Coming into the 2024 season, Shohei Ohtani had just about every major accomplishment an MLB player could want, besides one: a World Series.
The that the superstar finally has his first championship after the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the New York Yankees 7-6 in Game 5 of the World Series on Wednesday.
When Shohei Ohtani was a sophomore in high school, his baseball coach at Hanamake Higashi High School introduced him to a method of self improvement called the Harada Method.
Named for Takashi Harada, a former physical education teacher in Japan, the method found its way to Hanamake Higashi through Hiroshi Sasaki, the school’s meticulous and venerated baseball coach. It included five stages — goals, purpose, analysis, plan and action — and the way Sasaki saw it, it offered his players a blueprint for their futures.
According to the method, the players at Hanamake Higashi had to write down their goals and a list of strategies to achieve them. The resulting document was a 9-by-9 grid that Harada calls a 64 chart, and when Ohtani sat down to fill his out, he wrote of matters philosophical and practical. He wanted to have a “tenacity for victory” and “a cool head and hot passion.”
Ohtani spent his first six seasons with the Los Angeles Angels and didn’t reach the postseason once. This offseason, the Dodgers handed him a historic 10-year, $700 million contract in hopes he could lead the organization to its eighth World Series.
A cool head and hot passion paid off as it took him just one season to bring another championship to Los Angeles.
Following the monumental milestone win, Ohtani and his teammates celebrated accordingly as beer and champagne flowed in the locker room.
Read about Shohei Otani’s rise to success in DiversityComm Magazine
Ohtani had a season for the history books, hitting 54 home runs and 130 RBI with a .310 batting average to go along with his 59 stolen bases to lead the Dodgers to the best record in baseball.
His numbers tapered off in the postseason, but he did enough to help Los Angeles take down the Yankees.
Ohtani has four All-Stars, a pair of Silver Slugger Awards and two MVPs under his belt and he’ll more than likely earn another MVP this year. Now, he’s a world champion and is only looking to continue leaving his mark on baseball.
What’s more, Ohtani will be back on the mound in 2025. He couldn’t pitch in 2024 while recovering from elbow surgery, but is expected to return to pitching next season, adding just another weapon to the Dodgers’ rotation.
Read more about the World Series win at The Bleacher Reports here.
Read more articles from the AAPI Community here.
This article was originally published on diversitycomm.net.