Somebody might want to tell Kirk Herbstreit how to pronounce Shohei Ohtani’s name correctly.
The NFL and college football analyst, who probably has little time to watch baseball, fumbled when it came to correctly saying the new Dodgers star’s name during the “Thursday Night Football” broadcast.
Ohtani was on hand at SoFi Stadium for the Rams’ 30-22 win over the Saints and created quite the buzz, and, well, that naturally meant the Prime Video broadcast was going to make mention of the baseball superstar’s presence in Inglewood, California.
That resulted in one of the worst attempts at pronouncing the two-way player’s name.
“They just showed [Sho-han Oh-tony] up on the board,” Herbstreit said before play-by-play man Al Michaels jumped in to bail him out.
“Yeah, Shohei Ohtani, now a Dodger and that’s the reason for the cheering,” Michaels said.
The moment did not go unnoticed by the masses on social media, and fans were quick to poke fun at the mispronunciation.
“Did this man Kirk Herbstreit just call that man Shohan Ohtony??” One X user wrote, adding three crying laughing face emojis.
“Does @KirkHerbstreit not know who Shohei Ohtani is? How can you mispronounce his name that wrong?” another user commented.
“Excuse me what the hell did kirk herbstreit call shohei ohtani?” a third user joked.
Thursday’s game proved to be a tough one beyond just the Ohtani mispronunciation, as the analyst appeared to be losing his voice on-air during at least one part of the broadcast during the first half, as shown in a clip by Awful Announcing.
As for Ohtani, he appeared to be enjoying his first visit to SoFi Stadium for the game, and he was greeted with loud cheers when he was shown on the stadium video board when he opened his jacket to show off the personalized Rams jersey he was wearing.