On the eve of Shohei Ohtani’s greatest night in the majors, Dodgers first base coach Clayton McCullough made a prediction.
As a key character in Ohtani’s chase for 50 home runs and 50 stolen bases this season, McCullough had watched much of the Japanese star’s campaign from the first base coach’s box, marveling at the pursuit of a landmark no player had even come close to reaching.
“He’s gonna get it,” McCullough predicted, confident Ohtani had enough time over the season’s final two weeks to complete history.
Then, the coach offered a bolder, more tantalizing take.
“Probably,” he said, “in the same game, again.”
Such dramatics, after all, the Dodgers were accustomed to by this point.
Ohtani had already delivered this season amid a hostile reception in Toronto, in his first game against his old team in the Angels, and even on the night of his highly anticipated bobblehead giveaway.
He’d gone deep in the All-Star Game, and joined the 40-40 club on a walk-off grand slam last month.
Even his first official game in a Dodgers jersey, in spring training in late February, was christened by an opposite-field Camelback Ranch home run.
“[Times] that we hope he can kinda do something special and there’s anticipation, he comes through,” manager Dave Roberts said. “It’s really uncanny.”
But what unfolded at loanDepot Park on Thursday, in front of a scarcely populated crowd on a late afternoon, transcended what many thought ever possible in the sport — even for someone like him.
Ohtani achieved MLB’s first ever 50-50 season, founding a once fathomable club that now has a membership of one.
And he got there with a performance likely to be remembered as one of the best in baseball history: a six-for-six, three-home-run, two-stolen-base, 10-RBI tour de force.
“That’s insane,” said third baseman Max Muncy.
“Just unexplainable,” echoed outfielder Mookie Betts.
“Never mind in the same game as accomplishing 50/50,” general manager Brandon Gomes, watching the contest from back home in Los Angeles, said via text. “Feels like one of those special nights that will never happen again.”
For the last several weeks, each of Ohtani’s trips to the plate have been accompanied by a question across the press boxes of America’s ballparks.
Is Ohtani going to homer? Or is he going to steal?
After his first at-bat Thursday, it didn’t look like either would happen. The slugger narrowly missed a leadoff home run, sending a screaming line drive thudding off the wall in right-center.
Standing on second with no outs, a steal didn’t look all that plausible either.
At least to everyone not named Ohtani.
“The feeling is that if I can go,” Ohtani said in Japanese, “I go aggressively.”
And go aggressively, Ohtani did.
After a one-out walk from Freddie Freeman, Ohtani and Freeman took off on a double steal. Freeman reached second without a throw. Ohtani looked beat by a bullet from catcher Nick Fortes.
The only problem: The Marlins had rookie Connor Norby at third base, a position he had played in just 28 total professional games (majors and minors).
Norby’s stretched for the tag. Ohtani slid right under it, mirroring the umpire with extended arms as safe.
“In that sense,” said Ohtani, who later scored from third on a sacrifice fly, “I think it was a good steal.”
His 50th steal was finally down. Two home runs were left to go.
Had it not been for a perfectly executed relay play on a third-inning double Ohtani successfully tried to stretch to third base, the MVP front-runner might have been batting for the cycle when he came up in the sixth.
After his leadoff double and steal, Ohtani had hooked an RBI single in the second inning (and later stole second without a throw), then drove in two more on the third-inning drive he failed to turn into a triple.
“After the first few at-bats, he was sniffing a cycle, I think,” Roberts said, grinning. “It’s fine. I got no problem with the aggressiveness.”
On this night, it would prove to be Ohtani’s only mistake.
For the rest of the game, the NL’s home run leader moved into the long-ball portion of his two-act affair.
When Ohtani came up in the sixth, it felt like a tipping point.
He seemed likely to have only two more at-bats the rest of the game. If he going to get to 50-50, it was going to have to start now or never.
Right-hander George Soriano helped by tossing a hanging breaking pitch.
Ohtani took a mighty hack at the inside slider. He stood and stared as it soared to the upper deck.
Home run No. 49 traveled 438 feet and tied Shawn Green’s franchise record set in 2001.
An inning later, Green would be bumped to second on the Dodgers’ all-time home run list.
“Sorry, Shawn,” Roberts, a former Dodgers teammate of Green’s who witnessed his similarly historic four-home run game in Milwaukee in 2002, joked afterward. “But just in totality I don’t know that I’ve seen anything like this.”
On Wednesday night, Mike Baumann’s plan of attack against Ohtani worked.
With two on and two outs of the Dodgers’ eventual 8-4 win, Baumann threw Ohtani two fastballs up for strikes, then a curveball in the dirt for a swing-and-miss.
It was the first time in four career meetings the 29-year-old journeyman had retired the two-time MVP.
On Thursday night, in a rematch in the seventh inning, Baumann tried a similar sequence again. The fact Baumann was allowed to pitch to Ohtani was a credit to his manager.
With the Dodgers already up 11-3, and first base open with runners on the other two bags, an intentional walk to Ohtani would have been warranted, even amid the 50-50 stakes.
From the third base dugout, however, Marlins manager Skip Schmuaker kept his arms crossed, and rendered his decision to his bench with an expletive. Schumaker explained his rationale after the game.
“That’s a bad move, baseball-wise, karma-wise, baseball-gods-wise,” Schumaker said of intentionally walking Ohtani. “You go after him and see if you can get him out.”
From the opposite bench, Dodgers personnel appreciated the decision.
“To take that potential moment away from the fans and Shohei himself, Skip understood that it was bigger than that, and I’ve got nothing but respect for that,” Roberts said.
Thus, Baumann tried in vain to retire Ohtani again.
As he begins every at-bat, Ohtani laid his bat on the ground, on the exact same angle as the third-base line, to ensure his back foot was in perfect position.
Curveball in. Foul tip.
As he fidgeted with his bat between pitches, surrounded by a sea of standing spectators either clapping or cheering or recording the moment on their phone, Ohtani showed hardly any expression on his face.
Fastball up. Fouled back.
Down 0-and-2, Ohtani called time and ran his fingers through his hair. Once he dug back, Baumann prepared to deliver what he hoped was put-away spin.
Like the previous night, Baumann threw his two-strike curveball in the dirt. But this time, Ohtani laid off.
Wild pitch. Run scores.
Undeterred, Baumann rocked, fired and unleashed another two-strike curve. This one, however, had little late break.
A hanging meatball. Hit squarely off the barrel.
Home run No. 50 was an opposite-field rocket, traveling an estimated 391 feet after exploding off Ohtani’s bat at 109.7 mph.
“I’m really just a fan watching just like y’all are,” said Betts, who was standing in the on-deck circle. “I don’t even know what feelings and emotions I had.”
After Ohtani rounded the bases, he was received by hugs from teammates, Teoscar Hernández’s signature sunflower seed shower, and a raucous roar from a crowd that belied its sparse 15,548-person attendance.
“It was great,” Hernández said of the atmosphere. “I even told the guys that for the amount of fans, it was actually really lively.”
Coaxed by his teammates to make a curtain call, Ohtani emerged just as the pitch clock was about to expire in Baumann’s next at-bat.
But as Ohtani climbed the stairs and waved with his right hand — the one he hopes will be firing pitches of his own again next season — Baumann stepped off the rubber and let him have the moment.
Home plate umpire Dan Iassogna signaled to negate any pitch-time violation.
“It was a good day for baseball,” Schumaker later said. “Bad day for the Marlins.”
After Ohtani hit his 50th home run, shortstop Miguel Rojas was among the first Dodgers players to greet him.
Out a second-straight game while he nursed left leg soreness, Rojas watched the play from the dugout, reflecting on Ohtani’s laborious season as he watched the ball sail over the fence.
He considered the pressure the former Angels star arrived with, after signing a $700 million contract this offseason. He recalled the early-season theft and gambling saga, when Ohtani’s ex-interpreter (and former close friend) Ippei Mizuhara was found to have stolen $17 million from the player’s bank account to cover debts he owed to an allegedly illegal bookmaker.
Rojas also thought about all the little moments this season, when he saw Ohtani grinding in the cage, or working on the bases, or going through his throwing program — a daily routine of strict regimentation.
“We all know it’s been an eventful first season in a Dodgers uniform,” Rojas said. “So for us teammates, it’s just a privilege to watch him every single day.”
There was another layer of meaning given the date.
On Sept. 19 of last year, Ohtani underwent a Tommy John revision surgery to repair a tendon in his elbow; a procedure that sidetracked him from pitching this season, and also threatened to compromise his abilities at the plate.
On Sept. 19 of this year, Ohtani completed his historic performance with a third home run off position player Vidal Bruján in the ninth inning — marking his first career three-homer game, giving him a career-high six hits and setting a new Dodgers single-game record with 10 RBIs.
“The rehabilitation process isn’t entirely fun, and if there are places you advance, there are of course places where you also regress,” Ohtani said when asked about the serendipitous coincidence. “I do what I can so that doesn’t affect me in the game, and I emotionally flip the switch. When I play as a hitter, I am careful to focus fully on that.”
When Ohtani returned to the clubhouse, after a couple of on-field postgame interviews, he found a few celebratory surprises waiting.
Already, commemorative “50/50” T-shirts were being handed out to teammates, displaying Ohtani sliding on one side of the slash-mark and taking a swing on the other (one team staffer joked that Fanatics, MLB’s official merchandise partner, shrewdly had memorabilia stocked for the occasion).
Bubbling glasses of Veuve Clicquot were being passed around as well, a champagne toast to celebrate the Dodgers clinching their 12th straight playoff berth, and first for a team on which Ohtani has played.
Roberts praised the room for their annual October advancement. Ohtani also rose to deliver a brief speech in English.
“He was just really grateful to his teammates for their support, that’s about it,” Roberts said with a laugh afterward. “A man of few words.”
While clubbies packed and shuttled luggage bound for the team’s plane back to Los Angeles, players talked with reporters and amongst themselves about the feats they’d just witnessed.
“That has to be the greatest baseball game of all-time,” infielder Gavin Lux said. “It’s ridiculous. I’ve never seen anybody do that even in Little Leagues, so it’s crazy that he’s doing that at the highest level.”
As he returned to his locker to change, Ohtani interjected on Hernández’s scrum with media members, joking the outfielder had told him to complete a cycle with a triple in the ninth inning.
“Instead he hit hit upper deck,” Hernández responded about home run No. 51. “That’s why we’re not friends anymore.”
At the of Roberts’ postgame chat with reporters, he was thrown a light-hearted hypothectical about Ohtani’s chances of reaching 60-60.
“I mean as long as there’s games being played,” Roberts said laughing. “He drove in like 15 runs tonight, so, there’s nothing saying he can’t hit nine or 10 more homers.”
But for one remarkable night, and one record-shattering regular season, Ohtani and the Dodgers had already done plenty.
“It’s been a grind of a season, a lot of challenges,” Roberts said. “With that, when things happen like this tonight, you gotta enjoy it.”
