Baseball's Unicorn

If you’ve ever wondered what people mean when they refer to someone as a “Unicorn,” look no further than Shohei Ohtani.

We all know the Unicorn as a mythical creature, something that isn’t supposed to exist. Shohei Ohtani showed last night why he is the very definition of a human Unicorn with the most amazing performance in Major League Baseball’s long postseason history. We’ve never seen anything like him - he isn’t supposed to exist.

What Ohtani does on the baseball diamond is so unique that, when he signed with the California Angels in 2018 after five years of starring in Japan’s major baseball league, leaders of America’s MLB had to create a special rule for him in his frequent role as a team’s starting pitcher and its designated hitter.

The rule allows any player who starts the game as both a pitcher and DH to remain in the game as the DH after being pulled as the pitcher. It is, in fact, named the Ohtani Rule, because no one else does what this human Unicorn is able to do. In fact, nobody not named Babe Ruth has ever done it at the major league level before, and Ruth did it more than a century ago against competition that was not remotely at the same level as today’s players.

That’s not to demean Ruth, who was without question the greatest player of his time and who remains one of the 10 greatest to ever play the game. But times change, and no one ever expected to see any player come along again who could do what Ruth did until Ohtani arrived on the American scene.

Last night, Ohtani put on a one-man show the likes of which has no precedent in baseball history. It is important here to keep in mind that he did it against not some also-ran team, but a team - the Milwaukee Brewers - which put up the best record in MLB during the regular season, sweeping all five games they played against the Los Angeles Dodgers in the process.

As the Dodgers’ starting pitcher last night, Ohtani tossed six shutout innings while allowing just 2 hits, and striking out 10 Brewers batters. That would be a hell of a night’s work for any starter in a playoff game.

But what Ohtani did at the plate was even more incredible. The human Unicorn blasted three home runs, all of which traveled well over 400 feet, and one of which was hit out of Dodger Stadium entirely, a feat achieved in the past just twice, by Willie Stargell and the Phillies’ DH, Kyle Schwarber, just last week.

Ohtani’s performance was so incredible, so unprecedented, that it left even the best players in today’s game in awe. Freddie Freeman, one of the best players of his generation who is a sure first-ballot hall-of-famer, held his head in shock as Ohtani’s third blast traveled over the fence in left-centerfield. Mookie Betts, another generational player and sure hall-of-famer, was left shaking his head and struggling to find words to describe it all during a post-game interview.

The big story line out of last night’s game should have been that the Dodgers, who struggled through the regular season thanks to a withering wave of injuries to key pitchers and position players, swept the Brewers in four games, and have now plowed through three postseason series, winning 9 out of 10 games in the process.

But that impressive narrative was completely eclipsed by the one-man show put on by baseball’s Unicorn.

Shohei Ohtani simply isn’t supposed to exist. Yet, there he is.

No one alive has ever seen anything like him, and none of us will ever see anything like him again. I feel truly blessed to be able to take it all in.

What an amazing time this is to be alive.

That is all.