Shohei Ohtani creates a world in which there are no stupid questions. Could there ever be a two-way player in the majors? Could he become an elite power hitter and a frontline starter? Could he recover from two Tommy John surgeries? Could he close out the NLCS with a six-inning, 10-strikeout performance while also hitting three of the season's most picturesque home runs? Yes, yes, yes, and hell yes.
The Dodgers are going back to the World Series after completing their sweep of the Brewers with a 5-1 victory on Friday night, and Ohtani has enshrined yet another impossible box score in baseball history. On the mound: six shutout innings, two hits, three walks, and 10 strikeouts. At the plate: 3-for-3, one walk, three solo home runs. As is always the case with Ohtani, the words and numbers don't really do his game justice. His first homer led off the bottom of the first, coming just moments after he had struck out the side in the top half of the inning. His second homer of the night traveled 469 feet and is one of the most gorgeous things ever produced by a baseball game:
His third homer briefly robbed play-by-play announcer Brian Anderson of the ability to say anything other than the magic word: Ohtani.
Baseball is the sort of game that usually demands statistical deep dives and historical comparisons for a particular performance to be properly situated within the history of the game, but Ohtani renders those usual rituals a waste of time. You don't really need anyone to tell you that Ohtani is the first player in MLB history to ever hit three homers and record 10 strikeouts in a game, because that would be like pointing at the Tiktaalik as it took its first steps on land and saying, "Just FYI, that's never happened before." Some things about baseball did not become possible until the day Ohtani entered the league.
Anyone who watched that game knows that they just saw the greatest individual performance in the history of baseball. There's no need to consider the context, or the stakes, or anything that came before it. All anyone needs to think about is what it felt like to watch it happen. You spend years of your life watching thousands of sports games that all sort of blend together, and then one night you are blessed with a few hours of clarity: You are seeing the coolest thing to ever happen on a baseball field. Nobody before you ever saw anything better than this, and nobody after you ever will.
