Baseball Player

In life, I think huge failures are extremely important.

I talk to Kyle Hendricks a lot.

I'm trying to throw more curves because I'm always throwing fastball, slider, fastball, slider.

Playing in Japan suits me the best, but what I need is in the Majors. I felt that in order to do my job, I needed to change my job location.

When I look at my numbers, I don't give up a lot of hits.

I feel that if I absolve myself and say it was the Astros' fault I was bad in Game 7, in the World Series, I can't develop as a person.

I had bad days, and that means somebody else had a great day.

I want to remind people with dogs that they are your responsibility.

I could throw the ball hard, but at this level if you're not accurate, it's easy for batters to light you up with home runs. That's when I started concentrating on making my movements more compact. It just seemed to me that smaller movements would produce the kind of pitching I desired.

Every morning when I woke up, I would pray, 'I have to throw today, please let there be no pain.' Those were very gloomy days. Meanwhile, the atmosphere around me had become, 'Is he faking an injury?' 'Is it a mental problem?' Those words made it extremely difficult for me to stop and rest, and it really took a toll on me emotionally.

America is very tolerant of mistakes.

There were a small number of voices that said, 'Darvish only cares about strikeouts.' Although I may have had strikeouts in my mind, fans, team, teammates and team staff were always my top priority.

Kids used to say stuff all the time about how I was different.

If I were to return to Japan, Nippon Ham would be my top choice. No doubt about that.

Since coming to the major leagues, my passion toward baseball had started to decrease.

I feel like, of course, Houston has Asian fans and Japanese fans, and Asian fans live all over the place.

If you ask me if I got hit in Game 7 because they stole signs, I don't think so. The Astros have great players who don't have to do that. So I think that whether or not they stole signs, the results wouldn't have changed.

When people boo you, they're telling you, 'We don't like you.' It's not a good feeling to get that from the fans of an organization you respect so much.

A couple of Astros players told me I was tipping pitches, but now it comes out they were stealing signs. Was I tipping, or were they stealing?

Personally, do I feel like an All-Star? I don't think so.