JOURNALISM CLUB WEEKLY MAGAZINE
MR. COOK
Yuteh Weekly
Journalism Club Magazine 2018/Week 7 COVER BY: ANAHEIM ANGELS – SHOHEI OHTANI – JAPANESE BASEBALL PLAYER
FOOD – FASHION – ART – STYLE
Sports Review: SHOHEI OHTANI Article by: Frankie https://frankie032203.wixsite.com/website
Shohei Ohtani, a baseball player born in Japan 1994, now plays for Los Angeles Angels in Major League Baseball. He is an outfielder, an incisive pitcher as well as a destructive batter. During senior high school, he had displayed his fastest speed ball to 147 km/h (91 mile/h), which implied that he had the abilities to break the limits of over 150 km/h (93 mile/h). As it turned out, he had created the fastest record in the history of Japanese high school baseball league: 160 km/h (100 mile/h). That's incredibly fast especially for a high school player to reach this professional level of speed. For that reason, in 2012, he was in the first priority chosen by the Hokkaido Nippon-ham Fighters in the Japanese Major League Draft.
At first, he wasn't willing to accept the contract made by the team due to the fact that he had aspirations toward Major League Baseball (MLB) in U.S. However, he eventually adopted the agreement as the Hokkaido team offered him the best treatment any player had received, the highest value of contract/ the same back number as the former ace pitcher Darvish as well as being a twoway player in the seasonal tournaments.
“This guy is over here to represent you. To make you proud.”
In March 2013, he had his first appearance in his career in the opening game of the season as an outfielder, and contributed two hits as well as one RBI (Run Batted In). Then in May, he was arranged as the lineup pitcher, first time in his career. In June, he seized his first win in his profession. Surprisingly, he broke the record of the fastest speed ball in NPB (Nippon Professional Baseball) later on, 162 km/h (100.1 mile/h). Delivering the goods, he broke through his limits and continued to produce fascinating records of speed ball in the year of 2016 with the speed of 163 km/h (101 mile/h) and 165 km/h (103 mile/h).
JOURNALISM CLUB WEEKLY MAGAZINE
MR. COOK
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Thanks to his astonishing capabilities in baseball, he was selected by the team Los Angeles Angels in MLB with the contract of 2.315 million US dollars. During his warm-up matches, he played pretty awfully, which brought about a lot of people's doubt toward his strength. Clayton Kershaw said that he was not suitable for MLB, and it didn't worth for LAA (Los Angeles Angels) to provide considerable benefits for him. Others like Justin Turner thought that the involvement was a waste of time due to the fact that he had already chosen the Angels as his first priority. Therefore, it was meaningless to have a meeting with him. However, all those criticizes did not defeat his confidence, it made him challenge himself to come to a stop where he could be a vigorous batter as well as an influential pitcher. Also, the team did not give up on him. Instead, they kept providing chances for him to emerge as one of the crucial figures in the team.
“We have to remember there’s an entire country following his every move”
As expected in the first game of him being the hitter versed the Athletics, he had his first hit in his career in MLB. Not for long, he gained his first win as well, 6 strike outs/ 6 innings of pitching/ 3 earned run. Surprisingly, he started to display his actual strength in the substantial games. He hit three homers in the three matches with Cleveland Indians successively. In the following weeks, Shohei Ohtani hit a homer from Corey Kluber who obtained CY Young Award before.
Additionally, he had changed his ready posture for hitting. Instead of lifting up his right leg highly like what he did in Japan, his coach taught him to just twist his leg to have more time on observing the ball clearly. In conclusion, I am really looking forward to Shohei Otani's future career in MLB because of his talented skills and abilities just like Babe Ruth. I wish that he could be successful to become as good as his teammates like Albert Pujols and Mike Trout.
Shohei Ohtani – LA Angels