanning the seating bowl at Ravens games.

But this season has brought long-avoided angst in Baltimore about the performance of the kicker and led to a small but growing segment of Baltimore’s fan base to question why the organization hasn’t moved on, or at least brought in competition, for its longtime star.

“Knowing the team, knowing the character of Justin, yes, his performance in the past does warrant him the benefit of the doubt, for sure,” Stover said. “But this is the NFL. It is a very immediate performance you have to have. With an objective job like being a kicker, it becomes a quick response for people to say, ‘Hey, man, what’s wrong with you? Do we need to make a change?’”

Yet, Stover said, “He’s one of the best who has ever done it. Who are you going to get who you can guarantee will be better?”

Justin Tucker has missed a field goal in each of the Ravens’ four losses this season. (David Eulitt / Getty Images)

Bringing in another kicker in mid-November likely means either signing a well-traveled veteran who hasn’t been able to land another job or plucking someone off another team’s practice squad. It’s inconceivable at the moment that the Ravens would trust one of those options more than Tucker at a time when they fancy themselves as Super Bowl contenders.

“He’s definitely our best option, and he’s going to make a lot of kicks — I really believe that,” Harbaugh said. “But it’s up to him and the guys he works with every day to make those balls go straight. Competition right now, at this time, no that’s not something we’d want for Justin.”

Stover, who is in the Ravens’ Ring of Honor, still lives in the Baltimore area and has relationships with many people in the building, including Tucker. He also understands what Tucker is going through. There were times early in his career with Cleveland when he struggled and the Browns brought in competition for his job. In 1999, the Ravens claimed kicker Joe Nedney on waivers while Stover remained on the roster.

“That was brutal. He wasn’t on the practice squad. He wasn’t on IR. He was on the roster,” Stover said. “It really just comes down to performance. There’s no subjectivity. I got through it.

“Justin is going through a little blip. He’s mentally strong. He’s got a great support staff around him. He’s got a head coach who totally gets it. To do it for 12 years as well as he’s done it says a lot about who he is and his character. It’s the first time he’s ever had to deal with this. I dealt with it three or four times. It was hard and it sucks. He’ll get through it.”

Stover, who trains young kickers, acknowledged that he hasn’t broken down Tucker’s mechanics, but he maintains the fact that Tucker has missed all seven kicks wide left is a “good thing,” because that often points to a fixable issue. It doesn’t appear to be a leg strength issue with Tucker. Almost all of his kicks, except one, have had the necessary distance.

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There has been plenty of speculation about whether his issues are being caused by snapping and/or holding problems, but Tucker and others at the Ravens’ facility have continued to say snapper Nick Moore and holder Jordan Stout, who aren’t new at this or to the team, are doing their jobs.

After Sunday’s misses, Tucker retreated to the locker room to address reporters and insisted his struggles are not a confidence issue, either.

“I’m still confident I’m going to go out there and nail every single kick,” Tucker said. “Part of the way we stay confident is by continuing to work and trust the process, and I know I might sound like a broken record, but it’s a part of what brings us success — just trusting the process and then taking it one kick at a time.”

Harbaugh, a former special teams coach, has a very close relationship with the kicker. Senior special teams coach Randy Brown has been with Tucker every step of his career and is considered one of the top kicking gurus in the league. Ravens assistant special teams coach Sam Koch is a former holder for Tucker and one of his closest confidants.

Stout has been holding for Tucker for three seasons, and Moore has been in the Ravens organization since 2020. The kicking battery and coaching staff have an established routine that has yielded very strong results for many years.

“You try to attack everything to the utmost that we can, across the board,” Harbaugh said. “Justin is one of the aspects that we’re looking at. He’s going to get it figured out. We have coaches. We have technique. We look at the tape. He’s practicing well. He’s got to kick it straight.”

(Top photo: Barry Reeger / Imagn Images)

Sports

Florida city council changes mind on paying to repair Tampa Bay Rays' ballpark after hurricane ripped roof off

Published

4 hours ago

November 21, 2024

Press Room

Florida city council changes mind on paying to repair Tampa Bay Rays' ballpark after hurricane ripped roof off

Just hours after voting to finance repairs to the home stadium of the Tampa Bay Rays, the St. Petersburg City Council reversed course.

The Rays will now pay the division rival New York Yankees $15 million to play their home regular-season games at New York’s spring training ballpark. That is now the only certain home the Rays will have until further notice.

The stadium’s fiberglass roof was ripped clean off Oct. 9 when Hurricane Milton swept ashore just south of Tampa Bay. Then came the destructive water damage inside the venue, causing an estimated $55.7 million in damage. The extensive repairs cannot be finished before the 2026 season, city documents show.

The city at least would have supplied some funding and started the process with its initial vote, which was a 4-3 decision.

A drone image shows the dome of Tropicana Field, which was torn open by Hurricane Milton in St. Petersburg, Fla., Oct. 10, 2024. (Bryan R. Smith/AFP via Getty Images)

The initial vote Thursday was to get moving on the roof portion of the repair. Once that was done, crews would begin working on laying down a new baseball field and fixing damaged seating and office areas and a variety of electronic systems, which would require another vote to approve money for the remaining restoration.

Members who opposed it said there wasn’t enough clarity on numerous issues, including how much would be covered by the ballpark’s insurance and what amount might be provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

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The reversal on fixing Tropicana Field came after the council voted to delay consideration of revenue bonds for a proposed new $1.3 billion Rays ballpark. Just two days earlier, the Pinellas County Commission postponed a vote on its share of the new stadium bonds, leaving that project in limbo.

“This is a sad place. I’m really disappointed,” council Chair Deborah Figg-Sanders said. “We won’t get there if we keep finding ways we can’t.”

The Rays say the lack of progress puts the new stadium plan and the future of Tropicana Field in jeopardy.

“I can’t say I’m confident about anything,” Rays Co-President Brian Auld told council members.

Cots at Tropicana Field before the arrival of Hurricane Milton in St. Petersburg, Fla., Oct. 7, 2024. (Reuters/Octavio Jones)

The reversal now means the city and Rays must work on an alternative in the coming weeks so that Tropicana Field can possibly be ready for the 2026 season.

“I’d like to pare it down and see exactly what we’re obligated to do,” council member John Muhammad said.

Several council members said before the vote on the $23.7 million to fix the roof that the city is contractually obligated to do so.

“I don’t see a way out of it. We have a contract that’s in place,” council member Gina Driscoll said. “We’re obligated to do it. We are going to fix the roof.”

The team’s planned new stadium would be ready for the 2028 season, if that project advances, the team said Tuesday.

Rays top executives said in a letter to the Pinellas County Commission that the team has already spent $50 million for early work on the new $1.3 billion ballpark and cannot proceed further because of delays in approval of bonds for the public share of the costs.

View of the damaged roof of Tropicana Field stadium

The damaged roof of Tropicana Field, home of Major League Baseball’s Tampa Bay Rays, after Hurricane Milton made landfall in downtown St. Petersburg, Fla., Oct. 10, 2024. (Reuters/Octavio Jones)

“The Rays organization is saddened and stunned by this unfortunate turn of events,” a letter, signed by co-presidents Auld and Matt Silverman, said. They noted the overall project was previously approved by the County Commission and the City of St. Petersburg.

Asked if Major League Baseball can survive long term in the Tampa Bay area, Rays Principal Owner Stuart Sternberg said the outlook is “less rosy than it was three weeks ago. We’re going to do all that we can, as we’ve tried for 20 years, to keep the Rays here for generations to come.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Jackson Thompson is a sports writer for Fox News Digital. He previously worked for ESPN and Business Insider. Jackson has covered the Super Bowl and NBA Finals, and has interviewed iconic figures Usain Bolt, Rob Gronkowski, Jerry Rice, Troy Aikman, Mike Trout, David Ortiz and Roger Clemens.

Sports

Shohei Ohtani unanimously wins his third MVP award, and first with the Dodgers

Published

4 hours ago

November 21, 2024

Press Room

Shohei Ohtani unanimously wins his third MVP award, and first with the Dodgers

The coronation was nothing new.

The narrative that came with it, however, reflected just how much has changed in one year.

For the third time in his decorated Major League Baseball career, Shohei Ohtani won most valuable player honors Thursday, claiming the National League’s top individual accolade by a unanimous vote from 30 members of the Baseball Writers Assn. of America.

While no designated hitter had won an MVP, the award was not a surprise. In his first season with the Dodgers, Ohtani led the NL in home runs (54), RBIs (130) and on-base-plus-slugging percentage (1.036). He was second in batting average (.310). And with 59 steals, he became the first player in history with a 50-homer, 50-steal season.

Unlike his previous two MVP awards in 2021 and 2023 with the Angels, the two-way star didn’t win this one while pitching, limited to hitting this past season after undergoing last year a revision of the Tommy John surgery he had.

“The fact that I knew I wasn’t going to be able to pitch this season,” Ohtani said through an interpreter, “just made me focus more on my offensive game.”

And the circumstances surrounding Thursday’s announcement that Ohtani won were even more different. There were no looming questions about free agency. No lingering doubts about his lack of postseason experience.

Only one last victorious appearance to bookend a celebratory season for the newest Dodgers star.

“I’m representing the team, winning this award,” Ohtani said on MLB Network, after teammate Clayton Kershaw delivered the announcement.

“I obviously don’t go into the season trying to strive to get the MVP award,” Ohtani added. “I was more focused on being one of the guys with a new team, with the Dodgers. I wanted to embrace the fans, as well, and just let them learn who I was. That was my main focus.”

When Ohtani won his second MVP this time last year, the announcement was surrounded by thick offseason speculation. Ohtani was early in his process as a marquee free agent. He had yet to start meeting with clubs trying to sign him. His future was hanging in the balance.

Fast-forward 12 months, and there were a few constants to be found Thursday — right down to Ohtani’s new interpreter for the announcement, Matt Hidaka (who interpreted for Ohtani during his introductory news conference with the Angels in 2017).

Instead of facing total offseason uncertainty like he did last year, Ohtani was looking ahead to his return to the mound with the Dodgers next year, when he is expected to resume two-way duties as a member of their rotation.

Exactly when Ohtani will retake the mound is unclear. He ended the season needing to check a few more boxes in his recovery from elbow surgery, including facing hitters again in live batting-practice sessions.

“The goal is to be ready for opening day, and that includes hitting and pitching,” Ohtani said. “But we are taking our time, obviously … I think we are going to take a little bit more time and be conservative and we’re going to make sure I’m healthy before I step back on the mound.”

A labrum surgery on his left shoulder this month — resulting from the dislocated shoulder Ohtani suffered in the World Series — also likely will push back his pitching timeline, leaving his chances of starting during the Dodgers’ season-opening trip to his home country of Japan seemingly slim.

It’s also unknown how strictly the Dodgers will limit Ohtani’s pitching workload, as they typically do with pitchers returning from major arm surgeries.

What is clear: Ohtani will have a leading role to play in multiple ways for the Dodgers, who are hoping he can replicate some of his dominant offensive form from the past year while also being in position to impact what was a shorthanded staff.

“Right now my focus is to get healthy, come back stronger, get on the mound and show everybody what I can do,” Ohtani said, after laughing off a question about whether he hopes to add a Cy Young Award to his trophy case next year.

It was all a far cry from where Ohtani was last year, as he embarked on a free-agent process that resulted in a record-breaking $700-million contract.

In hindsight, it’s a decision that worked out for both parties.

En route to helping the Dodgers win the World Series — their second since 2020 and first in a full season since 1988 — Ohtani pulled away from all other NL MVP contenders, including New York Mets shortstop Francisco Lindor (who finished second) and Arizona Diamondbacks second baseman Ketel Marte (who finished third).

MVPs in L.A. Dodgers history include Maury Wills (1962), Sandy Koufax ('63), Steve Garvey ('74), Kirk Gibson ('88), Clayton Kershaw (2014), Cody Bellinger ('19) and Shohei Ohtani (2024).

It made Ohtani the 12th player in MLB history with three or more MVP awards (of that group, only seven-time winner Barry Bonds won a fourth). It made Ohtani the second player in history to win both an AL and NL MVP, joining Frank Robinson’s honors in 1961 (with Cincinnati) and 1966 (with Baltimore). And it marked the 13th time in Dodgers history one of their players won an MVP. Cody Bellinger had been the last to do so in 2019.

The Dodgers’ hope is that more MVPs — and World Series titles — are in Ohtani’s future, as he enters the second year of his 10-year deal with the club.

Other than his pitching rehab, after all, the lack of uncertainties surrounding Ohtani on Thursday reflected just how quickly he has settled with the Dodgers.

It wasn’t his first time winning the honor. But it only added to what has been the most triumphant season of his MLB career yet.

“The next goal,” Ohtani said, “is for me to do it again.”