Shohei Ohtani delivered one of the greatest performances in baseball history as defending champions the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Milwaukee Brewers to reach the World Series.<\/p>\n
Japan’s Ohtani smashed three huge home runs and struck out 10 Brewers batters in a comprehensive 5-1 victory as the Dodgers swept the series 4-0.<\/p>\n
The 31-year-old’s trifecta of home runs and 10 strikeouts in the same game is a Major League Baseball post-season record, highlighting a rare talent of excelling with bat and ball. <\/p>\n
Ohtani also became the first pitcher since the Boston Braves’ Jim Tobin in 1942 to hit three home runs in the same game.<\/p>\n
“It was really fun on both sides of the ball today,” said Ohtani, who was awarded the Most Valuable Player award for his heroics.<\/p>\n
“I’m taking this trophy and let’s get four more wins. We won it as a team and this is really a team effort. I hope everybody in LA and Japan and all over the world could enjoy a really good sake [Japanese rice wine].”<\/p>\n
Ohtani’s entered the game at the Dodger Stadium on the back of an eight-game home run drought, but led from the front as he struck out three batters in the opening frame.<\/p>\n
He then starred with the bat in a performance which included a crushing 446 foot home run and a monster 469 foot hit which bounced out of the stadium.<\/p>\n
It marked another historic showing from Ohtani, who last year became the first player ever to record 50 home runs and 50 stolen bases in the same season.<\/p>\n
“That was probably the greatest post-season performance of all time,” said Dodgers manager Dave Roberts. <\/p>\n
“There’s a reason why he’s the greatest player on the planet. It’s kind of whatever you don’t expect, expect him to do it.<\/p>\n
“This is just a performance that I’ve just never seen. No-one’s ever seen something like this. I’m still in awe right now of Shohei.”<\/p>\n
The Dodgers’ comfortable victory sets up a World Series showdown against the Toronto Blue Jays or Seattle Mariners, with the latter 3-2 up in the best-of-seven series.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Shohei Ohtani delivered one of the greatest performances in baseball history as defending champions the Los Angeles Dodgers…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":208412,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-208411","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208411","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=208411"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208411\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/208412"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=208411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=208411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}