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LOS ANGELES — Major League Baseball’s biggest superstar had another game for the ages on Monday for Game 3 of the World Series, burnishing his already historic legend. His reward is the pressure to top it less than 24 hours later.
The Dodgers’ Shohei Ohtani hit another milestone during the team’s epic, 18-inning win over the Blue Jays, hitting two home runs and two doubles and walking five times, becoming the first player in league history to reach base nine times in a single World Series game and smashing the prior record of six.
In a career already marked by one unfathomable feat after another, Ohtani will take the mound as the Dodgers’ starting pitcher for Game 4 on Tuesday—marking his first such appearance in the World Series after he wasn’t pitching last year while recovering from an elbow injury.
MLB has greatly enjoyed the Ohtani ride, particularly these last two seasons as a Dodger, while he has become the sport’s brightest and biggest-selling star, and he has served as a key base for the league’s broad-based gains in viewership and attendance this year. Ohtani now has an opportunity on Tuesday to take all of that to yet another level by showcasing his two-way skills on the sport’s biggest stage.
In the meantime, even his teammates who are around him remain in awe of what they are witnessing.
“He’s a freak. I mean, that guy,” Dodgers reliever Will Klein said of Ohtani in the early hours of Wednesday after closing out Game 3 with an unexpected, four-inning relief appearance. “I don’t know how anyone can do what he does. Being the best hitter and the best pitcher in the league. I don’t think there’s a word to describe it other than he’s the GOAT.”
Even for Ohtani, though, Game 4 won’t be easy. His Dodgers team is now heavily depleted after the six-hour and 39-minute contest that was the second-longest game by time in MLB postseason history—one that also included Los Angeles using a World Series record of 10 pitchers during the game. Ohtani was cramping during the latter portions of Game 3, due in part to the game’s historic length and his repeated journeys around the bases, but he repeatedly resisted overtures to come out of the game.
If Ohtani and the Dodgers win Tuesday, they will be a single victory away from becoming MLB’s first back-to-back champions in a quarter century, and Los Angeles will also have an opportunity Wednesday to clinch a World Series on its home field for the first time since 1963. If the Blue Jays prevail in Game 4, though, the series will again be deadlocked and definitely headed back to Toronto.
Taking Notice
Less than two weeks after Ohtani put up a three-homer performance against the Brewers in Game 4 of the National League Championship Series while also striking out 10 on the mound, the superstar has posted yet another “Ohtani Game.” That is drawing more raves from stars across the rest of the sports world.
“He’s a freak of nature,” said Houston Rockets forward Kevin Durant. “He’s changing sports in general. It’s kind of crazy, this era of players, so many unique players in every sport. It’s just incredible to be watching sports and Shohei is one of those guys who’s going to be a legend, one of the greatest of all time, arguably the greatest of all time when he’s done playing.”
MLB commissioner Rob Manfred, meanwhile, also levied more praise on Ohtani before Game 2 of the World Series.
“Shohei, he absolutely has been the greatest benefit to the game that you can imagine throughout the year,” Manfred said. “We’re fortunate to have him here in the World Series.”
