(Tokyo) Japanese baseball superstar Shohei Ohtani, recruited at the end of 2023 by the Los Angeles Dodgers for a record contract of $700 million over ten years, announced Thursday a more personal commitment: his marriage.
“I wanted everyone to know that I am now married,” Ohtani wrote on his Instagram account, which has 7.2 million followers, a confession that garnered more than 750,000 likes and 23,000 comments in just 25 minutes.
“Not only have I started a new chapter in my career with the Dodgers, but I have also started a new life with someone from my home country of Japan, a truly special person to me,” explained the player 29 years old, who has not revealed any details about his wife.
Ohtani is an icon in Japan, where baseball is the king of team sports, and the Japanese media widely reported his announcement on Thursday.
Arriving in MLB in 2018, Ohtani has since been voted best player in the American League in 2021 and 2023, each time unanimously, which had not happened to any other player before him.
He excelled at both batting and pitching, leading to comparisons to Babe Ruth, an American baseball legend from the 1910s to the 1930s.