Sam Broadway: Shohei Ohtani makes baseball history

On a historic night for baseball:

Sam Broadway (KEPW Newsday): Shohei Ohtani is the first hitter in the history of baseball to have hit 50 home runs and stole 50 bases. He is Mr. 50-50. Showtime. Shohei is the fastest player to 40 homers and 40 stolen bases in the season, and now he’s Mr. 50-50. Wow, it all happened so fast, they’re still talking about his 49th home run, which tied the Dodger franchise record, but yeah, now he’s Mr. 50-50. And this is outstanding. Nobody has done this…

[00:00:44] He did it again! A three-run home run, number 51! Wow! Three home runs tonight. He is so happy, look at him. Wow. That is the talk of SportsCenter tonight. He is going to lead it all. Japan must be going crazy right now. Oh my goodness. Wow.

[00:01:08] The score doesn’t even matter anymore. A three-run homer for Shohei, a two-run homer for Shohei, another two-run homer for Shohei. He’s half the scoring.

[00:01:24] What I watch sports for, more than anything else (if I can get this in), is, you know, I like the competition. I like my Dodgers to win of course, my team, I want them to win. But more than anything else, I want to see something I’ll never see again. That’s the reason I watch sports.

[00:01:42] I watched an outfielder once chasing a ball down, in right field, and he was going for it back, back, back, back. And he went right through the fence, the board flipped up and he ran right through the fence. It was just like, something out of a cartoon, but I’ll never forget it. Just something you never will see again. And I like that kind of stuff better than anything, historic moments that you’ll never see again.

[00:02:09] John Q: He looked at the final week of the season.

[00:02:13] Sam Broadway: There’s only a week left. And the Padres are our biggest threat, in that we are going to have a head-to-head matchup towards the end of the season here with them for who is going to be atop the National League West. They are 3.5 games behind right now of the Dodgers, but they keep winning.

[00:02:39] And the Dodgers’ pitching woes are making trouble for them. And that’s what’s happening is their pitching rotation. They lost one of their best which was Tyler Glasnow, and he is out for the entire season with elbow injury, so that really was a blow. And then we had two pitchers that came back from shoulder surgery.

[00:03:04] Bobby Miller never got himself back on track after the surgery, he just couldn’t do it. So he has been sent back down to AAA, and Walker Buehler, he was okay for his last outing, but it’s very iffy whether he’ll travel with the team for the playoffs. I don’t know.

[00:03:23] If not, we do have a couple of others that may go in his place: Landon Knack just pitched for the Dodgers last night and is an outstanding rookie with good stuff, so we’ll see if he gets picked up, and stay with the Dodgers instead of Walker Buehler. We’ll see.

[00:03:41] We’ve had a couple of other pitchers. We have Yabaguchi, who just came off of elbow injury, and he’s pitching all right, doesn’t seem like he missed a beat. We’re still waiting to see if Clayton Kershaw can come back from a toe injury; had bone spurs in the toe. Nobody knows exactly how to treat that on the Dodgers. So they’re just hoping it’ll go away by itself.

[00:04:04] It’s going to be interesting to see how Dave Roberts, the manager of the Dodgers, deals with the pitching situation for this postseason. Shohei is still coming off of Tommy John’s surgery. So, Dave Roberts doesn’t want to push it. What Dave Roberts did say is if all the pieces fall into place and it just becomes that possibility, okay. But we’ll see. And he’s not looking to do that.

[00:04:34] So hopefully with this last week of the season, this being as close as it is with the Padres on there, but maybe we’ll make it so that they go in competing for the postseason this year. I just hate to see them get wiped out, with the way the playoffs are structured, it could be anybody that does that to you.

[00:04:56] John Q: On a historic night for baseball, a recap and look ahead to the postseason, from KEPW’s Sam Broadway. You can hear Sam Broadway on Newsday every Tuesday through Friday at 12:30 p.m.