Early life

Ohtani was born to Kayoko and Toru Ohtani in Mizusawa (now part of Ōshū), Iwate, Japan, on July
5, 1994. His mother was a national-level badminton player in high school and his father worked at a
local automobile manufacturing plant and was an amateur baseball player who played in
the Japanese Industrial League.[17][18] He is the youngest of three children. He has one older sister,
Yuka, and one older brother, Ryuta, who is also an amateur baseball player in the Japanese
Industrial League.[17] In Japan, Ohtani was known as a "yakyū shōnen" (野球少年)—a kid who lives,
eats and breathes baseball.[18] Coached by his father, he displayed an aptitude for the game at an
early age.[19] He began playing baseball in his second year of elementary school, and as a seventh-
grader, Ohtani recorded all but one of 18 outs in a six-inning regional championship game.[17][18]

Amateur career
As a teenager, Ohtani could have played baseball for any powerhouse high school team in big cities
such as Osaka or Yokohama.[18] Instead, he opted to stay local, selecting Hanamaki Higashi High
School in Iwate Prefecture, Northern Japan,[20] the same high school as pitcher Yusei Kikuchi, whom
he admired;[21] Ohtani competed there as a swimmer[22] and played baseball.[17] Ohtani's high school
baseball coach, Hiroshi Sasaki, said that he was a fast swimmer who "could have made the
Olympics."[23]

Under Sasaki's guidance, Hanamaki Higashi's players lived on campus, returning home for only six
days a year. Sasaki would assign toilet cleaning chores to Ohtani, to teach the youth pitcher humility.
[18]
In 2012, Ohtani threw a 160 km/h (99 mph) fastball as an 18-year-old high school pitcher, which at
the time, had set a Japanese high school baseball record until it was surpassed by Rōki Sasaki's
163 km/h (101 mph) fastball in 2018.[24] Ohtani threw the pitch in the Japanese national high school
baseball championship tournament, commonly called Summer Koshien.[25] In the 2012 18U Baseball
World Championship, Ohtani had an 0–1 win–loss record with 16 strikeouts, eight walks, five hits,
five runs, and a 4.35 earned run average (ERA) in 10+1⁄3 innings pitched.[26]

Professional career
Ohtani expressed a desire to move directly to the major leagues after high school and received
interest from numerous teams including the Texas Rangers, Boston Red Sox, New York
Yankeesand Los Angeles Dodgers.[25][27][28][29] On October 21, 2012, he announced that he would
pursue a career in Major League Baseball rather than turn professional in Japan.[30][31] The Hokkaido
Nippon-Ham Fighters decided to draft him in the 2012 NPB Draft nevertheless, despite knowing that
there was a high likelihood he would not play for them. After an exclusive negotiating window
between him and the Fighters, Ohtani announced that he would sign with the Fighters and spend
some years in Japan before a possible MLB move.[19][32] Hokkaido said it would allow Ohtani to serve
as a pitcher and position player; the Los Angeles Dodgers, who had become Ohtani's top-choice
MLB team, were not prepared to let him play both ways.[33] He was assigned the jersey number 11,
previously worn by Yu Darvish.[34]