I daresay most of the people on Hive don’t care about baseball. I love baseball. This post is about baseball — so feel free to turn away. I won’t be hurt.

It’s hard to come up with new words for Shohei Ohtani. Every time you think he’s peaked, he finds a new way to make history. Everyone already calls him a unicorn. He’s unreal. And he just keeps becoming more and more unreal.

The last game of the series against the Milwaukee Brewers will go down as one of those “where were you” moments. Ohtani didn’t just lead the Dodgers to a series-clinching win — he single-handedly defined the game. Three home runs, ten strikeouts, and a performance that felt like something ripped straight from a manga hero’s script.

A Dual Threat Unseen in Modern Baseball

To hit three homers in a game is already the kind of night players dream about once in a career. To do it while striking out ten batters? That’s not a dream — that’s baseball mythology.

Only a handful of players have even come close. The obvious comparison is Babe Ruth, who did both sides of the game better than anyone in the 1910s and early ’20s. But Ruth never pulled off a night quite like this — his pitching dominance and slugging prowess usually came in different eras of his career. When the Yankees discovered he could hit, they told him to stop pitching. There were only a handful of games where he did both at the same time.

Another faint echo might be Don Newcombe in 1955, one of the rare pitchers to hit multiple homers in a game and still pitch a complete win. But Ohtani’s feat surpasses even that: the combination of power and precision, of dominance on both sides of the plate and mound, belongs almost entirely to him.

A Night That Shifted the Mood of a Season

Coming into this series, the Dodgers had been sluggish, dropping key games to underperforming teams. Ohtani himself had been underperforming lately. But that changed in a hurry in this game. By the end of the night, the crowd was on its feet chanting his name — a chorus of disbelief and joy rolled into one.

His first homer came on a hanging slider in the first inning, a no-doubter into right center. The second was pure muscle: a fastball high and in that he somehow pulled 430 feet, out of the stadium, making him only one of three players to ever manage that at Dodger stadium. I watched a number of interviews with people, including one with baseball encyclopedist Bob Costas, all of whom said they have never heard a sound like when Ohtani hit that ball. By the time the third left the bat, everyone in the stadium knew what was coming and were shaking their heads in disbelief.

And then there was the pitching. Ten strikeouts, most of them swinging, and not only heaters, but multiple pitch types. Even when he gave up a couple of hits, he recovered immediately — laser-focused, poised, and clearly enjoying himself.

The Company of Legends

Baseball loves its numbers, and statisticians were scrambling before the ninth inning even ended. The last time a player struck out ten or more while hitting three homers? Never — at least, not in the modern era.

To find even a parallel, you have to look back to 1888 and Guy Hecker of the Louisville Colonels, who once hit three home runs in a game while serving as pitcher. But that was the dead-ball era — a completely different sport. Ohtani did this in a live-ball, analytics-saturated, 100-mph-fastball world.

In short: this was something new under the sun.

A Historic Series Clincher

The Dodgers clinched the series with this win, but what Ohtani did went beyond stats or standings. It reminded everyone why baseball still has room for awe — that even in an age of data, some performances defy explanation.

This game will go down in history as one of the greatest performances in the history of the game.

❦

David is an American teacher and translator lost in Japan, trying to capture the beauty of this country one photo at a time and searching for the perfect haiku. He blogs here and at laspina.org. Write him on Bluesky. 【Support @dbooster with Hive SBI】