LOS ANGELES – It’s easy to take Shohei Ohtani for granted. We’ve now settled into the comfort of routine: he’s the best player on the planet, and that’s that. Ohtani’s baseline is everyone’s peak. He only judges himself and himself.
And it’s human nature that when we watch something often enough — even if it’s something as mind-blowing as a full-time starting pitcher and a full-time hitter and among the best at both — it starts to register as normal.
Which is why his performance Friday — unleashing the full extent of Ohtani’s magic — was something of a necessary reminder that one of the world’s greatest athletes, and the most talented baseball player of all time, is now playing, doing unfathomable things, redefining the game in real time. And even as he begins his day in an uncharacteristic slump, Ohtani only needs one game to consign himself to the annals of history.
Ohtani’s performance in Game 4 of the National League Championship Series will be discussed on the all-time list of games for years. In the celebration following the Los Angeles Dodgers’ 5-1 victory over the Milwaukee Brewers, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts stood on the field and said, “This is the greatest night in the history of baseball,” and no one cared to discuss it.
Over the course of two hours and 41 minutes, in front of 52,883 fans, and with millions watching domestically and tens of millions in Japan, Ohtani threw six shutout innings and struck out 10 between hitting three home runs that traveled a combined 1,342 feet, including one that left Dodger Stadium entirely. It was the kind of game that takes place in comic books, not real life — and it was a game that completed a championship series and sent Los Angeles to its second straight World Series. It was the kind of night that leaves patrons thrilled because they’ve seen it and also a little devastated because they know they’ll never see anything like it again. Everyone was captivated, perhaps captive, by the single greatest game in the nearly quarter of a million games played over the past century and a half.
It was, at the very least, one of baseball’s best performances since the game’s inception, with Tony Cloninger hitting two grand slams and tossing a complete game in 1966 or Rick Wise hitting two home runs amid his lack of success on the mound in 1971. Unlike those, this one came in the postseason, and in a game, to give Los Angeles the chance to become the first team in a quarter-century to win back-to-back championships.
Don Larsen’s performance wasn’t exactly perfect — but Larsen went 0 for 2 in that game and needed a Mickey Mantle home run to account for his scoring. It wasn’t Reggie Jackson who hit three home runs either – because Reggie needed Mike Torrez to hit a complete game that night to make his blasts hold up.
Ohtani is the only player who can do that, attack and defend — master the game of baseball, distill talent into something pure and perfect.
Hours earlier, his day had begun, juggling the difficult balance of starting and batting on the same day. His up-tempo routine, a vital part of his three seasons as an MVP (his fourth season will be official in mid-November), is completely turned on its head when he throws the ball. He carves out the extra time he needs to spend taking care of his arm by sacrificing his attendance at the hitters’ meeting, instead getting the information he needs from the coaches in the batting cage about an hour before the game.
No one could tell, when Ohtani arrived at the underground cage on Friday, that he was mired in a bad slump that extended from the Division Series through Game 3 of the NLCS, a collection of hitting, soft contact, poor swing decisions and sheer frustration that had gotten so bad earlier in the week that he took batting practice outside at Dodger Stadium, something he never did — really, never did. never. He decided to do so on the plane ride back from Milwaukee, where the Dodgers had humiliated the Brewers with the kind of starting pitching never seen before in the Major League Series.
His teammates were convinced that the fourth bout would be the culmination of that extra work in the cage and matching the dominance of his peers.
“You asked me yesterday, and I said I expected nothing less than amazing today,” Dodgers third baseman Max Muncy said. “And he proved me wrong. He went beyond that beyond belief.”
After walking leadoff hitter Bryce Turang, Ohtani struck out the next three batters, popping a pair of 100-plus mph fastballs and unleashing the most disorienting version of the splitter seen all year. He followed it up with a sloppy sweep off Jose Quintana in the bottom of the inning for a home run, marking the first time a pitcher has hit a leadoff homer in the history of the game, regular season or playoffs.
The hits continued — one in the third inning, two more in the fourth, before Ohtani’s second home run left 50,000 mouths open. In the stands they chanted, in the dugout they shouted, and on the field they shouted: “The ball is out!” Alex Vesia, the reliever who would come in after Ohtani scored two more runs in the fifth and sixth innings, couldn’t imagine that anyone could hit a baseball in a game to that extent. Officially, it reached 469 feet. It felt like 1000.
“At that point, it has to be the greatest game ever, right?” said Vysia, who did his part to help keep it going. Ohtani allowed a walk and a hit in the seventh inning, and had Vesia allowed either to run to score, it would have been an ugly zero in the line of his pitch or two crooked pitches. When he hit a ground ball up the middle that made contact with his legs, Mookie Betts was in perfect position to fly it in, lead off second and fire off first on a double play that preserved Ohtani’s egg.
In the next inning, it was Ohtani’s third home run of the night, and this one was just showing off: a shot to dead center off a 99-mph Trevor Miguel fastball, a fitting complement to the second off of an 89-mph Chad Patrick cutter and the first off a 79-mph Quintana. If it’s impressive to hit three different home runs from three different pitchers for a home run in one night, then it is. To do that, pitching six innings, allowing two hits, walking three, and striking out 10, is otherworldly.
“We were so focused on winning the game and doing what we needed to do, I’m not sure we realized how good it really was,” Dodgers outfielder Will Smith said. “I didn’t really appreciate it until later. Did he really do it?”
Yes. Yes he did. In the history of baseball, 503 players have hit three home runs in a game, and 1,550 players have hit 10 or more home runs in a game. No one had done both until Friday. That’s what Shohei Ohtani, who is he, does. For eight years, he transformed what was possible in baseball, setting a standard that was truly impossible to match, and now, finally, having signed with a franchise capable of giving his talents the biggest stage, Ohtani can perform when it matters most.
Milwaukee won more games during the regular season than anyone else. No matter how poor the Brewers’ offense was in this series, they were a very good team, and the Dodgers flayed them. The last game was an exclamation point — and a warning for the Seattle Mariners or the Toronto Blue Jays, whichever side survives the back-and-forth American League Championship Series.
Shohei Ohtani is waiting. good luck.