'ULTIMATE UNICORN'

Ohtani puts on a one-man show as Dodgers reach the World Series

- Jack Harris

SHOHEI OHTANI watches his third home run on a night he also threw six scoreless innings with 10 strikeouts in perhaps the greatest postseason game ever played.

Two days before perhaps the greatest game in baseball history, Shohei Ohtani took one of the best rounds of batting practice anyone in attendance had seen.

It started with a swing-and-amiss, Ohtani goofing around after his walk-up song blared through the Dodger Stadium speakers and his teammates gathered in the dugout with anxious anticipation.

Then came some nondescript line drives, Ohtani getting into the real work of trying to fix a swing that had abandoned him for much of this postseason.

Finally, one ball went over the fence. Then another. Then another. In 32 swings, Ohtani hit 14 home runs. Many of them were moonshots. One even clanged off the roof of the right-field pavilion.

“He didn’t disappoint,” Max Muncy later recounted. “He hit a ball out of the stadium.”

On that off-day workout between Games 2 and 3 of the National League Championship Series, Ohtani looked like a man on a mission.

Over his previous seven games, going back to the start of the NL Division Series, he had two hits in 25 at-bats. He had recorded 12 strikeouts and plenty more puzzling swing decisions. And he seemed, at least in the estimation of some around the team, unusually perturbed as public criticisms of his play started to mount.

There were questions about his out-of-sync swing mechanics. Second-guessing of his poor quality of at-bats. Mostly, speculation centered on whether the physical toll of his two-way duties was starting to affect his potentness at the plate.

“All those things,” manager Dave Roberts said, “I think were fuel to his fire.”

Thus, the soon-to-be four-time MVP decided it was time to change something up.