Shohei Ohtani officially founded the 50-50 club in a sport where, in its more than 100 years of existence, no player has hit 42 home runs and 42 stolen bases in the same season.

For some players, this would be a career-defining achievement. For Ohtani, it’s just another entry on a seemingly mythical resume.

The Los Angeles Dodgers star hit his 49th and 50th home runs and stole his 50th and 51st bases on Thursday, all in one game against the Miami Marlins. He made history with a 5-for-5 game with two doubles, two home runs, two steals and seven RBI.

The final blow came in the seventh inning, when he was forced to retire on the road.

That history makes Ohtani the favorite to win his third career MVP award, which would make him the only player, along with Frank Robinson, to win the award in both leagues.

Ohtani accomplishes all this in a season in which he is not doing what made him the international face of baseball: hitting and throwing at the same time. His throwing arm is still recovering from major UCL surgery at the end of last season, but his throwing had made progress by late August.

Shohei Ohtani reached 50-50 with his best game of the season

That Ohtani would reach 50-50 felt inevitable going into Thursday, considering he entered the game with 48 homers and 49 steals and was swinging one of the best bats in baseball. Even the most optimistic Dodger fans probably didn’t see it happening against the Marlins.

And then Ohtani had easily the best game of an MVP season, and possibly of any player in 2024: a 5-for-5 performance with two doubles, two homers, two steals, three runs and seven RBI.

He was the first to reach 50 steals, leading off the game with a double and taking third base two batters later.

He followed that inning up with an RBI single and then took second base with runners on the corners for his 51st stolen base.

Ohtani’s only out of the game came in the third inning, when he doubled and was thrown out trying to stretch it into a triple. Had he been successful, he would have posted the second cycle of his career and added more history to an already ridiculous day.

The home runs came in the later innings, with Ohtani hitting his first home run to right field to give the Dodgers a 9-3 lead.

And then history came in the seventh, sooner than anyone expected. A hero’s welcome awaits him in the Dodgers’ home game against the Colorado Rockies on Friday.

Shohei Ohtani added another facet to his game, and the score is 50-50

Even before this season, a compelling argument could be made that Ohtani is the most talented player in baseball history, at least from a pure tools standpoint.

He can definitely hit and hit hard. As a pitcher, his four-seam fastball and sweeper are elite pitches, with a cutter, sinker, curveball and splitter behind them. He even had his moments with his glove and arm when he played right field in Japan.

It’s not an exaggeration to call him an eight-tool player. In fact, it might be conservative.

Ohtani’s speed, however, has been the most erratic. At 6-foot-3 and 205 pounds, he qualifies as a big man, even by baseball standards, and he’s faster than any big man should be. He’s spent much of his career in the top quartile of Statcast’s sprint speed rankings among MLB players, though it’s always seemed like a footnote on an already long page.

Ohtani has tried to use that speed on the basepath in the past, with mixed results. His previous career high in stolen bases was 26 in 2021, his first MVP year, but he also tied for the MLB lead in stolen bases with 10. His career success rate before 2024 was 72.3%, a figure that will have many sabermetricians telling you to stop stealing bases.

Something changed this year. Ohtani reached 50 stolen bases with just four failures, so he not only increased his stealing volume but also his efficiency. MLB’s increased base sizes and restrictions on pickoff attempts, which were instituted last year, undoubtedly helped, too.

While it would be easy to thank Dodgers manager Dave Roberts, a speed demon throughout his active career who is responsible for perhaps the most famous stolen base hit in MLB history, it’s reportedly Ohtani’s partnership with Dodgers first base coach Clayton McCullough that has made him a real problem on the bases.

From Fabian Ardaya of The Athletic:

So in addition to being one of the best hitters in MLB and one of the best pitchers when healthy, Ohtani is now one of the best baserunners, a change he made in his 30th season. You can attribute it to the change of scenery from the Angels to the Dodgers or maybe Ohtani’s chance to focus on something else by taking a year off.

Above all, I must thank Ohtani, whose talent has once again allowed him to do something unprecedented.

The Dodgers’ $700 million investment in Shohei Ohtani has paid off so far

In his first year with the Dodgers, Ohtani has hit 50 home runs and 51 steals, stayed healthy for one of the most injury-plagued teams in baseball and become an advertising giant for one of the richest teams in sports.

We’d call that a good start, even if the team had to endure the Ippei Mizuhara scandal, which saw Ohtani face troubling questions about his former interpreter’s gambling addiction but ultimately emerge unscathed in the eyes of the U.S. Department of Justice, the IRS and MLB.

It feels like so long ago that Ohtani’s $700 million contract was reported, and it struck like a ton of bricks on the shards of glass that fans understood how athlete contracts worked. His significant financial reprieve softened the blow to the Dodgers’ business side, but the record-breaking deal still positions him as the only player in baseball not allowed to have an off year.

And Ohtani didn’t do that. Instead, he’s the clear MVP favorite in the National League and is set to make his MLB playoff debut in his seventh season in the big leagues, having accomplished something that seemed nearly impossible until this summer.