Baseball

NY Times -  The Veuve Clicquot had been poured and the commemorative T-shirts handed out. Only then, once there had been time for it all to sink in, could his awestruck teammates fully comprehend the latest demonstration of greatness by Shohei Ohtani. They marveled not only at his latest milestone, becoming the first player to hit 50 homers and steal 50 bases in the same season. But they spoke with admiration about the way Ohtani reached the 50-50 club — with a single-game performance for the ages...

Ohtani singlehandedly pummeled the Miami Marlins on Thursday. He went 6-for-6, slugged three home runs, drove in 10 runs and swiped two bases — in a game that clinched a postseason berth. “I didn’t even realize he was 6-for-6,” Mookie Betts said. “What we see is like expected. It’s crazy that he lives up to those types of expectations. But that’s also what makes you speechless.”

And had Ohtani not gotten thrown out trying to leg out a triple in his third at-bat, he’d have added his second career cycle, too.

No player in baseball history had hit three homers and stolen multiple bases in a game, until Ohtani did it on Thursday. No player had collected more total bases (17) in a multi-steal game, smashing the previous mark of 11 from the likes of Kirk Gibson and Braggo Roth. No player since at least 1901 had collected at least five hits, hit multiple home runs and stolen multiple bases in the same game.