For Shohei Ohtani, the Los Angeles Dodgers had long been a special organization.

Ever since his days at Hanamaki Higashi High School, the Dodgers had closely followed his development and strongly believed in his potential. In many ways, they were one of the teams that made his dream of playing in Major League Baseball feel realistic.

Originally, Ohtani had planned to move directly to MLB after high school.

But everything changed when the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters proposed something unprecedented:

Why not try becoming a two-way player?

That possibility convinced Ohtani to remain in Japan for the time being.

After spending five seasons developing into one of the greatest talents in Japanese baseball history, Ohtani finally decided to pursue the majors in 2017. Multiple MLB teams tried to sign him, and once again, the Dodgers recruited him aggressively.

However, at that time the National League did not yet use the designated hitter rule.

For a player committed to pitching and hitting, that mattered.

In the end, Ohtani chose the Los Angeles Angels instead.

From the Dodgers’ perspective, they had effectively been turned down twice.

Reflecting on that decision later, Ohtani said:

“I think there were probably a lot of things they considered after I chose the Angels. I ended up joining another team in the same area, so I imagine the front office must have had complicated feelings about it.”

Even so, the Dodgers never stopped believing in him.

Years later, when Ohtani became a free agent again, the Dodgers continued pursuing him with the same seriousness and sincerity they had shown from the beginning.

That consistency stayed with him.

Explaining why he ultimately joined the Dodgers, Ohtani emphasized that it was not necessarily the organization itself that had changed.

Instead, he felt that the timing and circumstances of his own life had changed.

In 2017, the Angels felt like the right fit for where he was as a player and person.

This time, the Dodgers did.

It was a deeply human way of describing one of the biggest decisions of his career.

Sometimes, the right choice is not about one side changing completely.
Sometimes, it is simply about finding the right match at the right moment.

Source

This quote comes from a Japanese book published in Japan and is not currently available in English.

Number 1094–1095, p.8