Fourteen years ago, in the suburbs of Seoul, South Korea, a group of 20 enthusiastic Canadian teenage baseball players received humiliating news.
The club, made up of talented high school students from across the Commonwealth, was holding a pre-game meeting before its opening game of the 2012 U18 World Baseball Championship against Team Japan. Head coach Greg Hamilton, a no-nonsense Canadian baseball player, entered the room. He looked at the children he had helped gather, the majority of whom had never been this far from home. A handful of them, like Josh Naylor, Cal Quantrill and Jacob Robson, would go on to play in the majors. Others would carve out careers in the minor leagues. Some have chosen other paths.
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But everyone remembers the rest of that day. It all started with a scouting report from Hamilton that was half warning and half pep talk.
“The guy on the mound for Japan is the best 18-year-old pitcher in the world.” » the typically sensible and non-hyperbolic skipper told his players, according to Robson. “And he’s also the best 18-year-old hitter in the world.”
He was of course referring to Shohei Ohtani.
Although, technically speaking, Ohtani’s name did not yet have an anglicized H. At the 2012 BWC 18U, both his Samurai Japan uniform and the official box office scores spelled out this now unmistakable last name as “Otani”.
Things are a little different now. These days, the 31-year-old is a global superstar, a national hero and the captain of Japan’s quest to win back-to-back World Baseball Classic titles. Three years ago, in his first WBC appearance, Ohtani catapulted his club to glory with an unprecedented two-way performance. He won the tournament MVP award by going 10 for 23 at the plate with 10 walks and five extra base hits. He also turned in two stellar starts, as well as an unforgettable and dramatic relief appearance to close out the championship game against then-teammate Mike Trout.
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With the 2026 tournament in full swing, and The Japanese Samurai will face Venezuela in the quarter-finals on Saturday eveningthe focus is once again on Ohtani.
But if his international career has become legendary, it began with a disappointing afternoon in front of an audience estimated at only 125 people. In his life’s first appearance on the Japanese team, Ohtani, already a fairly well-known figure in his native country, was beaten by a team of Canadians who didn’t know who he was until Greg Hamilton told them.
“(Hamilton) went on to say that he didn’t say that to scare us,” Robson said. “He was just trying to prepare us, like, ‘Hey, he throws really hard. He knows what he’s doing.’ Everyone has followed him since he was little. It’s a miracle.
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He could have been a prodigy, but Ohtani’s final pitching lineup that day was disappointing: 3 1/3 innings, 3 hits, 3 earned runs, 4 walks, 4 strikeouts. At the plate, he went 1-for-3 with an intentional walk and a laser-beam double-play lineout that nearly decapitated Canadian pitcher Ryan Kellogg.
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Coincidentally, while a handful of MLB evaluators were in attendance, it was a significantly smaller group than one might expect. That’s because a highly touted Korean left-hander named Hyun-Jin Ryu, who was set to join the MLB that winter, was pitching that same day for the Hanwha Eagles. And so a number of scouts who otherwise would have seen Ohtani were out watching Ryu.
But even though Ohtani was knocked down and out early, opposing hitters were blown away by his stuff.
“I get in the box and he’s just pumping heat, 94, 95,” recalled shortstop Daniel Pinero, who won a College World Series with the University of Virginia. “At that time, no one was throwing that hard, especially high school kids. And we were also from Canada, where it was 85, 86.
“This long, lanky kid goes on the mound, and he’s just pumping heat, with some nasty moves too, and we’re like, ‘OK, this kid is disgusting.'”
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This overwhelming arsenal left Canada disconcerted at first, with Ohtani causing some nasty, nasty wobbles along the way. He struck out three in the second inning, including Naylor, a future All-Star and captain of Canada’s 2026 WBC team. In the third, Ohtani’s command abandoned him, as a walk, a few passed balls and a single led to Canada’s first run. Things took a turn for the worse an inning later, when a walk, a hit by pitch and two singles gave Canada the lead.
That brought the Japanese manager out of the dugout for a pitching change, but Ohtani’s day was far from over.
“I think they took him out of the game and he just ran to the outfield,” Robson said. “I think he played the field every inning without pitching.”
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Ohtani also continued to take at-bats, launching an RBI single to left in the seventh and drawing an intentional walk in the ninth. Japan took the lead in the seventh, but Canada sent the game into extra innings in spectacular fashion in the bottom of the ninth, with a game-tying two-run homer from third baseman Jesse Hodges. The Canadians finally managed to escape on a wild pitch in the 10th, thus completing the surprise.
“These are the types of games you dream about as a kid” Hodges was later quoted as saying. “Hitting a home run to tie the score in ninth place for your country is the best feeling in the world. »
The victory gave Canada one of its best results on the international stage, a silver medal, after losing to the American team in the title match. Ohtani would pitch one more time in the tournament, in the fifth place game against host Korea. In that one, he was dominant, striking out 12 in seven two-run innings, a more fitting harbinger of the brilliant international career he would have.
But this first outing? Against Canada? For Ohtani and his teammates, it was a moment to forget. But for the Canadian players, it was an essential memory that they still think about today.
Robson said, “I always say that to random people when they talk about Ohtani – like, ‘Oh, I played against him in high school.’
“They say, ‘What?'”
