Ohtani: Made In Iwate | The Untold Story of Shohei Ohtani’s Roots in Japan

Old Benny Shohe Otani is doing what no other baseball player has ever done.

He bats, pitches, and steals bases, all at the highest level.

He's the best player in the baseball ever, I think so.

There's no comparison.

There's nobody in baseball history .

That you might know, but even if you've never watched a single inning, to step foot in Japan is to discover a cultural phenomenon.

It's what I see fight fight fight.

It's hard to escape Shohei Otani's eyes in Japan.

He's like Big Brother.

He's everywhere here.

Otani isn't just a sports icon.

He's a figure whose presence is woven into the very fabric of daily life.

I didn't think it was possible for a human being to do the things that he's done.

As I begin my journey across Japan, the goal is to discover how a boy from rural Iwate became one of the most famous names on the planet.

What forged his character, fueled his ambition, and set him on this extraordinary path.

And what can his success tell us about the country that helped shape him?

We are seeing the miracle.

We are observing the miracle.

Welcome to Oshu City in Japan's Iwate Prefecture.

This is where Shohe Otani's story began, and you don't have to look far to understand how much he means to people here.

The two-way star is the pride of his own city, but it goes far beyond that.

He is a national treasure.

I'm Max Whittle, and this is the tale of Shohe Otani and the game that captivates a nation.

How?

What's this Does he have a name?

Bro.

Blue.

Blue.

So.

This is Kano, owner of Seams Hair and Spa, and known locally for his staggering collection of Otani memorabilia.

Today he has offered to show me around Oshu and give me a glimpse into what life is like in Otani.

Hometown.

star.

Sensational uniform.

So.

Let me see.

I jumped in the car with Kano, and before long, we were heading to one of the most important places from Otani's childhood.

You're such a.

Pretty much so.

It's.

gas.

Kokunga.

K.

So I said yo ok.

ok So.

Angel.

So.

Kokunga kunga.

Do you celebrate his birthday, or is it more the 17th.

No.

So.

Old Benny Goon They.

No.

Come.

So.

or.

Aihoi matote I.

Hello, hello, nice to meet you.

It's lovely to be here.

Thank you for having us.

During our segment on Osho FM we received a call from a local listener, the husband of Otani's former swimming coach.

After the show, we were taken to the local pool to find out from her what Otani was like as a young boy.

Chibasan, thank you so much for your time.

The quote on your hat, I think it says it all about Shoheotani.

Did you know back then how special he was as an athlete?

If Otanison had have pursued swimming, not baseball, do you think he could have got to the very top?

But you know.

Sookokosimo.

And you still have the registration sheet that Otani Sam would have filled in when he was that young.

Why did you keep it?

The more time I spent in Oshu, the more I wanted to understand the person behind the player and the little details that had made Otani such a tantalizing prospect.

Few people have spent more time exploring those themes than Sports Illustrated's Tom Verducci.

For more than 4 decades, he has covered baseball at the highest level and chronicled Otani's remarkable evolution.

That is why my search would eventually take me more than 6000 miles from Oshu across the Pacific to the east coast of the United States, where I sat down with Tom, whose insight would help guide the rest of this journey.

He is the most.

Gentlemanly guy that you've ever come across, and for a guy who's one of the biggest superstars in all the world, I found him very approachable.

Well, Tom, in those early days, Shohei and his father Toru were connected by a shared notebook, right?

Toru was his coach growing up on many of his teams, uh, so there's a lot of instruction going on, but at the same time, after each game, uh Toru had this idea that he would have this bound notebook.

And whatever happened during that game, it might have been, you know, something that Shohe did well, something that maybe he could improve upon.

He would jot down his observations in the book, and then he would give it to Shohei.

I love the fact that besides just conversationally, You're memorializing something by writing it down.

Now that Shohe has the notebook, now he can write his own thoughts, and then he would pass it back to his father.

They probably went through 3 or 4 different notebooks over the years.

I call it this game of catch in written form.

His father had 3 pillars of what he taught Shohei growing up.

Uh, one was to always be energetic, even loud sometimes, because that can affect the group, the whole team, your enthusiasm.

The other was kind of easy, always hustle.

We say it's easy, but not everybody does it all the time.

And the 3rd I thought was really interesting was about playing catch.

His father taught him that every throw you make has a purpose, and that's how he approaches the game of baseball.

My name is Bob Whiting.

I'm a reporter, a journalist, and an author living in Tokyo.

I'm the author of The Chrysanthem and the Bat and the bestselling You Gotta Have Waw.

The History of Baseball in Japan, which started back in the 1870s, was basically the history of high school and college baseball.

It was considered .

An amateur sport and a tool of education.

Western concept of sport was unknown in Japan.

They had martial arts, which was a military training tool.

Sumo wrestling, which was a Shinto religious ritual, wasn't considered a sport.

Baseball became their first group sport .

Baseball was making its way into the national consciousness, beginning to take on a distinctly Japanese identity.

My name is Seichiro Nakagaki.

I used to work for fighters .

Past 7 years I worked with Yu Darvish.

He brought me to the Rangers together, and then I rejoined the Fighters, and then I met Otay over there.

And Japan had been closed to the world.

It's a feudal country for 250 years.

It was isolated.

Japan was opened up to the West, but they were really far behind the rest of the world, so they invited all these engineers and professors and teachers to come to Japan and help Japan modernize.

And one of them was a man named Horace Wilson.

He's a teacher at what is now Tokyo University.

It was called Kaise Gako then, and he taught his students to play baseball in 1872, and that's how it started.

Became the national sport in 1896 when the first higher school of Tokyo played the first formal game with an American team in the history of Japan, a team from the Oklahoma Country and Athletic Club, a bunch of amateurs , diplomats, businessmen, traders.

Nobody thought they would win, but they won.

The first game 29 to 4, and they won several rematches by lopsided scores, and this was headline news in Japan.

It showed that if the Japanese can beat Americans at their own sport , then surely they can defeat them in other areas as well as commerce and industry and so forth.

Baseball is like a national religion because it gave Japan a sense of identity vis a vis the West.

Next, I'm taking you to Hanamaki Higashi High School, an elite baseball program run by coach Hiroshi Sasaki.

Students train here year round with the dream of playing in the coveted Koshen, a nationwide tournament that is broadcast across the country.

Both Otani and Y Kikuchi graduated from here before eventually playing in Major League Baseball.

G S.

He's got What is Ah.

What.

Hey.

Back up, back up.

Oh.

I Yeah.

He went to the school years ago and we all kind of feel connected to him.

That.

Man.

I'm Jason Kosky, and I've been a baseball writer with the Japan Times since 2007.

High school baseball is very strict, or at least it used to be a very strict, almost spartan sort of existence.

The old saying in Japan was the only way to cure a sore harm is to keep throwing.

At the school where it first became popular, they defeated this team of Americans from Yokohama.

Half the students were from samurai families, so they grafted the samurai ethic onto their approach to baseball.

Instead of baseball being a spring and summer sport, they turned it into a year-round sport where you had to practice all the time.

You had, you know, January 1st off, but then.

After that you're practicing every day several hours before school and after school until Christmas .

They shave their heads.

If you notice Coachin in the past, a lot of guys have the buzz cuts that was kind of mandatory.

They wake up early, they train, they go to school, then they go back and they train and in the summer they train, train, train, train it's very regimented.

It's probably not unlike being in the army.

Baseball.

It's a beautiful sport.

You miss it.

Yeah, I miss it.

Few figures have seen Japanese baseball from more angles than Otaru Kobayashi.

Just the 3rd graduate from the academically elite University of Tokyo ever drafted into Nippon professional baseball, he has been both a pitcher and a front office executive in the league.

Tell me about your experience of high school baseball.

My high school days, and it was really, really tough, you know, sometimes a big hierarchy, some violence.

What do you mean by that?

Violence means that an elder person hit me or something.

It's kind of.

Daily life, a senior player, senior player, what would you have done wrong in their eyes?

You have a certain way to speak to elder people in Japanese baseball hierarchy.

So.

In 1915, the national high school championship tournament began.

The winners of the regional playoffs of the 1949 prefectures in Japan sent the championship team to Kosin, and they played a single elimination to a tournament, and it became the biggest sporting event in the land.

How close did you get to Koshen?

Not even close.

This was a celebration of the purity of the Japanese spirit.

Teams would be playing 4 days in a row, and their ace pitcher would pitch all the games.

Doctor Re record was Daike Matsuzaka, who played for the Boston Red Sox but Sabled Lions before that.

He pitched a 17 inning game of 250 pitches, and before that he pitched a complete game, and the next day he came in in relief, and then the game after that he pitched a no-hitter.

Otani's Koshen experiences were not ones of trophies and championships.

He appeared there twice, and both times departed in the opening round.

Even so, the signs were loud and clear.

At Koen, Otani pitched, batted cleanup, hit a home run, and struck out 11 in the same game.

And as coach Sasaki told us, in the final year of his high school career, Otani became the first Japanese high school pitcher to break the 160 kilometer per hour barrier.

Despite creating the summer's biggest headline, his high school did not return to Koshen.

By the time Otani became a high school star, there was this awareness in Japan that they'd overdone it.

Why was it that all their.

Pitchers you were washed up by the age of 29 or 30.

In fact, I interviewed Nomo.

He said the reason I went to America is not because I wanted to play in America.

I just wanted to get away from my manager.

I had a sore arm and he kept telling me the only way to cure a sore arm is to go down on the farm team and throw as much as you can, and you'll come back 100% new, he says.

I hated him.

I just wanted to get away.

she said this.

Mako kangakinikeskika koto kangarikaansanstomoto taikon stako te taijo huastema.

More.

So.

So.

you.

Welcome inside Eskon Field, home of the Hokkaido Nippon Ham fighters since 2023.

As imposing as Shohei Otani in the batter's box, this stadium is one of the most ambitious ballpark projects in Japanese baseball history .

A field you've never seen, so you gotta see it to understand it.

Designing companies from the States called HKS, they came up with that design with the roof with the uh triangular shape.

I think they did their homework.

Houses or buildings in Okkaido are triangular shape just so that the snow would fall.

Fighters always love to be the first one in Japan or first one in baseball, or first one in the world.

In Japan's snowy north, Eskon Field is the first stadium with both a retractable roof and natural grass, plus a hotel, hot spring, sauna , even dog friendly viewing areas built right into the experience.

The fighters are the team Otani and Yu Darvish once called home.

In fact, Otani chose to wear number 11 in Hokkaido because it was the number Darvish made famous before him.

However, the fighter's origins lie outside of Hokkaido.

The franchise was born in Tokyo in 1946 and remained for almost 60 years in the capital.

Even before the Tokyo Dome was made, it used to be Korakan Stadium.

That's where we played, and this is where we used to play in Tokyo Dome.

We shared this ballpark with Tokyo Giants, and the first year since they weren't able to get the tickets for the Giants game, they came to our game.

The fighters had a full house every game , but after the second year, attendance started to decline very quickly.

The club owner wanted to meet me in person, one on one.

I did say we need to move out of here.

Otani's home for his first five professional seasons was at the mesmerizing Sapporo Dome.

Originally built for the 2002 FIFA World Cup, he made his debut here as an 18-year-old in March 2013.

I'm standing inside the original home bullpen.

This is where the team put Otani to work.

Shoey is just an incredible high school athlete, pitcher, hitter, but the Major league teams are all over him to come to America, uh, right away.

If he was in the draft, he would have been the first pick of the draft.

He was that obviously good, and he was set about signing with a major league team.

And he said to the Japanese team, Don't bother drafting me.

I'm gonna signed with a Major league team.

The way the fighters were different in their approach, number one is they drafted him because no other team took the risk.

I was a GM.

Of the Fukua Softbank hoax, we backed off in MPB.

You draft a player and that player doesn't sign it with you, then that's it.

You get nothing.

You just wasted a draft pick.

Shohei was born to greatness.

He's that supremely talented and driven.

That combination is unbeatable.

But I think his path to greatness would not be the same without Hideki Koyama.

And what a path Hideki Kuriyama has taken.

A qualified teacher, he went undrafted out of university before signing with MPB's Tokyo Y Colt Swallows.

After 7 seasons, mostly patrolling the outfield where he earned a prestigious Gold Glove Award.

He transitioned to a successful career in sports journalism and broadcasting.

He would later oversee Otani's entire development in Japan as the fighter's manager, and to top all of that off, he led Samurai Japan to World Baseball Classic glory in 2023.

Do you remember the first time you met him.

In America we love to specialize, and I think Hadeki understood that Shohe's greatness was the exact opposite of that.

And he sold them on this idea of being a two-way player.

Did you think it would work as a two-way project?

Questionable.

To say the least.

Why?

Because nobody did this before.

Real hero in baseball is a hitter, right?

Our team president was Sadaharu Oh.

Wow, yeah.

Tell us what he did in his career.

Oh, he hit 868 home runs.

That's a world record.

The reason he signed with the fighters ultimately was because they allowed him to do the two-way, two ways.

Would you have done that?

With Softbank or not, if you would have drafted him, we didn't come up with that idea.

You would never have done it.

No, there was no MLB team who was going to let a high school kid out of Japan come in with no background and be a two-way player.

They said this is what will happen to you if you go to America.

They'll send you to the minor leagues , and they probably won't let you pitch and hit.

On the other hand, if you come play for Nippon Ham for the next few seasons, we'll teach you how to pitch and to hit, and then we'll post you.

Decky had this touch that.

In terms of sealing a deal, the personal touch.

I mean, Shohei's high school colors were purple.

Hideki Kuriyama shows up the first time he meets him wearing, Shoe obviously didn't know this, purple underwear.

The one thing I was worried about was the schedule.

He's gonna hit in the big lease and pitch in Marlies.

That was the only thing that worried me.

How we're going to do that?

And the coaches did a very good job on that.

A.

He lived in the dorms and a lot of players did that.

He was different in that.

He was, I guess, didn't move away from the dorms when he got older.

He gave his checks to his parents and they gave him an allowance back because he was just so hyper focused on baseball.

The fighters assigned Otani to number 404, the room vacated by Darvish after his move to MLB's Texas Rangers.

One of Otani's neighbors was then fighters pitcher Hiato Arakaki, who today can still be found around the club running a hotdog restaurant at Eskom Field.

that is standard scale, neh, I'm looking at kamo that is that the savo and she must stand eh the matos of the nigiri katatokamo karreni you know time starimon in this one.

Uh.

Santa.

In 2016, Otani's fighters won the Japan Series, the same year he took home Pacific League MVP honors.

2016 Otani was.

In some ways it was kind of a turning point.

They're on the road.

First pitch of the game, he hits a home run.

Like it's like a storybook sort of thing.

It's beyond imagination, too impossible to even think about it, to excel in both in professional level.

I didn't think it was possible for a human being to do the things that he's done.

The fighters are hosting the Bay Stars tonight , so it's time to talk about baseball fans in Japan.

They don't just watch the game, they bring it to life.

I Japanese baseball cheer culture is unique.

The cheering squads have a collective name called.

Oh here.

Hello This unique culture, believe it or not, actually started in the United States.

There was a team of Japanese college boys from one of the schools in Tokyo who traveled to the United States on a baseball tour in the early 1900s.

They went to a college football game and when they soaked in that atmosphere and saw The cheering that was happening there, they were so impressed by it that they brought it home to Japan.

The home team gets to cheer loudly while the road team or the fans of the road team have to keep it quiet.

But the home team fans will give the road team an equal opportunity to have a cheering time during their team's at bats.

There's such a thing in Japan as what in Japanese they call oshikatsu, and the oshi means someone that you're cheering for, that you're rooting for, and the katsu means life.

So you're basically pouring your life into cheering for this individual athlete, this team, and people basically live, sleep, eat, and breathe their favorite oshi, whoever that might be.

For many Japanese baseball fans, Shohe Otani isn't just a player, he is their Oshi.

For Kataro and Minami, the admiration became part of their own story, taking them from Iwate to Los Angeles for their honeymoon to watch Otani in person.

It.

Are the.

So physical therapist kikosa kansa ko mina tato kato mija.

So.

Oh.

Oh yeah um.

So.

Some 360 miles south of Sapporo Dome, Otani was batting seventh in the lineup on July 10th, 2013, when he hit his first professional home run in this stadium against the Racketton Eagles.

But that's only half of this Sendai story.

Just 7 kilometers west of here, Babe Ruth hit his first home run in Japan in 1934, mere weeks after parting ways with the Yankees.

An all-American tour featuring 12 cities and legends such as Lou Gehrig and Jimmie Foxx.

This is the exact spot where Babe's home run landed inside Yagiyama Baseball Field.

For generations, Babe Ruth was considered the greatest player of all time, and nearly 80 years later, Shohe Otani hits his first professional home run in the very same city.

I promise I'm not making this up.

Baseball was considered a tool of education and the idea of playing for money was somehow impure.

So Japan Professional League did not start until the mid 1930s.

The impetus for that was this tour of the Major leaguers in 1934 with Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig.

Untilhohey, Babe Ruth was the definition, the epitome of a two-way player.

How could anybody do both?

And he was great at both.

I would imagine that Babe Ruth's name started coming up when the fighters said we're gonna make him a two-way player.

I'm sure it came up when he started pitching more on the farm team to get ready to pitch in the big leagues, and I know it probably came up after he started pitching for the top team.

For all of Ruth's two-way legend, he kept up both disciplines regularly over a span of just 202 games, from May 1918 through the following July when he was 24 .

The idea that we compared Shohey to Babe Ruth, in terms of how prolific they were and are doing the two-way thing, there's no comparison.

There's nobody in baseball history .

Who was able to do it for as long as Shoe has been doing it, especially at this level.

Yes, I think Shohe Otani is better than Babe Ruth to hit 500 ft home runs and throw the ball at 100 miles an hour.

I don't think that anybody back in those days could throw a pitch that fast.

Babe Ruth, he hit a lot of home runs, but did they go 500 ft?

I've never read that.

Otani's home runs went farther than that.

You might have to cut this answer out because I might be full of shit.

So Otani's exploits on the field had already drawn comparisons with Babe Ruth.

But as he prepared to leave Japan for the United States and MLB nobody could have known quite what was about to happen.

The move would transform him from a baseball star into the ultimate global icon, and one of the most recognizable figures in modern Japanese history.

You can't walk very long in Japan without seeing his face staring back at you somewhere.

He's looking back at you from a convenience store.

He's looking back at you from some billboard.

He's on a commercial somewhere.

There are some places maybe you can go and you can avoid the the gaze of Otani but pretty much.

It's hard to escape Oshohe Otani's eyes in Japan.

He's like Big Brother.

He's everywhere here.

My wife and I got tickets to the Dodgers Cubs opener.

I remember taking the subway to the Tokyo Dome.

Everywhere we looked, you know, in the subway and on the street to the stadium, there's a picture of Otani advertising something.

Every time you go in through one of these cash corners ATM, there's this picture looking at you.

You just can't avoid it.

You just can't get enough of it.

2.7 million viewers on average.

Dodgers in the morning, a day, a day.

Can you believe that people aren't working.

How would I describe a hardcore Otani fan in Japan?

I would describe him as a normal Japanese person because I think almost everyone's hardcore Otani fan.

it not onaziona and no neurio de uazique.

Hikutokoroga.

Akira queba kore.

There are people who go the extra mile to go to the US to see him in person.

It wasn't like this for Yu Darvish.

It wasn't like this for Daiseke Matsuzaka.

Otani has somehow transcended baseball and just become a just pop culture phenomenon.

I just went to a baseball store in Tokyo called Selection Shinjuku.

The store manager told me they have over 5000 Shohei Otani items .

They also have team-branded chopsticks made from broken bats.

He gave me the fighters, Otani's former team, of course, very kind.

We've got to go in because it really does show you how much Japan loves Otani.

Itari, the immense corporate backing of Otani, is it driven by national pride, or is it a strategy to break into Western global markets?

Japanese market.

Can you tell me some of the brands?

New?

Japan Airlines, Mitsubishi Financial Group, Porsche, more than 20 global brand partnerships.

This year's draft, draft presented by Nippon Express Holdings.

Can you imagine that?

I apologize to Dodgers fans, but Uniqlo Field, how much of an impact has Otani had with that name?

I think, I think everything.

Unico signed with the Los Angeles Dodgers because of Otani.

Reportedly it's $125 million over five years.

Unbelievable.

That's Otani's presence.

Lululu for a time.

he's a he's.

He's the one who we want to see at the old ball.

punish so.

Maotaiko monoga kokoni tako nika so you basika.

sado no seinwainoyona kotobade alawaarete.

Itchy go itchy, eh?

I.

Jack.

Choa itaikang hewaste shiwase kofku no immigarias.

Kotagayo omoyari soncho surukoto sogono sonchoashakai tikinachio kote rukoto o smeshtemas.

Sewa kokoro kada tamashi no sibeni oite kiyorakae smiki ta jotai zatsuneo hai josta jotai osasimas.

Jacko.

Kono wake sejakua nihon dentono shuchunno arikatadeskokoro odayakani tamottameni soste hokanosto tato chotekodo surutamenides.

Mass sanga.

Watashiwa masani taisan no ikizamato yoga samurai spirittari master.

you know.

No.

Dream idea passion.

Kok push up.

I was at the press conference on Christmas Day back in 2017 when Otani said farewell to the fighters.

That was another teary eyed occasion there.

Before Otani made the switch from MPB to MLB, Hideki Kuriyama handed him a signed pitching rubber, a parting message that would stay with Otani long after he departed Japan.

it's no no I think that's something I would do.

Was to to wear the Angels uniform.

You didn't see it much back then where a player would sign with MLB and there'd be this big farewell.

He did so much for the team and he put the Nepal Ham fighters on the map.

They can't say that Otani built Escon Field, but they can certainly say Otani.

Helped popularize the fighters enough so that ESCO Field was possible.

He proved that nice guys sometimes finish first.

It used to be a bit of a touchy subject, but now it's go and show the world what we're all about here.

Before Otani came a generation of Japanese players who helped open baseball's door to America.

Masanori Murakami was the first Japanese player in MLB in 1964.

Hideo Nomo, a trailblazer who blew the doors open for the modern era.

Kazuhisa Sasaki, American League Rookie of the Year in 2000.

Ichiro Suzuki, the inaugural Japanese-born player elected to the National Hall of Fame.

Hideki Matsui, 2009 World Series MVP.

With the New York Yankees, Dice K Motsuzaka, the Koen hero from earlier in the film, and years later, a World Series champion with the Boston Red Sox.

Koji Uihara, who closed out the 2013 World Series for Boston's first title at Fenway Park since 1918.

Yu Darvish, well, we've heard about him, the first Japanese pitcher to eclipse 2000 MLB strikeouts.

Now, Shohe Otani would join the list.

I talked to the guy who scouted him for the Angels.

His name is Jamie Storvit in, uh, this tournament in Seoul, the U18 tournament, and he said he never had a reaction to a ballplayer ever like the one he had to Otani.

He said the hair on his arms stood up and I just felt this tremendous electro.

Magnetic force that was sucking him in, so he called the Angels front office and said this is a guy you got to sign.

Whatever the figure is, he's worth it.

There's never been anybody quite like him.

Early on, he ruled out big markets.

New York, Boston would have loved him, but early on he said, nope, not going there.

I think he wanted to kind of carve his own path and not follow in Ichiro's footsteps.

But go to the Angels and establish your own identity as a player coming over from Japan and being a Major League star and not being compared to Ichiro, which would have happened in a Mariners uniform.

I think really nice weather was important to Shohei as well, and he played mostly indoors in Japan.

I think that was a big factor too, but I thought it was coming down to Seattle and Anaheim, and he chose the Angels.

Otani signed a six-year league minimum deal with the Angels ahead of the 2018 campaign, sacrificing the chance to earn more than $200 million by waiting for a couple more seasons.

His impact was immediate.

Despite a season-ending elbow injury that required Tommy John surgery, he was named the American League Rookie of the Year.

But behind the on-field accolades, a physical toll was mounting.

Injuries to his elbow, knee, and ankle led to 3 operations in just 2 years.

Yet Otani remained committed to a challenge baseball had not seen in a century, succeeding as both a pitcher and a hitter.

It was then that a new voice entered the clubhouse.

In the winter of 2019, the Angels hired Joe Maddon, the World Series winning manager who helped end the Chicago Cubs' 108 year championship drought.

Unlike many before him, Madden had no interest in limiting Otani.

He was determined to unleash baseball's ultimate two-way player.

There was a lot of interference in the beginning on how he was supposed to do this.

His schedule, couldn't pitch, uh, hit the day before he pitched, could not hit the day that he pitched, could not hit the day after he pitched.

Those were the roles I was given when, when I first got there.

The Angels, I was kind of like, really?

Why would you, why would that be that he came here to do two things.

He's a human being, nobody does what he does.

Listen to him.

I think what tipped the scales is why he was still with the Angels.

He became this.

Player that no one had ever seen, he would invent pitches on the fly.

Tim and Darvish are two guys they could invent on the fly.

You told me earlier that they grew up with the same, uh, trainer, which I found interesting.

He doesn't do anything without thinking about it thoroughly beforehand.

It was always he's like Babe Ruth, he's like Babe Ruth, then he goes to the league where Babe Ruth is or Babe Ruth was and he starts doing things that Babe Ruth wasn't even doing you hadn't seen since Negro League players have been doing it who sadly often get overlooked in this conversation.

So let's make sure we do that here with three of the great two-way players from the Negro Leagues.

Wilbur Bullet Rogan won 120 games and hit 338 with 50 home runs and 106 stolen bases.

He carried the Monarchs to a championship in 1924 before his eventual induction into Cooperstown in 1998.

Martin Dehigo not only played all 9 positions on the field, but later became the sole player in history inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 4 different countries.

And Ted Double Duty Radcliffe, the 6-time All-Star pitcher and catcher, who notched 45 wins on the mound.

Daily, I was always amazed.

We had like a pool table, billiards table in the locker room on the way out.

Night game, midnight, he's pitched or played or done both.

Him, he'd be out there shooting pool at midnight, on a Sunday.

Then Monday he's in the lineup as a hitter.

No apparent soreness, stiffness.

He still runs, the swing looks fluid.

Like when he was struggling, uh, hitting wise when I first saw him, I said, you see those rocks?

In left center at Anaheim Stadium.

The rocks are your friend.

If you hit those rocks, we're gonna have a party after the game.

You're gonna come see me.

But I, I wouldn't want to interfere with anything else.

It's pitching wise, come on.

He admonished me from the dugout once when I walked Olson intentionally.

Uh he was with Oakland at the time.

So he gave me one of these from, which I could still say and I giggle about.

He went 2-0 on him the next time up and I had him do it again.

And he put this little smirk, he wasn't upset.

Afterwards, I didn't even realize it.

So I looked at the numbers.

I think Olsen was 1 for 12 with 10 punch shots against him, which I wasn't aware of.

It's kind of become like, um, oh that, of course, he does both and he does both.

But in the beginning, man, nobody wanted to let him do both simultaneously.

And that's what he needed to do to really set him free.

Tom, you unearthed this incredible story that the Dodgers, when they were initially trying to sign Shohei out of Japan, they asked Kobe Bryant to record a recruiting video.

This was back in 2018.

Yeah, Lon Rosen was the connection there, uh, longtime basketball agent, obviously from Magic Johnson, and, um, listen, you pull out all the stops when you get a chance to sign Shoe Otani, and why not?

Obviously the tragic passing of Kobe.

And uh really nobody knew about it until many years later.

They wound up showing it to show, hey, uh, later on, Lon was the one who went back to his widow, Vanessa, and is it OK if we, we, you know, Kobe did this video for us to try to recruit him here to the Dodgers.

Can we show it to him?

And, and she said, sure, fine.

It's a great comp because there's probably very few people.

Kobe would have been one of them who is not just a national star, but an international star.

I'm Zach.

This is Yuko Takumi's here.

We're the Gator Hattori family, and we turned the upstairs of our home into a guest stay area for Japanese Otani fans.

We're booked during all of the Dodger home games.

This is all kicked in.

Oh, that's so nice.

The guests can wear these like shirts to go to the game and she kind of changes a little bit each year and this is the book I made any question that she thinks somebody would wanna know about traveling to LA and seeing the Dodgers, she drew everything she took all the pictures.

People come here is.

Like make it, make their dream come true.

It's like a once in a lifetime experience, so we really want to make it very special.

Hi, my name is Robert Vargas, and I'm in Los Angeles-based artist.

I painted both murals in Oshu Iwate, Japan with, uh, Kosan and one commissioned by the city of Oshu.

And then the uh iconic mural here in Little Tokyo at the Miyako Hotel LA Rising featuring Shohe Otani and the one behind me featuring Otani, Yamamoto, and Sasaki.

Torrance and the South Bay has the largest Japanese population in North America.

So I thought that this location would be perfect.

This mural is about ushering in foreign born greatness coming from Japan.

You know, it means a lot to me to be able to create these monuments that people respond to and people identify with, and it gives people hope.

Josaimashama set.

Let's go.

Dodgers.

That's my set.

Hi Shama set.

The store has been in Little Tokyo since 1979.

Little Tokyo is still somehow thriving, uh, because of Otani.

They are super loved right now.

Dodgers are almost as loved as Hello Kitty.

Otani has catapulted not just our economy, but he has really given us a lot of hope.

I think because of what happened during World War II, the Japanese Americans were a little ashamed throughout the years.

We're a lot more united and we're proud.

We're, we're very proud.

We're very proud of him.

00.

So it's the 17th, it's Otani Day, it's my last day in Osho City, so one more stop at Cano Sands Hair Spa.

I want to see those jerseys in action.

Let's get inside and have a look at what it's like on the 17th of every month in this city.

The hair salon, offices full of people wearing Otani jerseys and shirts.

I could not believe my eyes.

And all of this while their star man was playing live back in Los Angeles.

Shohey, just don't ground out to second base.

Sick.

So I'm not As my reporting in Iwate came towards an end, word of our documentary had started to spread.

In Otani's home prefecture, any project connected to Shohei tends to attract attention.

America sports Media Sports Illustrated documentary shis.

At that.

You found this.

Yeah, they made it.

watts.

Otashiwa somosomoya kimaditoyoka sushimojima enstein.

That's a sho gari chitani ski.

So what that.

Captain SS number.

Oh.

Kokonokoroko.

So cute.

Whoa.

To.

No.

That.

What.

I'm the image of kora in ski the kaitao yaku nokoto dake akute.

After the practices we rake the field or prepare the field for the next game or for the next day's practice.

I was born and raised in Germany and I came to Hanamaki Higashi High School in December of 2025.

All of the students live together 24 hours, 7 days a week, one year round.

You are automatically becoming friends or really attached to each other, so you can't even really live without them.

No.

Yet they What's your?

What's wrong?

What's one?

It's yours.

Yeah Yeah.

It's not good.

OK, OK, OK, fight, fight, fight, fight.

He paid cash they must.

Goodbye.

I'd like to ask him if he's ever been afraid in the batter's box.

I ask him if he's ever been afraid he's going to hurt somebody with this 100 mile an hour fastball.

Ask him who his heroes are and ask him if he's ever read You've Got to have a law.

I do think it's bigger than baseball.

He will bow to the umpire taking his first at bat.

If there's a gum wrapper in the dugout, he will pick it up.

This is a guy who's probably the greatest athlete, high school athlete in the land as a 10th grader who's cleaning toilets in the in the team dormitory.

Uh, that's part of his education.

He believes, truly believes the team has a better chance of winning if he can hit on the day that he pitches.

Uh, that's something that he relayed to me.

He knows his impact on the game on a daily basis and what his presence means, and that's why he always wants to answer the bell and never wanted a day off.

That's how he was raised.

You're describing his coach and his father to me and his parents and The notebook that he had had and all these different things that are embedded.

This stuff is embedded.

It's not just going to go away.

He'll never change.

This is who he is and we love him for that.

He's called the unicorn.

Yes.

He's the best player in baseball ever, I think so.

So we are seeing the miracle.

We are observing the miracle.

Do you now believe he is the greatest.

Na Not.

When he was leaving, I told him, You're going to be a big star over there, and one day if I come to the ballpark, don't look away from me, OK?

He said, No, I'll run, run to you.

I think the secret to Shoe Otani.

Is that he plays without stress.

It's very difficult to do in professional sports.

He's playing stress-free at the highest level possible of this game, and I think because he understands that he's kind of born to it, but it truly is fun.

I've really appreciated your time and your thoughts.

My final question then will be, what do you believe currently Shohe Otani's purpose is in life?

Kami.

Luniuso de dicta.

The.

OK.