Inside The Dodgers

Fellow Dodgers Can't Believe Shohei Ohtani's Latest Feat

Maren Angus-Coombs

Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports
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Shohei Ohtani stole the spotlight on Sunday to lead the Los Angeles Dodgers to a sweep of the Atlanta Braves. He put the exclamation point on the weekend with a booming 464-foot home run.

It was the longest homer of the season and it left his teammates in awe. 

“I think I have to hit the ball twice to get there,” infielder Miguel Rojas told reporters including Mike DiGiovanna of the Los Angeles Times. “That’s definitely next-level stuff. It’s pretty special having a guy like Shohei in the lineup, a guy who can do those kinds of things.”

The ball was hit over the tarp that covers a section of seats in the left-field pavilion just to the left of the center-field plaza. Manager Dave Roberts had never a ball hit that far at Dodger Stadium.

“No, no,” Roberts said, when asked if he’d ever seen a left-handed-hitter send a ball over that tarp. “He just keeps doing things that we haven’t seen before. A Minter fastball, middle-middle, and he just took a really good swing. It was 111 mph off the bat.

“That’s deep. People don’t hit the ball out there, whether you’re right-handed or left-handed, day game, night game. The wind was actually kind of pushing it from left to right, so he really got into that one.”

The series itself was set to be a matchup of two of Major League Baseball’s best. Atlanta arrived in L.A. with the best record in baseball. The Dodgers outscored the Braves 20-6 in three games and the visiting team was sent packing as the second-place team in the National League East division.

While the series win was key, the two teams are destined to find each other again in the postseason and that’s when it really counts.

“We’re gonna have to do it again in October to get to where we want to be,” Rojas said. “Remember, we beat the Diamondbacks last year, the whole year, and we didn’t get it done in October. So right now, we celebrate the little victories, but this doesn’t make our year.”

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Maren Angus-Coombs

MAREN ANGUS-COOMBS

Maren Angus-Coombs was born in Los Angeles and raised in Nashville, Tenn. She is a graduate of Middle Tennessee State and has been a sports writer since 2008. Despite growing up in the South, her sports obsession has always been in Los Angeles. She is currently a staff writer at the LA Sports Report Network.