![]() "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'. "I thought this boy could make it big, and he gave that impression, but he was very skinny at the time." "But he looked straight into my eyes and said, 'I want to play hardball with this team,'" says Asari. "He and his parents came to this field to see me," recalls coach Shoji Asari, who founded the Pirates.Īsari thought that Ohtani might like to join his school's softball team with the rest of his friends. Ohtani played here in the early 2000s, between the ages of 8 and 14. ![]() Ohtani's Little League team, the Mizusawa Pirates, still practices every weekend at a diamond sandwiched between a country road and a river where salmon swim upstream from the Pacific Ocean. To understand how Ohtani became such a baseball prodigy, it helps to journey to Ohtani's hometown of Mizusawa, in northern Japan's Iwate prefecture, to see where he got his start in baseball. MIZUSAWA, Japan - Los Angeles Angels superstar Shohei Ohtani is often described as a once-in-a century talent, especially for his dual skills as pitcher and hitter.
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