It wasn’t good enough for Shohei Ohtani to do all kinds of cool new things with the Los Angeles Dodgers.
He decided he had to go break some Brooklyn Dodgers records, too.
On Friday night, Ohtani passed Gil Hodges for an immense Dodgers home run record.
Hodges, in 1951, hit 21 home runs in Brooklyn’s first 57 games. No one since had matched that opening pace for the Dodgers franchise.
But then in game 57 on Friday, Ohtani entered with 20 homers and left with 22. He went deep twice against the Yankees, including on the first pitch of the bottom of the first inning.
SHOHEI OHTANI ANSWERS RIGHT BACK 🤯#FridayNightBaseball pic.twitter.com/PKH1PHWqDF
— MLB (@MLB) May 31, 2025
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Ohtani has already done unprecedented things in a Dodgers uniform, but there’s something powerful about him passing a legend like Hodges.
The Hall of Famer broke into the majors in 1943 as a 19-year old from Indiana. He missed two seasons for military service, then struggled in his first two seasons back.
Hodges broke out in 1949 and was one of the best hitters in baseball for the next decade.
Hodges stayed a strong slugger in the first two years in Los Angeles, then slowed down but kept appearing in MLB games all the way through 1963.
Ohtani won’t spend that long with the Dodgers, but his imprint is already massive.
And the best part of baseball is the way the distant past can intertwine with the present, like Ohtani and Hodges sharing trots around the bases in Dodgers blue all these decades apart.
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