Katsuya Nomura, one of the greatest players and managers in Japanese baseball history, won his first home run title in his fourth professional season. However, his numbers declined the following year.

One day, a senior player told him:

“The person who throws the punch may forget it, but the person who gets hit never forgets the pain.”

In other words, once you succeed, opponents study you relentlessly and develop strategies to stop you. To continue succeeding, you must keep evolving beyond what you achieved before.

Shohei Ohtani understands this reality better than most.

After winning the MVP Award in 2021, he continued producing elite seasons in 2022, then won back-to-back home run titles in 2023 and 2024.

Former Major League players admitted that they once believed Ohtani would eventually slow down. The competition in MLB is simply too intense, and the more successful Ohtani becomes, the more thoroughly opponents analyze and prepare for him.

That is precisely why sustaining MVP-level performance year after year is so extraordinary.

Knowing how difficult that challenge truly is, Ohtani once said:

“Since last year went fairly well, if you think you can simply repeat the same results, you quickly realize how difficult it is just to clear that standard again.”

No matter how great last season’s numbers were, assuming “I did it once, so I can just do the same thing again” is a dangerous mindset.

Performance quickly declines without constant improvement.

Ohtani believes that players must continually study, practice, adapt, and update themselves in order to stay ahead.

Source

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

Number 1048, p.15