There are moments in baseball that feel like myth even as they unfold—nights when time seems to hesitate, unsure whether to belong to the past, the present, or the realm of legend. What Shohei Ohtani did in Los Angeles was one of those nights. Under the glow of Dodger blue and October pressure, he didn’t just play a game. He composed a masterpiece. Three home runs. Ten strikeouts. Six scoreless innings. One soul-stirring performance that now belongs to history.

The setting was Game 4 of the National League Championship Series, and the Brewers, the team with baseball’s best record, had arrived in Chavez Ravine looking to survive. Ohtani, silent for most of the series, had other plans. He began with a swing that felt like thunder finding its echo—an opening-inning home run that sent Dodger Stadium into disbelief. By the seventh inning, he’d hit two more, each one a deeper exhale of destiny. Every pitch, every step, every roar from the crowd felt like baseball rediscovering its magic.

And then, there was the pitching. Six innings of complete control. Ten strikeouts, many on that late-sinking splitter that seems less a pitch and more an act of physics-defiance. The Brewers never stood a chance. When he left the mound, they were beaten, but more than that—they were witnesses. Witnesses to something that transcended the scoreboard.

For over a century, we’ve measured greatness through comparison—Babe Ruth’s dual brilliance, Reggie Jackson’s October electricity, Madison Bumgarner’s iron will. But there is no comparison here. Ohtani has rewritten what it means to dominate. To hit three baseballs into the night sky and then strike out ten of the best hitters on the planet, all in the same evening, in the same body—that’s not a statistic. That’s an experience.

CC Sabathia once said Ohtani was the greatest player who ever lived. That was before this game. Before the night he turned the postseason into his personal highlight reel. Before he proved, beyond all measure, that we are watching something baseball may never replicate. If Babe Ruth opened the door to possibility, Shohei Ohtani has walked through it—and built an entirely new wing.

​​As the crowd stayed long after the final out, Ohtani’s teammates poured from the dugout, the pennant theirs, the city roaring in gratitude. He smiled that modest, knowing smile, half joy, half serenity—as if aware that what he had done could scarcely be believed. For everyone else, this was the game of a lifetime. For Shohei Ohtani, it was simply Tuesday in October, when the best player the world has ever seen decided to remind us why we watch.