Los Angeles–It’s easy to take shohei ohtani Given. By now, we’ve settled into rote comfort: he’s the best player on the planet, and that’s all. Ohtani’s baseline is the pinnacle of all others. He is evaluated against him and him only.
And it’s human nature that when we see something often — even something as mind-bending as a player who is a full-time starting pitcher and a full-time hitter and one of the best at both — it begins to register as normal.
His performance on Friday – highlighting the full extent of Ohtani’s magic – was a necessary reminder that one of the world’s greatest athletes, and the most talented baseball player of all time, is playing right now, doing immeasurable things, redefining the game in real time. And even when he starts the day in an uncharacteristic slump, Ohtani still needs just one game to cement himself in the annals of history.
There will be debate for years over where Ohtani’s performance in Game 4 of the National League Championship Series ranks on the all-time list of games played. Celebrating after the Los Angeles Dodgers’ 5-1 win milwaukee brewersHowever, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts stood on the field and said, “This is the greatest night in baseball history,” and no one cared to argue.
Over the course of 2 hours, 41 minutes, in front of 52,883 fans, including millions of viewers at home and millions more in Japan, Ohtani pitched six shutout innings and struck out 10 between three home runs that covered a total of 1,342 feet, including one that skipped Dodger Stadium entirely. It was the kind of game that happens in comic books, not in real life – and it was a game that clinched the championship series and sent Los Angeles to its second consecutive World Series. It was the kind of night that left patrons watching overjoyed and also a little devastated because they knew they would never see anything like it again. Everyone was a prisoner, perhaps a prisoner, of the greatest individual game of the quarter-million or so times played in the last century and a half.
It was, at the very least, one of baseball’s finest performances since the game’s inception, with Tony Cloninger hitting two grand slams and throwing a complete game in 1966 or Rick Wise hitting two home runs between his no-hitters on the mound in 1971. And unlike them, it came in the postseason, and in one game Los Angeles had the opportunity to become the first team to win back-to-back in a quarter-century. Championship.
It wasn’t exactly Don Larson’s perfect game – but Larson went 0-2 in that game and needed a Mickey Mantle home run to wrap up his scoring. It wasn’t even a case of Reggie Jackson hitting three home runs – because Reggie needed Mike Torrez to throw a complete game that night to keep his hitting going.
Ohtani is the only player who can do it, offense and defense – mastery of baseball, distilling talent into something pure and perfect.
A few hours earlier, his day had begun with the difficult balance of starting and killing all in the same day. His metronomic routine, such a key part of his three MVP seasons (the fourth will be made official in mid-November), completely changes when he pitches. He budgets extra time to care for his arm by sacrificing his attendance at the hitters’ meetings, instead spending about an hour before the game receiving briefings from coaches in the batting cage.
When Ohtani arrived in the underground cage on Friday, no one could tell he was mired in a nasty slump that stretched from the division series to the third game of the NLCS, a blip of strikeouts and soft contact and bad swing decisions and utter frustration that got so bad earlier in the week that he took batting practice outside of Dodger Stadium, something he had never done before — like, really, ever. No – it does. He had decided to do so during the plane ride back from Milwaukee, where the Dodgers had humiliated the Brewers in the league championship series with starting pitching never seen before.
Game 4, his teammates were convinced, was going to be the culmination of that extra cage work and the dominance of his pitching teammates was going to be matched.
“You guys asked me yesterday, and I said I was expecting nothing less than incredible today,” the Dodgers third baseman said. max munsey Said. “And he proved me wrong. It was beyond incredible.”
after the leadoff hitter walks Bryce TurangOhtani struck out the next three hitters, popped a pair of 100-mph-plus fastballs and unleashed the most confusing version of his splitter seen all year. After this he wiped a solution jose quintana In the bottom of the inning for a home run, the first time a pitcher hit a leadoff homer in the history of the game, regular season or playoffs.
The strikeouts continued – one in the third inning, two more in the fourth, before Ohtani’s second home run that left the crowd of 50,000 gaping. In the stands, they cheered, and in the dugout, they cheered, and in the bullpen, they shouted: “The ball went out of the stadium!” alex vesiaThe relievers who would come in after Ohtani had two more outs in the fifth and sixth innings could not imagine anyone could hit a baseball that far in a game. Officially, it went up to 469 feet. It felt like 1,000.
“At that time, it would be the greatest game ever, right?” said Vessia, who played his part in keeping it that way. Ohtani allowed a walk and a hit in the seventh inning, and if Vecia had allowed either run to score, the glaring void in his pitching line might have been an ugly one or two. When he hit a groundball up the middle that hurt his legs, Mookie Betts He was in perfect position to bounce it, step on second and fire to first for a double play, preserving Ohtani’s goose egg.
Next inning, Ohtani hit his third home run of the night, and it was just for show: a 99-mph shot to dead center. trevor megill Fastball, the perfect complement to the 89-mph second ball chad patrick cutter and the first off a 79-mph José Quintana slurp. If hitting three different pitches on three different occasions for home runs in the same night sounds impressive, it is impressive. To do this by throwing six innings, allowing two hits, walking three and striking out 10 is supernatural.
“We were so focused on just winning the game, on doing what needed to be done, that I’m not sure we realized how good it actually was,” the Dodgers catcher said. Will Smith Said. “I didn’t really appreciate it until later. Like, he actually did that?”
Yes. Yes he was. 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. Till Friday no one had done both the tasks. And that’s what Shohei Ohtani does, who he is. For eight years, he has changed what is possible in baseball, setting a truly impossible standard to match, and now, finally, after signing with a franchise capable of giving his talent the biggest stage possible, Ohtani gets a chance to perform when it matters most.
Milwaukee won more games than anyone during the regular season. No matter how impotent the Brewers’ offense was in this series, they were a very good team and were blown away by the Dodgers. The final game was an exclamation point – and a warning seattle mariners Or toronto blue jaysWhoever survives the back-and-forth American League Championship Series.
Shohei Ohtani waits. May you be successful.
