Among Japanese position players who have succeeded in Major League Baseball, Ichiro and Hideki Matsui have long been regarded as special figures.

Many people believed that players like them would not appear again, and that surpassing their records would not be easy.

However, before long, Shohei Ohtani emerged and began to break their Major League records one after another, surprising everyone.

Matsui, after excelling with the Yomiuri Giants from the 1990s, moved to the prestigious New York Yankees in 2003, where he played a key role in the middle of the lineup with his clutch hitting. In 2009, he was named World Series MVP.

As a power hitter, Matsui was naturally one of the players Ohtani admired.

In 2024, Ohtani surpassed Matsui’s record for the most career home runs in Major League Baseball by a Japanese player. In 2021, he had already broken Matsui’s single-season record of 31 home runs.

Ohtani expressed his joy by saying, “I’m really happy to have reached the level of the players I admired.”

On the other hand, Matsui, whose record had been surpassed, evaluated Ohtani highly, saying that 31 home runs was “just a passing point” for him and that he is “a true power hitter.”

Since then, Ohtani has lived up to his words by continuing to build his career step by step. He has gone on to win the home run title twice—something once thought impossible for a Japanese player—and his numbers are expected to continue rising.

Source

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

Shohei Ohtani Report, p.86