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ODDS and EVENS | ‘LA Story’: A Brilliant Chronicle of Shohei Ohtani and the 2024 Dodgers

With riveting details, longtime reporter Bill Plunkett captured the thrills and challenges faced by Shohei Ohtani and the World Series champion Dodgers.

By Ed Odeven

In his new book, LA Story: Shohei Ohtani, The Los Angeles Dodgers, and a Season for the Ages (Triumph Books, April 2025), veteran baseball reporter Bill Plunkett chronicled the team’s mesmerizing 2024 MLB season.

The author, a sportswriter for The Orange County Register since 1999, summed up his hopes for the book in an email.

“Last year was a remarkable season for fans of Ohtani and the Dodgers,” Plunkett informed Odds and Evens. “The way I look at it, the book is the ultimate souvenir of the 2024 season. You can pull it off your shelf at any point in the future and relive that season.”

Indeed, it was a remarkable season for the 2024 World Series champions. And even before the season began, the Dodgers’ successful attempts to sign two-way star Shohei Ohtani and pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto generated massive publicity on both sides of the Pacific Ocean.

Plunkett was busy reporting the details every step of the way ― for newspaper and website readers. (The OC Register is one of 11 daily newspapers in the Southern California News Group.) A few months after the season commenced, he also began working on his 256-page book.

It was a rigorous undertaking.

“I started working on the book in mid-June ― obviously not knowing how it would turn out,” Plunkett wrote in an email. 

He added, “I’m a very organized writer/person so I had a list of chapter topics/ideas and started organizing my notes and interviews based on those. I did interviews whenever possible, then spent any off days I had either transcribing those interviews or writing the early chapters.”

Shohei Ohtani
The cover of Bill Plunkett’s new book on Shohei Ohtani and the 2024 World Series champion Los Angeles Dodgers.

Dodgers Reporting Duties and a Book Project

Based on Triumph Books’ plan to get LA Story published expeditiously, Plunkett juggled his primary work and his book project at the same time. 

“Once the playoffs started, it was impossible to get anything done,” Plunkett said of the book. “Hard enough just to keep up with the daily demands of playoff coverage. My deadline was two weeks after the Dodgers’ last game ― whenever that would be. As it turned out, I covered the World Series parade two days after getting back from New York ― then the next eight days, I never left the house, spending all my time finishing the book.”

It was time well spent. In LA Story, Plunkett displayed authoritative knowledge of the subject, weaving together the storylines of the next chapter of Ohtani’s one-of-a-kind career with the Dodgers’ perennial pursuit of excellence.

Light-hearted and fun details are sprinkled throughout the book (including about Ohtani’s dog Dekopin), humanizing the subject and reminding readers that even if pro baseball is a big-bucks business, it’s also entertainment. Players and coaches and managers are personalities, sometimes larger-than-life figures.

What’s also unique about Dodgers’ history is underscored by the book’s foundational structure.

“Has any other franchise been ground zero for not one but two ‘Manias’ ― Fernandomania and Nomomania?” wrote Plunkett, referring to Fernando Valenzuela in 1981 and Hideo Nomo in 1995, in the introduction.

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