It’s one thing to join rarified air in a professional sport where very few others have gone before.
It’s another thing to burst past the rarified air and do something that no one else in the history of the sport has ever done.
Shohei Ohtani did just that on Thursday night on a historic evening in Miami – becoming the first player ever to record 50 homeruns and 50 steals in a single season and immediately justifying the huge financial commitment from the
Ohtani finished the night going 6-for-6, with three home runs, driving in 10 runs, adding two stolen bases and clinched a postseason berth in the process for the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Yet, he wasn’t done there.
On the same night that he became the first player ever to break into the 50/50 club, he proceeded to immediately create the 51/51 club.
Ohtani finished the night going 6-for-6, with three home runs, driving in 10 runs, adding two stolen bases and clinched a postseason berth in the process for the Dodgers.
Greatest baseball game that anyone has ever played? Teammate Gavin Lux seems to think so.
“That has to be the greatest baseball game of all time,” said Gavin Lux via The Athletic. “It has to be.”
“I’ve never seen anybody do that even in little leagues,” Lux said. “So it’s crazy that he’s doing that at the highest level.”
The pressure on Ohtani reaching the 50/50 club had been building over the course of the last couple of weeks.
Now that he’s reached it, Ohtani couldn’t be more relieved.
“If I’m being honest, it was something I wanted to get over as soon as possible because the balls were being exchanged every time I was up to bat, so it was something that I wanted to get over with,” Ohtani said through interpreter Will Ireton via MLB.com.
“I’m just happy, relieved, and very respectful to my peers and everybody that came before that played this sport of baseball.”
On a night when Ohtani broke the franchise record for home runs in a single season, previously held by Shawn Green’s 49 in 2001, that was barely a blip on the radar.
The Dodgers 10-year, $700 million contract that they signed Ohtani to last December might be the first ever $700 million bargain.
It is the biggest contract in baseball history and ensured it was the Dodgers who won the Ohtani sweepstakes in the offseason when he left the city rival Angels as a free agent.
He is just the fourth reigning MVP to leave his team in the offseason, and the second to do so as a free agent, but his decision to leave the Angels is already vindicated.
Ohtani never made the postseason during his six years with his former team, so playing October baseball will be a new feeling for the game’s greatest player.
The two-time AL MVP and four-time All-Star has the Dodgers tied (with the Philadelphia Phillies) atop the National League and will be looking to make a deep postseason run for the first time in his career.
As easy as the game is for Ohtani right now, postseason baseball is different. It is the last part of the game for Ohtani to conquer.
And he is going to get a chance at it in less than two weeks.
Buckle up, it’s Sho-time.
