Shohei Ohtani announced on Instagram Thursday that he had gotten married in the offseason. The announcement came seemingly out of nowhere and read like a press release, but was also so characteristically Ohtani to announce his wife to the world with a Notes app-style document.
Ohtani is one of the most followed athletes in all of sports by the media, and has the right to keep whatever information about himself that he wants private to himself (like, bizarrely, the name of his dog). No one forced Ohtani to share his marital status. Still, his announcement was similar to fellow countryman Hideki Matsui, who sprung the fact that he had a wife on an unexpecting public and Yankees teammates in 2008, holding up a drawing of her that resembled a police suspect sketch.
“I met somebody who felt right,” Matsui told the media gathered at the Yankees’ spring-training complex in Tampa 18 years ago. “That was it.”
It later came to light that Matsui, Derek Jeter and Bobby Abreu made a bet that whoever got married first would win some cash. Matsui allegedly already planned to wed his fiancée, so he just sped up the process and flew to New York to get married and win the bet.
“’I’m happy for him,” Abreu said. “I’ll have to send him a check.”
To this day, there is little known about Matsui’s wife other than they have two children together.
As for Ohtani’s announcement, many fans took to social media to talk about Ohtani’s news.
What we have learned today is that Ohtani and his handlers seem more comfortable sidestepping traditional media in disseminating information about himself. Let’s just hope there is no sketch this time.
