Ohtani's Hanamaki Higashi falls in 2012 Iwate final, missing Koshien

In July 2012, Shohei Ohtani was a third-year student at Hanamaki Higashi High School in Iwate Prefecture, in northern Japan, and already the most talked-about amateur player in the country. His team entered the prefectural tournament, whose winner earns a place at the national summer championship at Koshien Stadium near Osaka.

During that tournament Ohtani threw a 160 km/h (99 mph) fastball in a televised semifinal, a record for a Japanese high school pitcher at the time. Hanamaki Higashi won that game comfortably, but lost the final, so the team did not reach the summer Koshien. Ohtani, who also hit for power as a batter, never played in the summer tournament, although he had pitched at Koshien in the spring invitational earlier in 2012.

The defeat mattered because it ended his school career without a national summer appearance. Ohtani then chose to go straight to Major League Baseball before joining the Nippon Ham Fighters in Japan's professional league. Opponents who faced him at that time have since become part of his story.