LOS ANGELES – Someday, Shohei Ohtani will shrink from a baseball moment. Statistically speaking, he cannot always rise. A century and a half of baseball history suggests ebbs follow every flow. The game is too hard, the players too good, for any one of them to tower over it for long.
But then there are moments, such as Game 1 of the National League Division Series on Saturday night, when it feels like maybe baseball science to this point cannot explain Ohtani. When his Los Angeles Dodgers faced an early three-run deficit against the rival San Diego Padres in the first game of his MLB postseason career, he hit a three-run homer. Then he flung his bat practically to Tokyo and roared around the bases, pulling the Dodgers to safety, his cape implied but out of sight.
“I could really feel the intensity of the stadium before the game began,” Ohtani said through interpreter Will Ireton after the Dodgers sealed their 7-5 win, “and I thoroughly enjoyed it.”
Ohtani spent the first six years of his major league career with the Los Angeles Angels, toiling through seasons in which games ceased to matter by late spring. As he emerged as an individual superstar unlike any since Babe Ruth, he remained mired in Orange County quicksand, his feet stuck out of sight as less talented colleagues played for more.
But when he became a free agent after last season, an October debut was penciled in. When he signed with the Dodgers, they put it in ink. Ohtani was ready to hand the title of most remarkable player with no shot at the postseason back to old teammate Mike Trout. And the baseball world was ready to see Ohtani evaluated by the sport’s most determinative rite of passage.
“The focus was really in my first at-bat, to focus on just having my swing,” Ohtani said. “The quality at-bat that I look for despite being in an excited, high-intensity environment.”
His first playoff swing in the first inning was a ferocious one that missed Dylan Cease’s knuckle curve. The second was similar, and he hit a foul ball – on a fastball, keep that in mind. He ended that first at-bat with a flyball to left and that was that. But his intentions were clear.
His next chance came with two on and two out in the second, against Cease, a true ace. With the count 2-0, Ohtani fouled a ball off his leg so hard that both umpire and catcher politely abandoned their posts to let him recover. Still wincing, he stepped back into the batter’s box. He hit the next pitch he saw – a high fastball at his shoulders – out to right like a sonic boom. Padres 3, Ohtani 3.
“Shohei is Shohei. We wouldn’t expect anything less than that, than what he did today,” Dodgers outfielder Teoscar Hernández said. “He is the guy who is going to guide us through all of this.”
Home runs like that are the norm for Ohtani, but this one proved a theory: As Ohtani frisbeed his bat to the side and hollered “Let’s Go!” before hopping his way up the first base line, it was clear the 29-year-old still has baseball and emotional layers he has yet to display in his regular season career. The reason Ohtani’s postseason debut stirred so much anticipation was not curiosity about how he would handle the moment. It was the undeniable feeling that he would find a way to consume it.
“It never gets old. It just seems like he’s going to do something to top what he’s already done, somehow, some way,” said veteran Dodgers outfielder Kevin Kiermaier, who was just acquired at the trade deadline. At some point, surely, the baseball odds will beat him back. But they have not caught up yet.
From the time he led off the All-Star Game here in 2022 with a single before heading to the mound himself, to his gallant strikeout of Trout to end Japan’s World Baseball Classic victory last year, to that time he went 6 for 6 with three homers and 10 RBI in a late September game that would have been plenty impressive if he had simply used it to join the 50 homer-50 stolen base club without all that – Ohtani continues to offer evidence that he can be expected to do things no one else can do.
“I don’t know how that happens. He certainly has that switch, that focus that goes to excitement versus nerves and feeling pressure and trying too hard,” Dodgers Manager Dave Roberts said. “… I just really have never seen a guy in the biggest of moments come through as consistently as he has.”
Everything Ohtani does is different. While most players in the on-deck circle spray tacky stuff on the handle of their bat, desperate for the perfect coat, Ohtani sprays it in the air first and waves his bat around in it, trusting himself to hit it. While most stars play along with questions about their nerves ahead of a postseason debut, Ohtani did not even let a reporter finish that question Friday afternoon before offering an answer in clear English:
“Nope.”
In a sport so defensive of its lore, saying something is unprecedented almost always constitutes exaggeration. But Ohtani is unprecedented, and no one will probably cite him as a credible precedent, either. Moments such as Saturday night are singular in the way everything he does for the first time is: Historic because of his presence on a new stage, unforgettable because of what he does there.
Yoshinobu Yamamoto’s presence as the Dodgers’ Game 1 starter was historic, too. It was the first postseason start of the $300 million ace’s MLB career, and a chance to avenge some regular season disappointments when it mattered most. But thanks in part to a Manny Machado homer, Yamamoto allowed three runs before recording his second out. The early deficit echoed last year’s division series-opening drubbing at the hands of the Arizona Diamondbacks, who ultimately swept the Dodgers. Déjà vu was hovering. An inning after Yamamoto departed, Ohtani swatted it out of the air.
“There was life,” Dodgers reliever Alex Vesia said. “That’s all we need.”
Ohtani’s homer, and a single that came in the Dodgers’ decisive three-run rally in the fourth, were not the only sources of oxygen to a Los Angeles offense that disappeared this time last year. Hernández singled to bring home runs in the fourth. Freddie Freeman, who rolled his ankle in the final days of the regular season, an injury he said would normally require four to six weeks of rest and rehabilitation if he had them to spare, returned to the lineup anyway with two singles and an improbable stolen base.
Were it not for Ohtani, who is limited to designated hitter duties because a) he is still rehabbing his throwing elbow from last year’s surgery and b) he has played just seven career big league games in the outfield, Freeman would not need to be mobile enough to play the field.
But getting creative with Ohtani was not a point of public discussion this week. He is too valuable to contemplate it. Most players are asked to fit into their team’s plans. The Dodgers knew when they signed Ohtani that they would be making their plans fit him – that Freeman and fellow MVP candidate Mookie Betts would have to exist in his orbit, rather than steer the organization into their own.
Betts is so formidable in his own right that the Padres walked him intentionally twice Saturday night to get to Freeman – so good that teams rarely walk Ohtani ahead of him, despite Ohtani’s run-producing prowess. But as Freeman put it Saturday evening, the best strategy the Dodgers had was their designated hitter
“When you have Shohei Ohtani on your team,” Freeman said, “that always helps.”
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