On Friday night, Shohei Ohtani did as he usually does, which is to say he made something extraordinary look completely routine.
In the sixth inning of an eventual loss against the Diamondbacks, he crushed a pitch to right field, a soaring, dramatic marvel of a moonshot. The official projected distance was 493 feet: Ohtani’s league-leading 30th home run of the season and the farthest hit ball of the year. Only a dozen longer had been recorded since MLB began tracking distance with Statcast in 2015.
It was a home run to rip apart the phrase “no-doubter”: This did not obliterate doubt so much as it invited belief. The broadcast caught his generational talent of a teammate Mike Trout slack-jawed in the on-deck circle. It was one of Ohtani’s last plate appearances for the month of June—he’d have just one more, leading off the bottom of the eighth that night, drawing a walk and scoring—and it capped a month unlike any baseball has ever seen.
