By: Jeremy T. Ballreich
On Friday night, with the weight of a franchise’s immediate fate resting on his shoulders, Shohei Ohtani delivered not just a victory, but arguably the greatest individual performance in the history of Major League Baseball’s postseason. Game 4 of the National League Championship Series against the Milwaukee Brewers was meant to be a high-stakes affair, a tense struggle to determine if the Los Angeles Dodgers would complete the sweep and punch their ticket to the World Series. Instead, it became a five-hour coronation for a player whose talent has often defied belief, but never before has it so emphatically redefined the limits of what one athlete can achieve on the biggest stage.
What Ohtani accomplished that evening wasn’t merely spectacular; it was statistically preposterous, a feat of two-way mastery that may never be replicated. The final line—six scoreless innings pitched with 10 strikeouts, coupled with a 3-for-3 night at the plate that included three towering solo home runs and a walk—reads less like a box score and more like a fever dream conjured by a fantasy league commissioner. This was not just a great pitching start, nor was it merely a legendary hitting performance; it was two separate Hall-of-Fame caliber nights merged into one, occurring simultaneously while clinching a pennant. Dodgers manager Dave Roberts put it best, calling it “probably the greatest postseason performance of all time,” a sentiment echoed by Brewers manager Pat Murphy, who conceded, “I don’t think anybody can argue with that.”
Ohtani’s command on the mound was the foundation of the win. Facing the team with the best regular-season record in the National League, he was masterful, utilizing a lethal fastball-slider combination to silence Milwaukee’s potent lineup. He worked with a surgical efficiency that belied the immense pressure, striking out three in the first inning to immediately establish dominance. Over six complete innings, he allowed only two hits and held the Brewers scoreless, showcasing the poise of a seasoned ace. Every pitch—whether it was a 100 mph heater or a vicious, darting breaking ball—was thrown with conviction, ensuring the Dodgers’ bullpen would be well-rested for the final innings and giving the offense all the time it needed.
But it was the offensive fireworks that turned a brilliant outing into an immortal spectacle. Ohtani arrived at the plate in the bottom of the first, fresh off striking out the side, and immediately etched his name into the record books by launching a 446-foot missile for the first leadoff home run ever hit by a pitcher in major league history. The crowd, already electric, seemed to understand they were witnessing something wholly unique.
The second home run, in the fourth inning, removed all doubt that Ohtani was possessed by a competitive spirit rarely seen. It was a 469-foot blast that didn’t just clear the wall; it sailed over the pavilion roof in right-center field, a place reserved only for the game’s most prodigious power hitters. The awe on the faces of his teammates in the dugout told the whole story: they were not just competitors, but fans witnessing a miracle in real time. He capped the performance with his third solo shot in the seventh, a thunderous statement that extended the Dodgers’ lead and crushed the last vestiges of hope for the Brewers.
The historical footnotes generated by this single game are almost as exhausting as the performance itself. Ohtani became the first player, regular season or postseason, to record 10 strikeouts as a pitcher and hit three home runs as a batter in the same contest. He is only the third player, and the first since Jim Tobin in 1942, to hit three homers in a game while also being the starting pitcher. The sheer, relentless force of his offense—hitting three round-trippers that traveled a combined 1,342 feet—was a complete undoing of a pre-series narrative that suggested Ohtani had been slumping in the postseason. That narrative, like the baseballs he struck, was emphatically put to rest.
Friday night’s game was more than a series clincher; it was a definitive moment in the story of Shohei Ohtani. He transcended the “unicorn” label to become an actual myth, completing the arc of his return to the mound and the peak of his power with unparalleled dramatic flair. In a postseason designed for stars, Ohtani made the rest of the constellation feel dim. He has set a new, perhaps unattainable, benchmark for individual excellence in the sport, ensuring that October 17, 2025, will forever be known as “The Shohei Ohtani Game.” The Dodgers now head to the World Series, propelled by a singular, iconic act that secured his selection as the NLCS MVP and cemented his status as the greatest player the game has ever seen.
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