Yu Darvish, one of Japan’s greatest pitchers, built his reputation as the ace of the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters before moving to Major League Baseball in 2012 to join the Texas Rangers.

Darvish once explained that one of his main motivations for going to MLB was simple.

He wanted to compete.

During his time in Japan, Darvish had already proven himself to be a dominant pitcher. In just seven seasons, he recorded 93 wins, and in five of those years his winning percentage exceeded .700. His career ERA in Nippon Professional Baseball remained in the 1.00 range, an extraordinary level of performance.

For Darvish, facing stronger competition was the natural next step in his growth as a player.

Shohei Ohtani shared a similar mindset.

From an early stage in his career, Ohtani believed that anyone who plays baseball should aim for the very top.

As a young player, he first set his sights on becoming a professional baseball player in Japan. Naturally, that ambition soon expanded toward playing in Major League Baseball, widely regarded as the highest level of the sport.

Yet unlike the Olympic Games, baseball does not have a single gold medal that clearly identifies the best individual player.

Because baseball is a team sport, determining who stands at the very top can be less obvious.

So what does “the top” really mean?

For Ohtani, the answer lies in how the game remembers a player.

If people look back and say, “He was the best player we had ever seen,” then that is the true summit.

The goal is not simply winning games or collecting statistics.

It is reaching a level where one’s impact on the sport becomes undeniable.

Source

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

Opening a Path, Crossing the Ocean: The True Story of Shohei Ohtani, p.51