LOS ANGELES — It’s easy to take Shohei Ohtani for granted. By now, we’ve settled into the rote comfort: He is the best player on the planet, and that’s that. Ohtani’s baseline is everyone else’s peak. He is judged against himself and himself only.

And it’s human nature that when we watch something often enough — even something as mind-bending as a player who’s a full-time starting pitcher and full-time hitter and among the very best at both — it starts to register as normal.

Which is why his performances on Friday — the unleashing of the full extent of Ohtani’s magic — was the sort of necessary reminder that one of the greatest athletes in the world, and the most talented baseball player ever, is playing right now, doing unfathomable things, redefining the game in real time. And that even when he starts the day mired in an uncharacteristic slump, Ohtani needs only a single game to launch himself into the annals of history.

Where Ohtani’s performance in Game 4 of the National League Championship Series ranks on the all-time list of games will be debated for years. In the celebration following Los Angeles‘ 5-1 victory over the Milwaukee Brewers, though, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts stood on the field and said, “That’s the greatest night in baseball history,” and no one cared to argue.

Over the course of 2 hours, 41 minutes, in front of 52,883 fans, with millions watching domestically and tens of millions more in Japan, Ohtani threw six shutout innings and struck out 10 in between hitting three home runs that traveled a combined 1,342 feet, including one that left Dodger Stadium entirely. It was the sort of game that happens in comic books, not real life — and it was a game that completed a championship series sweep and sent Los Angeles to its second consecutive World Series. It was the kind of night that leaves patrons elated they saw it and also just a little ruined because they know they’ll never see anything like it again. Everyone was a prisoner, captive to perhaps the greatest individual game in the quarter-million or so played over the last century and a half.

It was, at very least, one of the finest displays of baseball since the game’s inception, up there with Tony Cloninger hitting two grand slams and throwing a complete game in 1966 or Rick Wise socking two home runs amid his no-hitter on the mound in 1971. And unlike those, this came in the postseason, and in a game to clinch Los Angeles the opportunity to become the first team in a quarter-century to win back-to-back championships.

It wasn’t quite Don Larsen throwing a perfect game — but Larsen went 0-for-2 in that game and needed a Mickey Mantle home run to account for his scoring. It wasn’t Reggie Jackson hammering three home runs, either — because Reggie needed Mike Torrez to throw a complete game that night to make his blasts stand up.

Ohtani is the only player who can do this, the offense and the defense — the mastery of baseball, the distillation of talent into something pure and perfect.

Hours earlier, his day had started by navigating the tricky balance of starting and hitting on the same day. His metronomic routine, such a vital piece of his three MVP seasons (the fourth will be made official in mid-November), is upended completely when he pitches. He budgets for the extra time he needs to spend caring for his arm by sacrificing his attendance at the hitters’ meeting, instead getting the intel he needs from coaches in the batting cage about an hour before the game.

Nobody could tell, when Ohtani arrived in the underground cage Friday, that he was mired in a nasty slump that had stretched from the division series through the third game of the NLCS, a jag of strikeouts and soft contact and poor swing decisions and utter frustration that got so bad earlier in the week he had taken batting practice outside at Dodger Stadium, something he never — like, really, never — does. He had decided to do so on the plane ride back from Milwaukee, where the Dodgers had humbled the Brewers with the sort of starting pitching never seen in a league championship series.

Game 4, his teammates were convinced, was going to be a culmination of that extra cage work and the matching of his pitching peers’ dominance.

“You guys asked me yesterday, and I said I was expecting nothing short of incredible today,” Dodgers third baseman Max Muncy said. “And he proved me wrong. He went beyond incredible.”

After walking the leadoff hitter, Brice Turang, Ohtani struck out the next three hitters, popping a pair of 100 mph-plus fastballs and unleashing the most confounding version of his splitter seen all year. He followed by obliterating a slurve from Jose Quintana in the bottom of the inning for a home run, the first time a pitcher ever hit a leadoff homer in the game’s history, regular season or playoffs.

The strikeouts continued — one in the third inning, two more in the fourth, preceding Ohtani’s second home run, which left 50,000 mouths agape. In the stands, they cheered, and in the dugout, they whooped, and in the bullpen, they screamed: “The ball went out of the stadium!” Alex Vesia, the reliever who would come in after Ohtani struck out two more in the fifth and sixth innings, could not conceive that a person could hit a baseball in a game that far. Officially, it went 469 feet. It felt like 1,000.

“At that point, it’s got to be the greatest game ever, right?” said Vesia, who did his part to help keep it so. Ohtani allowed a walk and a hit in the seventh inning, and had Vesia allowed either run to score, the sparkling zero in his pitching line could’ve been an unsightly one or crooked two. When he induced a ground ball up the middle that nutmegged his legs, Mookie Betts was in perfect position to hoover it, step on second and fire to first for a double play that preserved Ohtani’s goose egg.

In the next inning, Ohtani’s third home run of the night, and this one was just showing off: a shot to dead center off a 99 mph Trevor Megill fastball, a proper complement to the second off an 89 mph Chad Patrick cutter and the first off a 79 mph Quintana slurve). If it sounds impressive to hit three different pitches off three different pitchers for home runs in one night, it is. To do so throwing six innings, allowing two hits, walking three and striking out 10 is otherworldly.

“We were so focused on just winning the game, doing what needed to be done, I’m not sure we realized how good it really was,” Dodgers catcher Will Smith said. “I didn’t really appreciate it until after. Like, he actually did that?”

Yes. Yes he did. In baseball history, 503 players have hit three home runs in a game, and 1,550 have struck out 10 or more in a game. None, until Friday, had done both. And that’s what Shohei Ohtani does, who he is. For eight years, he has transformed what is possible in baseball, set a truly impossible standard to match, and now, finally, having signed with a franchise capable of giving his talents the largest stage, Ohtani gets to perform when it matters most.

Milwaukee won more games during the regular season than anyone. Regardless of how impotent the Brewers’ offense was this series, they were a very good team, and the Dodgers flayed them. The final game was an exclamation point — and a warning for the Seattle Mariners or Toronto Blue Jays, whichever survives the back-and-forth American League Championship Series.

Shohei Ohtani awaits. Good luck.

LOS ANGELES — Shohei Ohtani has propelled the Los Angeles Dodgers back to the World Series with a two-way performance for the ages.

Ohtani hit three mammoth homers and struck out 10 while pitching into the seventh inning, and the Dodgers swept the Milwaukee Brewers out of the NL Championship Series with a 5-1 victory in Game 4 on Friday night.

The Dodgers will have a chance to be baseball’s first repeat World Series champions in a quarter-century after this mind-blowing night for the three-time MVP Ohtani, who emphatically ended a quiet postseason by his lofty standards. Ohtani was named the NLCS MVP essentially on the strength of this one unforgettable game.

“It was really fun on both sides of the ball today,” Ohtani said through his interpreter. “As a representative [of the team], I’m taking this trophy, and let’s get four more wins.”

After striking out three in the top of the first inning of Game 4, Ohtani hit the first leadoff homer by a pitcher in major league history off Brewers starter Jose Quintana.

Ohtani followed with a 469-foot blast in the fourth, clearing a pavilion roof in right-center.

Ohtani added a third solo shot in the seventh, becoming the 12th player in major league history to hit three homers in a playoff game. His three homers traveled a combined 1,342 feet.

Ohtani (2-0) also thoroughly dominated the Brewers in his second career postseason mound start, allowing two hits in his first double-digit strikeout game in a Dodgers uniform.

The numbers tell the story. Ohtani is the first player in MLB history to hit two-plus homers as a pitcher in a postseason game, according to ESPN Research. He is also the first MLB player with more homers hit (3) than hits allowed (2) in a postseason pitching start and the first player to hit a leadoff homer as a pitcher (regular season or postseason).

“Sometimes you’ve got to check yourself and touch him to make sure he’s not just made of steel,” said Freddie Freeman, last season’s World Series MVP. “Absolutely incredible. Biggest stage, and he goes out and does something like that. It’ll probably be remembered as the Shohei Ohtani game.”

After the Brewers’ first two batters reached in the seventh, he left the mound to a stadium-shaking ovation — and after Alex Vesia escaped the jam, Ohtani celebrated by hitting his third homer in the bottom half.

The powerhouse Dodgers are the first team to win back-to-back pennants since Philadelphia in 2009. Los Angeles is back in the World Series for the fifth time in nine seasons, and it will attempt to become baseball’s first repeat champs since the New York Yankees won three straight World Series from 1998 to 2000.

“That was special,” Freeman said. “We’ve just been playing really good baseball for a while now, and the inevitable kind of happened today — Shohei. Oh my God. I’m still speechless.”

After capping a 9-1 rampage through the NL playoffs with this singular performance by Ohtani, the Dodgers are headed to the World Series for the 23rd time in franchise history, including 14 pennants since moving from Brooklyn, New York, to Los Angeles. Only the Yankees, last year’s opponent, have made more appearances in the Fall Classic (41).

Los Angeles will have a week off before the World Series begins next Friday, either in Toronto or at Dodger Stadium against Seattle. The Mariners beat the Blue Jays 6-2 earlier Friday to take a 3-2 lead in the ALCS, which continues Sunday at Rogers Centre.

The Dodgers had never swept an NLCS in 16 previous appearances, but they became only the fifth team to sweep this series while thoroughly dominating a 97-win Milwaukee club. Los Angeles is the first team to sweep a best-of-seven postseason series since 2022 and the first to sweep an NLCS since Washington in 2019.

“I’ll tell you, before this season started, they said the Dodgers are ruining baseball,” Los Angeles manager Dave Roberts shouted to the crowd during the on-field celebration. “Let’s get four more wins and really ruin baseball!”

The NL Central champion Brewers were eliminated by the Dodgers for the third time during their current stretch of seven playoff appearances in eight years. Even after setting a franchise record for wins this season, Milwaukee is still waiting for its first World Series appearance since 1982.

“We were part of tonight an iconic, maybe the best individual performance ever in a postseason game,” Milwaukee manager Pat Murphy said. “I don’t think anybody can argue with that. A guy punches out 10 and hits three homers.”

The Brewers had never been swept in a playoff series longer than a best-of-three, but their bats fell silent in the NLCS against the Dodgers’ brilliant starting rotation. Los Angeles’ four starters combined to pitch 28⅔ innings with two earned runs allowed and 35 strikeouts.

The Dodgers added two more runs in the first after Ohtani’s tone-setting homer, with Mookie Betts and Will Smith both singling and scoring.

Jackson Chourio doubled leading off the fourth for Milwaukee’s first hit, but Ohtani stranded him with a groundout and two strikeouts.

Struggling Dodgers reliever Blake Treinen allowed two more baserunners in the eighth, and Caleb Durbin scored when Brice Turang beat out his potential double-play grounder before Anthony Banda ended the inning.

Roki Sasaki pitched the ninth in the latest successful relief outing for the Dodgers’ unlikely closer.

Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.

MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. — Miller Moss threw two touchdown passes to Chris Bell and ran for a score, Louisville intercepted four of Miami star Carson Beck‘s passes and the Cardinals got one of the most significant wins in their history by topping the second-ranked Hurricanes 24-21 on Friday night.

Louisville (5-1, 2-1 Atlantic Coast Conference) got touchdowns on its first two drives for a quick 14-0 lead, and the Hurricanes (5-1, 1-1) trailed the rest of the way.

Louisville also snapped Miami’s 10-game home winning streak. The last team to win at Miami? That was Louisville, in 2023.

The Hurricanes were in field goal range, but Louisville’s T.J. Capers intercepted Beck’s pass at the 30 with 32 seconds left to seal the win.

Moss completed 23 of 37 passes for 248 yards, and Isaac Brown ran for 113 yards on 15 carries for Louisville. Bell had nine catches for 136 yards, his TD grabs going for 35 and 36 yards.

Beck completed 25 of 35 passes for 271 yards for Miami. The Hurricanes had little success rushing the ball, generating only 63 yards on 24 carries against a Louisville team that came into the night with the No. 1 defense in the ACC.

Louisville came into the game 1-8 against teams ranked Nos. 1 or 2 in the AP poll. The win was over then-No. 2 Florida State, a 63-20 romp in 2016.

On the road, there had never been a night like this for the Cardinals. They were 0-18 against Top 10 teams in true road games before Friday. Most of them weren’t even close: Louisville dropped those games by an average of 26.3 points.

Miami got to 14-10 at the half and trailed 17-13 going into the fourth, but Moss’ 36-yard scoring grab with 13:27 remaining gave the Cardinals a two-score lead again. Beck — who threw two interceptions in the first half — had another picked off on the ensuing drive with 7:50 remaining, but Miami got the ball right back on a fumble.

Malachi Toney scored on a 12-yard run one play after the fumble, then threw a 2-point conversion pass himself and Miami was right back in it — down 24-21. But the Hurricanes got no closer.