For twelve minutes on Monday night, time bent around a baseball diamond in Los Angeles. Shohei Ohtani, back on a major league mound for the first time in nearly two years, stood beneath the Dodger Stadium lights with the cool calm of a surgeon and the raw electricity of a storm. His first pitch—97.6 mph—sizzled past Fernando Tatis Jr., and by the time he had touched 100.2 on the radar gun, the capacity crowd had already risen to their feet, not in disbelief, but in awe. Because with Ohtani, the extraordinary no longer surprises. It simply reminds.

Nearly 21 months had passed since his right elbow, a limb asked to do more than any in baseball history, last delivered a pitch in a game. Yet there he was, toeing the rubber in a Dodgers uniform, nerves acknowledged but not surrendered to, delivering sweepers and four-seamers with conviction. He gave up two soft singles and a sacrifice fly, yes—but this was no rehabilitation assignment tucked away in anonymity. This was a curtain rise on the main stage, one where expectations had no ceiling and precedent had no foothold.

Then, in an act of defiance against both logic and fatigue, Ohtani picked up a bat. No dugout pause. No moment to recalibrate. Helmet on, cleats digging in, he stepped to the plate less than two minutes after he stepped off the mound. The crowd, still digesting the return of the pitcher, was now met with the batter. And while his first at-bat ended in a strikeout, his second—a double to the wall—was a promise kept. Later, an RBI single added punctuation to a performance that was equal parts spectacle and substance.

What makes this all the more surreal is how seamless he made it look. Ohtani wasn’t at full throttle. He didn’t command every pitch. But he didn't need to. This was not a test. It was a statement. His fastball lived at 99, his tempo was fluid, and he induced swings and misses as if no time had passed. When he jogged off the field, pumping his fist, it felt less like the end of an inning and more like the opening stanza of a baseball opera no one's dared to compose—until now.

For the Dodgers, who have placed not just financial capital but generational hope in this player, Monday was affirmation. Not just of investment, but of belief—that Ohtani could be something more than just the sum of a slugger and a starter. That he could bend the game's rules and rhythms to his will. As manager Dave Roberts said, “You try to treat him like a normal pitcher,” but even the most casual observer knows: there is nothing normal about Shohei Ohtani.

​​And so we move forward, one week at a time, inning by inning, bat by bat. Ohtani’s dual path will be paved not in dominance alone, but in resolve—the desire not merely to perform, but to elevate the very idea of what one man can do in this game. What he did on Monday night wasn’t just baseball. It was a glimpse into what we used to think was myth, now made flesh in a Dodgers uniform, throwing 100 miles per hour and sprinting toward first base before the echoes of the crowd had even faded.