For baseball fans: Shohei Ohtani just played the greatest game in baseball history

[Nevilledog]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2025/10/18/shohei-ohtani-best-mlb-game-ever/

No paywall link
https://archive.li/Ev8XX

LOS ANGELES — This is Beethoven at a piano. This is Shakespeare with a quill. This is Michael Jordan in the Finals. This is Tiger Woods in Sunday red.

This is too good to be true, with no reason to doubt it. This is the beginning of every baseball conversation and the end of the debate:

Shohei Ohtani is the best baseball player who has ever played the game, the most talented hitter and pitcher of an era in which data and nutrition have made an everyman’s sport a game for superhumans. And Friday night, when he helped his Los Angeles Dodgers win the pennant with a 5-1 victory over the Milwaukee Brewers in Game 4 of the National League Championship Series, was his Mona Lisa.

It’s hard to say when exactly the possibility of exaggeration around Ohtani evaporated. Maybe it was when he struck out the side in the top of the first, then hit a leadoff homer in the bottom of the inning, though that is almost banal by his standards.

*snip*