'You have to do the lowest job’: How cleaning toilets prepared Dodgers’ $700 million star Shohei Ohtani for World Series moment

CNBC ^ | 10/24/2024 | Nicolas Vega

[SeekAndFind]

There’s no bigger stage in baseball than a World Series between the New York Yankees and the Los Angeles Dodgers, and there’s no bigger star than Japanese slugger Shohei Ohtani.

The 30-year-old’s ability to hit mammoth home runs, pitch over 100 mph and steal bases with ease got him a $700 million contract from the Dodgers this past offseason. But despite his on-field exploits, the 30-year-old is also known for being one of the most humble players in the league.

It’s an approach that was instilled in him when he was just a promising high school athlete. Ohtani attended Hanamaki Higashi High School, where coach Hiroshi Sasaki designed the athletic program to shape his players as people in addition to as athletes, according to journalist Jeff Fletcher’s 2022 book “Sho-Time”.

For the players, who dormed at the school during the season, this included being assigned chores. The task of cleaning the bathroom always fell to the pitchers because of the outsized attention they receive compared to the rest of the team when they take the mound.

“The mound is the most elevated place on the field,” Sasaki previously told the LA Times. “It’s a stage. If you’re on that stage, you receive the most attention. You get interviewed and written about the most.”

Not wanting any of his pitchers to get a big head — especially a star like Ohtani, who as a teen was able to hit 99 miles per hour on the radar gun — the coach devised the chore as a way to keep them humble.

“Once they get up [on the mound], they are at the pinnacle,” Sasaki told Fletcher for his book. “For the rest of the day I tell them, ‘You have to do the lowest job.’ Shohei never complained.”

[Pearls Before Swine]

You didn’t, did you?

This is so Zen.

[SunkenCiv]

I’m sure you were flush with applicants, so if they’re not going to take the plunge, give ‘em the brush off. :^)

[subterfuge]

Through my teen years and up until the age of 21 all the jobs I had were HARD, nasty outdoor jobs. Battery manufacturing dunking batteries into acid, lumberyard building trusses and girders, furniture warehouse and plant nurseries. Then managed to get low level position at a Department of Defense contractor at 21 and have been doing that for the last 45 years.

My point being, that after those tough jobs anything I’ve ever done in high tech is a picnic compared to that. Try getting some battery acid in your eye or in a cut. LOL!