Shohei Ohtani is the first player in baseball history. It doesn’t matter how you complete that sentence; it has a solid chance of being right. He is Bill Brasky in spikes. This year, a one-way year as he recovers from Tommy John surgery, he just up and decided to double his previous stolen base high, because I guess he was bored not pitching. Sure, why not. Next year he might play goal for the Kings. It feels just as realistic. He makes baseball seem like a matter of willpower. If you can dream it, he might do it, and he might do the undreamt too. The 50/50 club—50 home runs, 50 stolen bases—was not a thing. No one was in it. Those are two very different skills, and guys who hit for power don’t tend to run well, and vice versa. Whatever. Ohtani did it. I think he can do anything.
Except be patient, perhaps. When he joined the 40/40 club last month, 21 games faster than anyone had ever done so, he said he felt relief, as all the pending pomp was getting in the way of the thing he really wants to do: step into the box and hit the dang ball. “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,” he said.
So when Ohtani entered Thursday in Miami sitting at 48 dingers and 49 swipes, it only felt unrealistic that he might get there if you forgot who you were talking about. He stole No. 50 in the first inning. Burgled No. 51 in the second for good measure. Then it was time to go deep. Out to right in the sixth, then the other way the very next inning. Fifty home runs. Something to celebrate, but not to savor, because he tacked yet another in the ninth. We make hay of round-number achievements because they’re easier to process, but Shohei Ohtani cares nothing for our ease. He thinks 51/51 is even better than 50/50.
What the hell are you even supposed to do with a night like this, a season like this, a player like this, who effortlessly confounds preconceived notions of human limitations? How am I supposed to focus on the 50/50 when it was achieved with one of the great single-game performances in the sport’s history? Three homers, two stolen bases. Six hits. Seventeen total bases, the first ever to reach that mark without hitting four home runs, and the first to steal any bases while doing it. Ten RBI. 0.7 fWAR in nine innings. A curtain call on the road. Three hours of saying “Shohei Ohtani did what?!” every 30 minutes or so. This guy has LeBron James out here saying “wowzers.”
“I have no idea where this came from,” Ohtani said.
It feels like a million years ago that there were any questions about this man. Could he live up to a $700 million contract? Could he handle the spotlight of being on a team with expectations? Would he thrive as a full-time DH? Would a betting scandal involving his closest confidant engulf or distract him? All of these have been answered, 51 times over. He can do it. He can do everything.
Ohtani’s career is brain-breaking because it violates the greatest thing baseball has going for it: the ability to compare players across generations. Give or take some rule changes, statistics tell stories in the same language. It’s how you can earnestly argue Mickey Mantle vs. Mike Trout, or how Scooter Gennett can end up on the same list as Mike Schmidt, or how, earlier in his career, you could put Ohtani in the context of Babe Ruth. But he’s moved beyond that. They haven’t even invented context for some of the things he’s doing. He’s smashing together stat combos like he’s at a Coke Freestyle machine. The baseball he plays is not the baseball that anyone’s played before. He is singular. He is one of those handful of athletes every generation that make you feel privileged to be alive when you are because you get to watch them play. You will tell your grandkids about him, and they may not believe you; you’ll have the numbers to show them, but they’ll only ever be outliers in the scoresheet of history.
And now, for the very first time, we are about to see Playoff Ohtani. Looking away is not an option.
