Shohei Ohtani Trivia
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49 free Shohei Ohtani trivia questions with answers — sports quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Shohei Ohtani does things baseball had not seen since Babe Ruth, and a few things baseball had never seen at all: 10 wins and 10 homers in one Japanese season, a unanimous MVP as a pitcher-DH, 50 home runs and 50 steals, a $700 million contract with $680 million of it deferred, and a World Baseball Classic final that ended with him striking out his own Angels teammate. These 50 trivia questions about Shohei Ohtani cover the whole arc. Early life in Mizusawa, Iwate, with a badminton-playing mother and a coach who assigned him toilet-cleaning duty; the 2012 NPB draft and the Fighters jersey once worn by Yu Darvish; the 101 mph fastball that broke a bat in half; the 2016 Japan Series; the posting to the Angels and the Rookie of the Year; Tommy John surgery; the 2021 and 2023 unanimous MVPs; the Dodgers deal structure; the Ippei Mizuhara scandal; the 2024 World Series and the 2025 NLCS Game 4; plus Decoy the Kooikerhondje and a wife described only as 'a normal Japanese woman'. Easy questions stick to teams and awards; the hardest ask about Marc Kroon's record, the Edgar Martínez Award and Alfonso Soriano's 40-40 mark. Every answer is cited to a page we checked, with a one-line explanation. Play it online or print it for a baseball night.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What nickname is Shohei Ohtani known by?
Shotime
Shotime. The 'Sho' in his given name was chosen to evoke the soaring leaps of the samurai hero Minamoto no Yoshitsune; the 'hei' is the first character of Hiraizumi, a place tied to the same hero.
Q 02In 2023 Ohtani donated about 60,000 of which item to Japan's 20,000 elementary schools?
Gloves
Gloves. He sent youth gloves to every elementary school in the country, writing that he looked forward to one day sharing a field with someone who grew up using one.
Q 03In which Japanese prefecture was Ohtani born?
Iwate
Iwate. Winters there bury the fields in snow, which may be why the prefecture was long seen as a baseball backwater that rarely produced stars.
Q 04Ohtani's mother Kayoko was a competitive player in which sport?
Badminton
Badminton. Kayoko later handled his pro salary too, paying about $1,000 a month into his account to teach him to budget, and his old coach said he barely touched it.
Q 05Who coached Ohtani's boyhood baseball teams?
His father
His father. Toru, a car-plant worker and former corporate-league outfielder, felt he had given his elder son's baseball too little time and resolved to make it up with Shohei, the youngest of three.
Q 06Which high school did Ohtani choose, staying local rather than joining a big-city powerhouse?
Hanamaki Higashi
Hanamaki Higashi. Yusei Kikuchi, a pitcher he admired, had just carried its team of local boys to the final of the national spring tournament, and Ohtani enrolled the following year.
Q 07What chore did Ohtani's high school coach assign him to teach humility?
Toilet cleaning
Toilet cleaning. His coach gave the job to every pitcher, reasoning that whoever stands on the mound, the highest spot on the field, should do the lowest job afterwards; Ohtani never complained.
Q 08Besides baseball, in which sport was Ohtani a competitive athlete growing up?
Swimming
Swimming. His high school coach also made pitchers swim as training, and the school's swimming coach reckoned Ohtani was fast enough to have reached the Olympics.
Q 09Which future Dodgers teammate later broke Ohtani's Japanese high school record for the fastest pitch?
Roki Sasaki
Roki Sasaki. At 17 he was clocked at 163 km/h, about 101 mph, against the 160 Ohtani had reached, and the comparisons with Ohtani began.
Q 10Which former Fighters ace had worn the No. 11 jersey the team gave Ohtani?
Yu Darvish
Yu Darvish. The Fighters offered the teenager their departed ace's number, which might otherwise have been retired, as part of the pitch that persuaded him to start his career in Japan.
Q 11Which club did Ohtani cut in December 2017, before naming his seven finalists?
New York Yankees
New York Yankees. General manager Brian Cashman said he was told Ohtani leaned towards the West Coast or a smaller market, adding that he couldn't change being a big-market team in the East.
Q 12In Japan, Ohtani's pitching-and-hitting act is known as 'nitoryu', a word borrowed from which tradition?
Sword fighting
Sword fighting. Nitoryu means wielding a sword in each hand, and at first almost nobody wanted him to keep both: American scouts saw a pitcher, while Japanese clubs wanted the hitter.
Q 13What did Ohtani give Joe Kelly's wife after the Dodgers pitcher handed over uniform No. 17?
A Porsche
Q 21Who knocked Ohtani out of the 2021 Home Run Derby's first round?
Juan Soto
Juan Soto. Ohtani lost 31-28 in the second swing-off, gave his $150,000 Derby earnings to about 30 Angels trainers and staff, and started the All-Star Game on the mound the next night.
Q 22Ohtani's 2021 MVP made him the first winner at which position?
Designated hitter
Designated hitter. Four full-time DHs had finished second before him, David Ortiz among them, but none had won; in 2024 he took the award again in a year when he did not pitch at all.
Q 23How did Ohtani respond in 2021 when Japan's government offered him the People's Honour Award?
He turned it down
A Porsche. Ashley Kelly had campaigned online for him to join the Dodgers, even joking she would rename her baby son ShoKai, and the car arrived at her door with the words 'It's yours, from Shohei.'
Q 14Ohtani's Fighters beat which club, then Seiya Suzuki's, in 2016's Japan Series?
Hiroshima Carp
Hiroshima Carp. The Fighters lost the first two games, then Ohtani's walk-off single in extra innings set off four straight wins and the title.
Q 15Where did Ohtani choose to live during his five seasons with the Fighters?
The team dormitory
The team dormitory. Anyone else would have rushed to get a place of his own, his old coach said, but Ohtani just liked living close to somewhere he could train.
Q 16Why was Ohtani's signing bonus with the Angels in 2017 capped at about $2.3 million?
He was under 25
He was under 25. MLB treats international players that young as amateurs, so by leaving Japan at 23 instead of waiting two years he passed up a deal executives valued at about $200 million.
Q 17How did Ohtani's Angels teammates greet him in the dugout after his first MLB home run?
With the silent treatment
With the silent treatment. Ignored as an old dugout tradition demands, he high-fived a row of invisible teammates until the Angels gave in and mobbed him.
Q 18Which award did Ohtani win in November 2018 despite pitching in only 10 games?
AL Rookie of the Year
AL Rookie of the Year. After a spring training so poor that there was open talk of starting him in the minors, he hit 22 home runs and took 25 of the 30 first-place votes.
Q 19In June 2019 Ohtani became the first Japanese-born MLB player to do what?
Hit for the cycle
Hit for the cycle. He homered and doubled, sat through a 36-minute power cut at the Rays' ballpark, then tripled and finished the set with a single in the seventh.
Q 20Ohtani became a paid global ambassador for which cryptocurrency exchange in 2021?
FTX
FTX. He was paid entirely in cryptocurrency and company shares; a year later the exchange went bankrupt and investors named him in a class-action suit.
He turned it down, saying it was still too early. Ichiro Suzuki had already refused the same prize three times, the last when he retired in 2019.
Q 24The 2022 'Ohtani rule' lets a starting pitcher in the batting order do what after leaving the mound?
Stay in as DH
Stay in as DH. Under the old rule a team whose pitcher batted had no DH, so when Ohtani was relieved his bat left the game too, unless he moved to the outfield.
Q 25Despite 34 homers and 219 strikeouts, Ohtani was 2022 MVP runner-up to whom?
Aaron Judge
Aaron Judge. He had just hit 62 home runs, an American League record, and took 28 of the 30 first-place votes; the other two went to Ohtani.
Q 26Whom did Ohtani strike out to end the 2023 World Baseball Classic final?
Mike Trout
Mike Trout. His Angels teammate swung through two 100 mph fastballs, worked the count full, then missed a slider that swerved 17 inches off the plate.
Q 27What did Ohtani's dog Decoy do at Dodger Stadium on the pair's bobblehead night in August 2024?
Delivered the first pitch
Delivered the first pitch. He took the ball from the mound to Ohtani at the plate, a trick the pair had rehearsed for three weeks, and Ohtani then homered in his first at-bat.
Q 28In May 2023 Ohtani passed Babe Ruth on the all-time list for what?
Pitching strikeouts
Pitching strikeouts. Ruth gave up regular pitching at 25 to become a full-time outfielder, which left his total low enough for Ohtani to pass in his sixth big-league season.
Q 29What did Ohtani do in a 2023 doubleheader opener before homering twice in the nightcap?
Threw a one-hit shutout
Threw a one-hit shutout. It was the first complete game of his MLB career, and he changed, met the press and went straight back out to hit two of the 44 homers that led the American League that year.
Q 30Which outstanding-DH honour did Ohtani win three straight times through 2023?
Edgar Martínez Award
Edgar Martínez Award. It was created in 1973 for hitters who never take the field, yet in 2021 and 2022 it went to a man who was also one of the league's best starting pitchers.