Shohei Ohtani has always been deeply committed to sleep.

Even during his days with the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters, he openly admitted, “I really love sleeping.”

He says he usually sleeps during travel, enjoys naps in addition to nighttime sleep, and especially tries to rest after training sessions.

He even once talked about how daytime sleep feels different from nighttime sleep.

Those habits never changed after moving to Major League Baseball.

Including the “power naps” built into his daytime training routine, Ohtani aimed to sleep around ten hours a day.

According to Dodgers manager Dave Roberts, during the roughly 13-hour flight from Arizona to South Korea for the 2024 season opener, Ohtani slept for nearly 11 hours — reportedly the longest sleep anyone on the team had ever seen during a flight.

People often say, “Children grow while they sleep,” and Ohtani was apparently exactly that kind of child.

Even as a boy, he would quickly fall asleep in his father’s car or during long trips for youth baseball games, and once asleep, he was difficult to wake up.

Normally, those habits fade with age.

But in Ohtani’s case, they never did.

No matter how much his environment changed, he continued to prioritize recovery and sleep above almost everything else.

That discipline may be one of the hidden foundations behind his extraordinary performance.

Source

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

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