On a cool night at Dodger Stadium, Shohei Ohtani put up a show that defied imagination. In Game Four of the National League Championship Series, stalwarts of the blue and white swept the Brewers and booked a second consecutive trip to the World Series by riding on the coattails of the three-time Most Valuable Player awardee. The latter pitched six shutout innings, struck out 10, and hit three home runs. Needless to say, he was the first pitcher in postseason history to post the eye-popping stats in a single outing. In a sport obsessed with specialization, he was everything everywhere all at once: ace and slugger, spectacle and certainty.
For much of the National League Championship Series, Ohtani had seemed off-balance. And so unnerved was he that he saw fit to take extra batting practice in the tunnels of American Family Field. He was in a certified slump, and appeared bent on finding rhythm even as the Dodgers kept winning. Then, the other day, it all returned in a surge of power that set precedent. No one had ever combined a double-digit strikeout line with a three-homer effort, let alone in October. Manager Dave Roberts called it “the greatest night in baseball history,” and his other charges readily agreed. They bore witness to dominance unlike any performance they were hitherto privy to: a two-way act that made perfect sense in and of itself.
Significantly, Ohtani’s historic bid also reframed the Dodgers themselves. Their pitching staff had already been airtight, compiling a microscopic 0.63 earned run average through the series. And, under the circumstances, his remarkable turn bordered on the ridiculously unfair. Injuries and bullpen doubts that shadowed them for most of the regular season suddenly became irrelevant. In making short work of the Brewers, they became the first defending champions in 16 years to return to the Fall Classic.
To be sure, baseball, even at its most mythic, is still a team sport. Ohtani may be its frontispiece, but the Dodgers’ foundational designs expose his brilliance as equal parts a miracle and a plan fulfilled. Already, historians are ranking his brilliant night alongside the sport’s greatest feats. And rightly so. That said, its true value is in its capacity to stand as proof that the game, already well over a century old, can still surprise itself: for all its supposed predictability, one player can apparently stretch its limits. He didn’t just win a pennant; he expanded the borders of what the best of the best can test.
Anthony L. Cuaycong has been writing Courtside since BusinessWorld introduced a Sports section in 1994. He is a consultant on strategic planning, operations and human resources management, corporate communications, and business development.
