Angels’ Shohei Ohtani Wins AL MVP Award

Shohei Ohtani has been phenomenal this season. Ohtani, Two-way star of the Los Angeles Angelssmashed 46 home runs, drove 100 runs, and posted .965-plus deceleration percentage at the base, trailing only Toronto Vladimir Guerrero Jr. in the American League. As if that wasn’t impressive enough, Ohtani was also his team’s top starting pitcher, averaging 3.18 wins and scoring 156 goals in 23 in 130⅓.

On Thursday, Ohtani’s historic efforts were rewarded with the AL Most Valuable Player Award. He joins former Seattle Mariners star outfielder Ichiro Suzuki, a 2001 ALMVP, as the only Japanese player in Major League Baseball history to win the award.

Ohtani took all first place votes are 30 For the annual award given by the Baseball Writers Association of America. He beat fellow finalist Guerrero with 29 second place votes and Blue Jays second baseman Marcus Semien with 24 third place votes.

Few people in Ohtani’s inner circle can be more happy with her success than Tomoyuki and Kaoru Iwase. They never formally met Ohtani, 27, but watched him play more than perhaps anyone outside of his family.

Just this season, Kaoru attended 136 Angels games to watch Ohtani game ( Home Derby in Denver in July). Her husband, Tomoyuki, said he attended roughly 10 fewer games. Superfans would fly to Japan to see his old team play for the Nippon Ham Fighters in Nippon Professional Baseball. Tomoyuki, 49, estimates they’ve been to 15 different MLB stadiums this season to watch Ohtani. 38-year-old Kaoru shared about travels her Instagram page.

There are nearly 300 Ohtani memorabilia, from Raw Fighters and Angels jerseys to bobbleheads and balls he threw into the crowd. (No autograph, though.) They did a wedding photo shoot at Angel Stadium a few years ago – naturally – wearing Ohtani jerseys. They used to live 30 minutes’ drive from the stadium in Anaheim, but last year they moved into an apartment a five-minute walk from the ballpark.

“We’re marching to Angel Stadium even out of season,” Tomoyuki said. He added with a laugh, “This is our main house.”

So when Ohtani was announced as ALMVP, that moment meant much more to the sport, Japanese baseball fans and others, than being the cornerstone of an amazing campaign on the field.

Ohtani throughout his career, even in Japan Faced with constant skepticism on his ability to remain a two-way player. Being a casual hitter in MLB, the top league with the best players in the world, is tough enough to be a beginner shooter at the same time.

But from the start, it resulted in nearly two seasons of missed shooting, even after Tommy John’s throwing elbow, right, and another elbow injury in 2020 in 2018. insisted on doing both. In his first season with the Angels, Ohtani won the AL Rookie of the Year Award in 2018. This year it was even better.

“Why do I love Shohei and why he’s the best and why I follow him, it’s because he’s the best in his mind,” Kaoru said emotionally. “He never changed his goal. In high school in Japan, everyone used to say that two players was impossible.”

He later added, “It was #1 in Japan, but everybody said, ‘You can’t do that in two-player MLB.’ But he never changed his mind. He believed he could be the #1 player.”

The Iwas, who met in Japan, have followed Ohtani’s career since high school and as a highly rated contender in the hit tournaments at the time. During his five seasons with Raw Fighters, they traveled from the United States to Japan to see him play and visited their families while there. “Shohei was the first priority,” Kaoru said.

The Iwas watched Ohtani grow, grow, and get stronger, hitting some speed bumps and now dominating the biggest stage.

Now a US citizen, Tomoyuki moved to that country in 1997 when another Japanese shooting phenomenon, Hideo Nomo, was playing for the Los Angeles Dodgers. Tomoyuki’s favorite player used to be Suzuki – with whom he shares his hometown, Aichi Province. (Suzuki, who was named AL Rookie of the Year 2001, first Asian actress He was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame.)

“We are proud of Shohei and Ichiro,” Tomoyuki said. “Ichiro, of course, he is special. But Shohei, changed the rules. What he’s done is incredible.”

Of course, not only the Iwas noticed this. While the Angels have gone 77-85 this season, extending the playoff drought to seven years, Tomoyuki said he’s seen more Japanese in the stands. For example, he said that during his trips to Texas to see Ohtani play the Houston Astros and Texas Rangers, they met Japanese fans from Florida for the same reason.

Due to their job as a wedding planner, the Iwas can always watch their favorite actress. Tomoyuki is a wedding photographer, while Kaoru is a hair and makeup artist.

They have their own company, they can work remotely this season and travel all over the country for weddings, they can arrange a few business trips with Angels road games. They find cheap ballpark tickets and use cash or air miles to pay their way. They try to arrive early to watch batting practice.

When asked if Ohtani knew them after all these years, the Iwas chuckled and told a story. (Tomoyuki said he knew Ohtani’s longtime translator, Ippei Mizuhara’s father.) In 2018, they flew to Seattle to embark on an Angels road trip and brought a birthday banner for Ohtani, who turned 24 on the last game, July 5th. from the three game series.

Tomoyuki said Ohtani noticed the sign in the stands and perhaps recognized them, but “we’re afraid he might think of us as stalkers.”

The Iwass laughed as he said this. To them, Ohtani inspires and so is his journey – just like theirs, coming to a foreign country for business. Thursday’s new plaque formalized what they already knew.

“It proves that the level of Japanese baseball is a little high,” Tomoyuki said. “I’m very happy about that. And he’s also proving to be his number one player. targets” Kaoru added seconds later, “I’m so proud of her.”