Shohei Ohtani's pennant-clinching game against the Brewers was the greatest baseball performance of all time, and during Game 3 of the World Series, it wasn't hard to talk yourself into the idea that you could be witnessing No. 2. Ohtani smashed the record for most times on base in a playoff game (previously six; now nine), and it was his power, and Toronto's healthy fear of it, that can be blamed for so many people waking up bleary-eyed this morning—if they got any sleep at all. His night was not only one for the books; it's changed the dynamic for the rest of the series.
Ohtani's first hit proved his only harmless one: Leading off against Max Scherzer in the bottom of the first, he rocketed a ball that just barely stayed fair down into the right field corner, where it hopped over the short fence for a double. The next three Dodgers couldn't drive him in, but facing Scherzer again in the third with a 1-0 lead, Shohei did it himself, smashing a high fastball much higher and farther to that very same corner.
Mason Fluharty was the next pitcher tasked with stopping him, taking over for Scherzer to face Ohtani in the fifth with a runner on first. The reliever worked the count full, then left a sweeper floating up in the zone. Ohtani's fly ball landed in the left-center gap and scored Kiké Hernández to cut the Jays' lead to 4-3.
It would take one more at-bat for Toronto to realize they should stop letting Ohtani swing. You can pick whatever verb you want here—belted, blasted, devoured, obliterated—but on the very first pitch, Seranthony Domínguez served up 98 mph of Grade-A cheese, and Ohtani's appetite proved limitless.
This dong tied the game at 5-5, which was the score that burned into the retinas of everybody who endured the 11 innings still to come. The highlights stopped after that, as Ohtani went on to take five walks (four of them, officially, intentional) in his final five plate appearances. A pitcher giving out a free pass no longer has to toss four balls to the catcher, so the imagery of Ohtani unceremoniously traveling to first was a little more abbreviated and less vivid than it might have been years back. But as the hour got later and later, Ohtani's constant presence on base served as a reminder of how much had happened without anything happening at all. It felt a little like a lost driver passing the same landmark again and again, only with an extra blast of Michael Bublé horns. It's comical, and it feels impossible to imagine how you'll ever escape the loop, but that’s not Ohtani’s fault. The mountain does not concern itself with the tides.
From the sound of it, the Blue Jays aren't going to give Ohtani another chance to get a clutch hit in this World Series. When manager John Schneider was asked in the postgame if taking the bat out of Ohtani's hands was "what we should expect going forward," he gave a one-word answer: "Yeah."
Blue Jays fans, drunk on their 11-4 lead in the ninth inning of Game 1, chanted "We don't need you" at Ohtani. Now, thanks to him, they're desperately hoping they get another chance to see him at the Skydome before their season is over. By the way, he's the starting pitcher in Game 4.
