Shohei Ohtani’s unprecedented Dodgers night puts him in league of his own

LOS ANGELES — Dodgers superstar Shohei Ohtani is worth the price of admission, which ain’t cheap, by the way. And he’s certainly worth the $2M they’re paying him this year — and probably worth a hundred times that — in a historically deferred deal for instant amazement and thrills. 

Fairly, the unprecedented two-way performance Ohtani put on to personally usher baseball’s best regular-season team, the small-market Milwaukee Brewers, out of the playoffs and send the defending champion $400M Dodgers back to the World Series was worth everything. 

It’s hard to imagine anyone’s ever done more in a playoff clinching game — or any postseason game. Ohtani became the 11th player to homer three times in a postseason game. But of course, no one ever did that while throwing six shutout innings and striking out 10, too, because that’s supposed to be impossible. 

This was Ohtani’s signature performance, and it’s hard to recollect anyone having a better one, in any setting. He hit the three longest shots of the game and the three hardest-hit balls, too, and he threw all the fastest pitches of a game that few will forget who witnessed it.