LOS ANGELES — Two hours after the best player in the history of baseball played the best game in the history of baseball, he headed home from the office. Shohei Ohtani was not holding the National League Championship Series Most Valuable Player award or the 2025 World Series swag he had earned that night; the half-dozen members of his agency and his security team trailing him could handle that. And besides, his hands were full: He was pushing a Nuna stroller containing his six-month-old daughter and, in the basket below her, his Nederlandse Kooikerhondje.
Almost more impressive than the feats Ohtani achieves on a nightly basis—the devastating splitters, the towering home runs, the fact that sometimes, as on Friday, three minutes pass between the two—is this: He is both the most and least normal person at the ballpark.
