From a young age, Shohei Ohtani dreamed of becoming a professional baseball player. However, at the start of his high school career, he did not yet see himself as someone destined to become the best in the world. Although he had competed in national tournaments during his Little League and Senior League years, he had never won a championship. Even as a first-year high school student throwing 143 km/h, Ohtani later admitted that he still did not know how good he truly was.

At that time, his goal was simple and realistic. Each year, roughly 30 to 40 high school players are selected in the professional draft. Ohtani decided that if he could rank among the top 30 players in the country by his third year, that would be enough to earn a chance at becoming a professional.

That perspective began to change through encounters with others. Keiji Kojima, a scout who would later join the Los Angeles Dodgers, watched Ohtani and remarked that he could someday win the Cy Young Award multiple times. Hanamaki Higashi High School manager Hiroshi Sasaki told him directly, “You can throw 160 kilometers.”

While Ohtani himself was aiming simply to be “among the top 30,” those around him saw far greater potential—someone who could become the best in Japan, or even the world. Encouraged by those voices, Ohtani began to take the idea of throwing 160 km/h seriously. From there, his ambitions expanded beyond Japanese professional baseball, and he started to look toward playing in the United States.

What began as a modest, carefully measured goal was transformed by encounters with people who believed in possibilities Ohtani had not yet imagined for himself. Those encounters marked the moment when his pursuit shifted from “good enough” to “how far can I really go?”

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.162