Shohei Ohtani has nothing to do with the Hanshin Tigers… but I’m still going to review this book on my site, if you don’t mind. My first-ever NPB regular season game (June 18, 2014) saw him on the bump with the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters against my beloved Tigers, and he dominated. I had heard he was special and wanted to see him for myself and I was not disappointed! But anyhow, I love Shohei Ohtani. Who doesn’t?
I heard about this book when I stumbled across the author’s YouTube channel. Tomoya Shimura is a Japanese reporter (raised in the USA) who became a beat reporter for the Angels (and specifically, Shohei). He has had to write articles about Ohtani in English for an American audience, but all the while, he collected little insights that would enthrall Japanese fans as well. And last spring (2022), he put it into a book for people to enjoy. Subtitled “The Truth About this Two-Way Player that the Japanese Media Doesn’t Know,” this book recounts the exploits of Shohei from 2018 until the end of his MVP 2021 season. Much of this information has been disseminated in English already, and those who love Shohei already knew most of it.
That said, many of Shimura’s conversations with local media also get printed here, revealing a whole new layer about how the American media perceived Ohtani’s arrival, struggles, injuries, adjustments, and dominance. Furthermore, the latter chapters dig into some of the fans’ experiences around Shohei, including some touching stories about regular American kids who have become enamored with Ohtani.
The final chapter is also a gem, as Shimura writes from an angle that he knows perhaps better than anyone. He talks about the impact that Ohtani has had on the image of Asians in America, whether in baseball or not. He talks about how baseball is losing its traction as America’s pastime, and how maybe Ohtani could play a role in reversing that trend. (But also fully realistic about how the odds are stacked against Shohei and baseball because of the times we live in and the type of person Shohei is.)
The most impressive thing about this book is that Shimura wrote it entirely without a single exclusive interview with Shohei. Ohtani is so focused on baseball that he seldom gives his spare time to reporters, regardless of the reason, to do extra interviews. He is not an extrovert and seems to have more interest in the game than in people. That is not a criticism of Shohei. It is what it is.
On the whole, it was a bit of a slugfest for me to get through this book, as it is pretty dense with information. But as I have been saying quite a bit of late as I read Japanese books, it definitely has given me a few more hints about how to up my own writing game in my second language. If you read and understand Japanese, I can definitely recommend you get this book on your shelf, and eventually, in your brain!