The Notebooks and the Number

The Notebooks

Toru Ohtani coached his youngest son from elementary school through junior high, and the two of them kept notebooks. Game feedback. Fundamentals. The plain instruction to hustle. Toru had played amateur baseball in Japan's industrial league and later worked at an automobile plant. Shohei's mother, Kayoko, had been a national-level badminton player in high school. The youngest of three — an older sister, Yuka, and an older brother, Ryuta, who also plays amateur baseball — grew to 6-foot-4, and at Hanamaki Higashi High School he threw a then-record 99 mph fastball for a Japanese high school pitcher.

On July 7, two days after his 32nd birthday, Shohei Ohtani hit his 300th career home run.

The Path

Ohtani was born in Mizusawa, now part of Ōshū, a rural farm town in Iwate Prefecture. After high school, he wanted to skip Nippon Professional Baseball and go straight to the major leagues. The Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters drafted him first overall in 2012 anyway and won him over with a presentation called "The Path to Realizing Shohei Ohtani's Dream" — an honest accounting of minor-league bus rides and a lack of Japanese food in the United States, paired with the promise that he could star immediately in Japan, stay near family, and develop as a two-way player. He signed. In 2018, he made his major-league debut with the Angels.

Nine Seasons

Six years in Anaheim, then the Dodgers in 2024. Four MVP awards — 2021, 2023, 2024, and 2025 — and World Series championships in 2024 and 2025. He has played 1,131 games. The home run that reached the mark came in his ninth season, and he sits at 302, batting .282 with a .577 slugging percentage for his career.

One of the Guys

In the Dodgers clubhouse, Kiké Hernández has described Ohtani as almost like a little kid in a giant's body, a teammate who jokes and laughs. The surprises have been the goofy side — the anime discussions even after historic games, the long hours of sleep he banks on team flights. Manager Dave Roberts has noted that Ohtani wants to be seen as one of the guys. He has 22 home runs through 98 games this year, his third season with the Dodgers.

Reporting: People, MLB.com, Britannica, Wikipedia, Los Angeles Times. Career and biographical data: MLB StatsAPI, via the Fever engine.