Growing up, Shohei Ohtani always had big aspirations for his baseball career. The four-time All-Star wrote down a list of his life goals when he was in high school. Ohtani wanted to win two World Series titles by the time was 32.

In what was a display of Japanese baseball excellence, Ohtani’s teammate Yoshinobu Yamamoto faced off against Shota Imanaga, marking the first game in MLB history which featured two Japanese-born starting pitchers in an Opening Day game.

The baseball-mad country of Japan greeted perhaps the brightest star it has ever produced with silence. When Shohei Ohtani stepped into the batter’s box to open Major League Baseball’s season against his fellow countryman,