'I think even now, he plays with the mind of an elementary school kid who loves baseball.' 'No matter what the results are for him, his team's victory simply makes him happy,' says former catcher Sasaki. Kobayashi says that anyone who has ever had fun playing baseball as a kid will be reminded of it when they see Ohtani play. So Ohtani has continued to enjoy baseball the whole time.' 'But Coach Asari let his players grow freely. 'Most Japanese baseball players train hard how to play, suppress their own feelings, be patient and practice exactly as their coach says,' explains sports journalist Nobuya Kobayashi, who has written a book about Ohtani. Young baseball players in Japan use repetitive drills to hone skills such as bunting or executing double plays.īut Coach Asari took an unconventional approach, emphasizing fun over winning games. Players with the Mizusawa Pirates hop over a ladder for agility drills during a weekend practice. In the beginning, I couldn't catch his pitches at all.' 'Also, his slider curves too much,' he says, 'and my body couldn't react in time. He remembers the numerous sprained fingers that the pitches caused.

'I had never caught a ball from a pitcher who could throw at more than 87 miles per hour,' says Ryuki Sasaki, Ohtani's catcher in high school. Not only were they hard to hit, they were also very hard to catch. He hurled faster fastballs and his sliders curved more than other pitchers'. Opposite-field home runs require more power, as the batter swings later and the bat has less time to accelerate.Īs a kid, Ohtani also excelled at pitching. Ohtani's opposite-field home runs have become a signature of his hitting, including the hardest-hit opposite-field homer by a left-handed hitter since Major League Baseball's Statcast data system began tracking them in 2015. I think that was when he found the fun of opposite-field hitting.' 'He shot me a dagger-like look, and then hit his next homer to left field. 'So I jokingly told him, 'Don't pull your hits, Shohei!'' he recalls.

Asari says the cost of lost baseballs began to add up. Batting left-handed, he often hit home runs over the right-field fence and into the river. Ohtani's capabilities quickly surpassed his teammates'.

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