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 mythical-seeming resume, and he followed it up by creating the 51-51 club in the same game.

The Los Angeles Dodgers star hit his 49th, 50th and 51st home runs and stole his 50th and 51st bases all in a single game against the Miami Marlins on Thursday. He made history with a 6-for-6 game with three homers, two doubles, two steals, four runs scored and 10 RBI in a 20-4 Dodgers victory that clinched Ohtani’s first trip to the MLB playoffs.

“I’m just overjoyed with both experiences that I’ve had,” Ohtani told MLB Network after the game through an interpreter. “The most important thing for me was that I was finally able to fulfill the dream of playing in a postseason game.”

The home run that tied him at 50-50 came in the seventh inning and earned him an away game.

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.

During a locker room toast with his players, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts raised a glass of champagne and said to Ohtani, “Shohei, cheers to something very spectacular, man, congratulations.”

Ohtani accomplished all this in a season in which he did not do what made him the international face of baseball: hit and pitch at the same time. His throwing arm is still recovering from major UCL surgery on September 19 of last season. A year later, to the date, he put together one of the best offensive games ever.

“I personally think the best way to hit a home run is to just have good at-bats, so I don’t try to focus on hitting a home run,” Ohtani said during the broadcast.

The answer was met with laughter.

“It was a good day for baseball, a bad day for the Marlins, but a good day for the game of baseball,” Miami manager Skip Schumaker said after the game.

Shohei Ohtani reached 50-50, then 51-51, with one of the greatest games in MLB history

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. But even the most optimistic Dodger fans probably didn’t see it happening against the Marlins.

Then Ohtani had easily the best game of an MVP season and of any player in 2024. It was the first 10-RBI game in Dodgers history and the 16th in MLB history. It was the first time a player had two homers, two steals and five hits in a game, and then he homered to make it the first game ever with three homers and two stolen bases. He did it all to record the first 50-50 season in history, a feat many thought impossible before this season.

In case you forgot, he can also pitch.

Ohtani became 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 but 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 in the sixth inning.

Then history came in the seventh inning, sooner than anyone expected.

The final home run came against a position-player pitcher, Vidal Brujan. Chris Taylor extended the game with a two-out single, opening the door for Ohtani to be the exclamation point of all exclamation points.

Schumaker later said he had no intention of letting Ohtani walk or run to prevent him from making history.

“You go after him and see if you can get him out,” Schumaker told reporters. “Out of respect for the game, we go after him. He hit the home run. That’s part of it. He’s hit 50. He’s the most talented player I’ve ever seen. He’s doing things I’ve never seen in the game before. If he has a couple more years like that, he might be the best guy to ever play the game. As a fan, I wish I was in the stands and not in the dugout to see it. I’m proud of the guys that went after him and weren’t afraid of him. That’s how you should go after him.”

All told, Thursday’s game gives Ohtani a notable place in the MLB record books.

It’s no exaggeration to call this the greatest offensive game in MLB history, especially considering what’s at stake. Shawn Green, whose Dodgers single-season home run record Ohtani tied and broke on Thursday, holds the MLB record for total bases in a game with 19 (accomplished on four homers, a single and a double). If you count Ohtani’s stolen bases, or if his second double had traveled a few feet further, Ohtani would tie that record.

Either way, he’ll get a hero’s welcome in the Dodgers’ next home game against the Colorado Rockies on Friday.

“The 50/50 mark was kind of a clean slate in terms of chasing a record,” Ohtani said. “But the most important thing for us right now is that we’re leading the division, and just winning the division is probably the most important thing for me and for the team right now.”

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 outlandish to call him an eight-tool player. It might even 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 one of the best baserunners, something he accomplished in his 30th season. You can attribute it to the change of scenery from the Angels to the Dodgers or perhaps 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 51 home runs and 51 steals to his name. He has stayed healthy for one of baseball’s most injury-plagued teams and has 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.