Shohei Ohtani and His Road to Victory

Shohei Ohtani on the Field//Getting ready for his at bat with the Dodgers, Ohtani practices his swings. Ohtani is hitting very well, showing his excellent talent, benefiting his team as well as the whole Major League Baseball (MLB) organization. (Photo Courtesy of Creative Commons).

With baseball season coming to an end, there have been countless highlights to choose from. One of these highlights wasn’t just a play, but a player: Shohei Ohtani. Ohtani is originally from Oshu, Japan. He was born on July 5, 1994, making him 31 years old as of this summer. His parents, Kayako Ohtani and Toru Ohtani, were impressive athletes themselves. His mom played badminton professionally, and his dad played baseball in the professional Japanese baseball league before coaching kids. In doing so, he raised his son to love it as well. This caused him to play a wide variety of sports as a young child. His dad was his baseball coach, who encouraged him to become what some might call the greatest baseball player of all time. Surrounded by sports during his childhood, there was no doubt Ohtani found his interest in baseball as he grew older. During an interview after a game, Ohtani shared a message about his childhood.

"[It's always been my childhood dream to be able to be in an important situation, to play in important games,]" he elaborated later in Japanese. "[So I think the excitement of that is greater than anything else that I could possibly feel.]"

In high school, Ohtani played baseball and was on the swim team. He lived on campus, only coming home for 6 days a year. He had a great baseball coach named Hiroshi Sasaki, who taught him humility by making him do lots of chores, such as cleaning toilets and kitchens. As an 18-year-old, Ohtani was already pitching 99 miles per hour, which set the high school record at the time. Sports Illustrated made an article about Ohtani on why he is so great and used this quote from a post-game interview.

"It’s actually an honor to feel the pressure because that means there’s a lot of expectations, and I just change that to more of a positive," Ohtani said.

Ohtani has an extraordinarily smart way of thinking and is great at achieving his goals. When he was in his early years of high school, he wrote down the things he wanted to accomplish in his future along with each age. He has accomplished a lot of those goals so far. Amongst those goals included:

“Age 25: Throw fastest pitch in the world 175 kph (108 mph), Age 26: Win the World Series and get married, Age 28: 1st son is born.”

He has been nothing short of a success so far; however, some goals remain on his list to this day. Overall, he wants to win three World Series, and being on the Los Angeles Dodgers is a great start toward achieving that goal. He started playing baseball in the MLB with the Angels, where he was both pitching and hitting. The Angels haven’t had the best record in baseball for a while and have not won a World Series since 2002. That was one of the reasons why he switched to the Dodgers. However, during his first year, Ohtani was still recovering from an injury that affected his pitching, so he was mainly focused on his hitting. This ended up turning out really well for him, as many saw him as one of the greatest batters in baseball, and his statistics were looking amazing. In an ESPN article, they explain what his former teammate from the Angels, Mike Trout, said about Ohtani.

"He's got the best stuff in the league, I think,” Trout explained. “I don't think I've talked to anybody in the league that wants to face that dude. And at the plate, he's got very little weaknesses.” 

Shohei Ohtani has achieved much in baseball and life overall, yet he still has so many goals yet to be accomplished. There are so many different statistics and aspects that go into being called the best baseball player of all time. If anyone can prove to be an outstanding player all around, it is Ohtani, and because of where he’s been, where he is, and where he is going, undoubtedly, he will go down in history as one of the greatest baseball players of all time.