One minute, he was burning the start of the first inning with three fiery outs.
Roar!
The next minute – literally – he was hitting the bottom of the first, sending a ball 446 feet to the back of the right-field pavilion.
Roar! Roar!
Three innings later, he did it again, striking out two batters in the top of the fourth inning before driving a ball 469 feet under the roof of the same right field pavilion.
Roar! Roar! Roar!
Then, in the seventh inning, after leaving the mound, he made history again, sending a ball 427 feet over the center field fence.
Roar! Roar! Roar! Roar!
Shohei Ohtani, are you real?
Dodgers fans, do you realize what you’re looking at here? Los Angeles, can you understand the singular grandeur at play here? Fall Classic, are you ready for another dose of Sho-time?
Ohtani and the Dodgers are back on baseball’s biggest stage, with arguably the greatest player in baseball history and the defending champions returning to the World Series together Friday night, Ohtani pitching and hitting his star-studded teammates in a four-game sweep of the Milwaukee Brewers in the National League Championship Series.
The final score was 5-1, but, in reality, it ended 1-0, with Ohtani’s thunderous first home run after his thunderous three strikeouts igniting a dancing Dodger Stadium crowd and stifling the Brewers before the first inning was even 10 minutes old.
How far did that first home run actually travel? Back, back, back forever, it was the first home run by a pitcher in baseball history, regular season or playoff, even the legendary Babe Ruth never did it.
The Incredible Unicorn basically created the same magic again in the fourth inning and added a third long ball in the seventh to carry the Dodgers to their second straight World Series and fifth in nine years while cementing their status as one of baseball’s historic dynasties.
They are trying to become the first back-to-back champions in 25 years, since the 1999-2000 Yankees.
Starting October 24 against the Seattle Mariners or Toronto Blue Jays, the Dodgers will enter this World Series with something that none of those great teams of the past – or any team ever – has possessed.
All together now… Ohhhhhtani!
And to think, before the game he was slumping, two for 11 in the NLCS, hitting .158 for the postseason, swinging so wildly that he actually emerged from his usual fortress of an indoor batting cage to take batting practice on the field during Wednesday’s practice.
Facing nagging questions before practice about whether pitching strain affected his hitting, he denied any correlation.
“I don’t necessarily think throwing affected my hitting performance,” he said at the time. “Just on the pitching side, as long as I control what I can control, I feel pretty good about my results. On the batting side, just the stance, the mechanics, it’s something I do — it’s a constant work in progress. I don’t necessarily think so. It’s hard to say.”
Everyone should have known something was up in that special batting practice when Ohtani knocked a ball off the roof in right field. He was clearly embarrassed by his performance and vowed to silence the critics.
His pitching was never in question — he was the winning pitcher with six solid innings in Game 1 of the Division Series against the Philadelphia Phillies — but he still came out firing Friday in the top of the first when he struck out two Brewers on 100 mph fastballs and another on an 88 mph breaking ball.
Late in the first half, he finally silenced everyone when he connected on a full count from Brewers left starter Jose Quintana and drove him into oblivion.
Shohei Ohtani of the Dodgers celebrates striking out Jake Bauers of the Milwaukee Brewers during the fourth inning of Game 4 of the NLCS.
(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)
Almost the same scene repeated itself in the fourth inning, two strikeouts followed by a deafening home run against Chad Patrick.
By then, he was so powerful in so many ways that in the sixth inning the fans began cheering with timing probably never heard at a baseball game.
They chanted “MVP…MVP…MVP”… while Ohtani was on the mound.
When Ohtani finally left the game in the seventh after giving up a walk and a single, organist Dieter Ruehle played “Jesus Christ Superstar” as the stadium shook with a prolonged ovation.
But he wasn’t finished yet.
After finishing with six scoreless innings, two hits and 10 strikeouts on the mound, he came out of the dugout again in the seventh. For most great pitchers, they would only emerge for an encore. But being Ohtani, he was still in the game, and for pitcher Trevor MeGill, it was curtains.
The fastball disappeared into the crowd and what ultimately emerged was surely the greatest postseason stat line in baseball history.
Three home runs, six shutout innings with 10 strikeouts, in an NLCS game that sent his team to the World Series.
Before the game, manager Dave Roberts basically called him out saying, “I think this is his opportunity to leave his mark on this series. And so, we’re going to see his best effort. So, I feel good about him pitching for us.”
Throwing, hitting and winning, all at heights never before reached in the long history of this great ancient game.
Amazing.
Ohhhhhtani.
