One minute he was burning through the top of the first inning with three flaming strikeouts.
Roar!
The next minute — literally — he was slugging through the bottom of the first by driving a ball 446 feet into the back of the right-field pavilion.
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Roar! Roar!
Three innings later he was doing it again, striking out two batters in the top of the fourth inning before driving a ball 469 feet over the roof of the same right-field pavilion.
Roar! Roar! Roar!
Read more: Shohei Ohtani’s historic game carries Dodgers past Brewers and into World Series
Then in the seventh inning after he had left the mound after six scoreless, 10-strikeout innings, he hammered history again, driving a ball 427 feet over the center-field fence to complete a three-homer night.
Roar! Roar! Roar! Roar!
Shohei Ohtani, do you have any idea how you sound?
Dodger fans, do you realize what you’re watching here? Los Angeles, can you understand the singular greatness that plays here? Fall Classic, are you ready for another dose of Sho-time?
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Ohtani and the Dodgers are back on baseball’s grandest stage, arguably the best player in baseball history concocting arguably the best single-game performance in postseason history, leading the defending champions back to the World Series with a four-game sweep of the Milwaukee Brewers in the National League Championship Series.
“That was probably the greatest postseason performance of all time,” said Dodger manager Dave Roberts.
The final score was 5-1, but, really, it was over at 1-0, Ohtani’s thunderous leadoff homer after his thundering three strikeouts igniting a dancing Dodger Stadium crowd and squelching the Brewers before the first inning was even 10 minutes old.
How far did that first home-run actually travel? Back, back, back into forever, it was the first leadoff homer by a pitcher in baseball history, regular season or postseason, a feat unmatched by even the legendary Babe Ruth.
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The unicorn Ohtani basically created the same wizardry again in the fourth inning and added a third longball in the seventh in carrying the Dodgers to their second consecutive World Series and fifth in nine years while further cementing their status as one of baseball’s historic dynasties.
“This is really a team effort, so I hope everybody in L.A.and Japan and all over the world can enjoy a really good saki,” said Ohtani through his interpreter after accepting the NLCS MVP award while standing on the league championship stage.
Drink up. The milestones are staggering.
The Dodgers are attempting to become the first back-to-back champions in 25 years, since the 1999-2000 Yankees.
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Beginning Oct. 24 against either the Seattle Mariners or Toronto Blue Jays, the Dodgers will enter this World Series with something none of those past great teams — or any teams ever — possessed.
All together now… Ohhhhhtani!
“It was really fun on both sides of the ball today,” said Ohtani in his only understatement of the evening.
And to think, before the game he was slumping, two-for-11 in the NLCS, batting .158 for the postseason, swinging so wildly that he actually emerged from his usual indoor batting cage fortress to take batting practice on the field during Wednesday’s workout.
Facing nagging questions before the workout about whether the strain of pitching was affecting his hitting, he denied any correlation.
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Don’t believe it.
“I don’t necessarily think that the pitching has 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 putting up results. On the hitting side, just the stance, the mechanics, that’s something that 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 during that special batting practice when Ohtani drove a ball off the right-field roof. He was clearly embarrassed by his performance and vowed to silence the critics.
“I was expecting nothing short of incredible, and he definitely surpassed that,” said teammate Max Muncy. “Unbelievable. Wow.”
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His pitching was never in question — he was the winning pitcher with six strong innings in the division series opener against the Philadelphia Phillies — but he came out firing anyway 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.
In the bottom of the first, he finally shut everybody up when he connected on a full-count slurve from the Brewers’ lefty starter Jose Quintana and drove it into oblivion.
The Dodgers’ Shohei Ohtani celebrates striking out the Milwaukee Brewers’ Jake Bauers in the fourth inning during Game 4 of the NLCS. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
“Yeah, yep. I think there was a lot of talk that he was scuffling at the plate, he doesn’t swing the bat well when he’s pitching,” said Roberts. “And all those things I think were fuel to his fire.”
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Nearly 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 overpowering in so many ways, in the sixth inning fans started a cheer with a timing likely never before 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” while the stadium shook with a prolonged standing ovation.
But he wasn’t done yet.
“It’s kind of, whatever you don’t expect, expect him to do it,” said Roberts.
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After finishing six two-hit innings on the mound, he came out of the dugout again in the seventh. For most great pitchers, they’d only emerge for a curtain call. But this being Ohtani, he was still in the game, and for pitcher Trevor Megill, it was curtains.
The fastball disappeared into the crowd and what eventually emerged was surely the greatest postseason stat line in baseball history.
Three home runs at the plate, six shutout innings with 10 strikeouts on the mound, in an NLCS game that sent his team to the World Series.
“There wasn’t one person in the dugout that didn’t think he was going to hit a home run,” said Muncy. “He hits the second one, and we’re like, is this the single greatest game anyone has ever played? At the same time, it was like, you know he’s going to hit a third one. No one even questioned it.”
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Read more: Shaikin: Shohei Ohtani could pull off a playoff feat even Babe Ruth never achieved
Afterward the carefully soft-spoken Ohtani actually came close to saying “I told you so,” but demurred. He is unfailingly polite. He is terribly boring But he burns. Watching him play, you can tell, he burns.
“This time around it was my turn to be able to perform,” Ohtani said. “And I think just looking back over the course of the entire postseason, I haven’t performed to the expectation, but I think today we saw what the left-handed hitters could do.”
Frankly, we saw what we thought nobody could ever do.
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Four wins from his second World Series championship in two Dodger seasons.
Ohhhhhtani.
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
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