On the evening of Friday, October 17, 2025, baseball fans filed into Chavez Ravine for Game 4 of the NLCS in eager anticipation to see the sport’s biggest star “sho-case” his full arsenal of insane talent. Ahead 3-0 in the series, the Dodgers were looking to sweep the Milwaukee Brewers and return to the World Series for a chance at the elusive repeat. Japanese sensation Shohei Ohtani would be starting on the bump and batting leadoff in Dave Roberts’ lineup. The stage was set in a playoff closeout game for something truly special, but no one could ever imagine what was about to unfold.

Under the bright lights with millions around the world tuned in, Ohtani took the “Greatest Shoh on Earth” to an otherworldly level, hitting three monster home runs and pitching six dominant innings of 10-K, 2-hit shutout ball in a 5-1 L.A. victory to clinch the National League pennant. It was the performance of a lifetime, something no baseball player – or any athlete for that matter – had ever come close to matching. We are talking about arguably the greatest single-game output by an athlete in the history of sports as we know it. Let’s refresh the facts.

• • The Dodgers starting pitcher belted three homers in one postseason game.
• • The three home runs traveled approximately 1,342 feet, one of them essentially leaving the stadium in the deepest part of the ballpark.
• • On the mound, Ohtani struck out 10 batters and allowed just two hits over six scoreless innings.
• • In the top of the first, Shohei struck out the side (two on 100+ mph pitches) and then proceeded to lead off the bottom half with a 446-foot missile to right.
• • In the bottom of the fourth, “Sho-Time” launched a moonshot to deep right-center. The ball eventually landed on the roof of the pavilion well beyond the bleachers and bounced into some lonely bushes near a concession stand – “out of the stadium” in baseball lingo. The 469-foot estimate did not do it justice. Nobody had ever come close to hitting a ball out there.
• • In the bottom of the seventh, Ohtani blasted his third dinger of the night, a 427-foot shot to left-center. At this point, fans were beside themselves, hands on heads, not understanding how this was humanly possible.

“We’re watching something we’ve never seen before,” said Roberts after. In the 150-year history of baseball, what Ohtani did has never come close to happening, not in the regular season and surely not in the postseason. It would be like Tom Brady throwing five TD passes AND intercepting three passes AND sacking the opposing QB three times in the AFC Title Game. There really is no comparison because there’s nothing to compare it to.

SCP Auctions is excited to present the second of Ohtani’s three historic home run balls that night, easily the most impressive of the trio. This was the one that took everyone’s breath away. The official MLB game-used baseball has been consigned straight from the serendipitous fan who corralled it and comes with detailed, indisputable documentation to verify its authenticity.

Carlo Mendoza, a lifelong Dodgers supporter, was eating nachos with his friend at concession stand tables on the other side of the bleachers when this ball seemed to come down from the heavens. Watching the game on a massive, theatre-size flat screen, the last thing he expected was to snare a home run ball some 600 feet from home plate. He was just trying to finish his food and get back to his seat as quickly as possible. “There’s no way any ball is making it all the way out here,” he noted. Well, it did and, luckily, Carlo was the only person who saw it land in the planters about 10-20 feet away. He pounced on it before anyone else had a chance to.

Shortly thereafter, Mendoza was interviewed by a Japanese YouTuber with a large social media following (“TERIYAKI TIMES”) and then he did some impromptu meet-and-greets with fellow Dodger fans who wanted selfies with him and the ball. One mentions on video that he saw Carlo with his own eyes jump into the bushes to retrieve the ball. Before returning to their seats, Carlo and his friend went on a mission to get the ball authenticated by MLB or someone affiliated with the Dodgers. They were unsuccessful with MLB – none of Ohtani’s three HR balls were stickered by MLB Authentication – but did find a Dodgers operations staffer to give the ball an official dated stamp certifying it as being game-used and leaving the field of play that evening.

The blue stamp reading “Dodger Stadium Oct 17 ’25 Los Angeles, CA 90012” appears on a side panel. There are several hard scuff marks visible on the white leather ball from Shohei’s bat, the pavilion roof, and wherever else it bounced on its path to Carlo Mendoza. One scuff that fades the end of the word “Baseball” on the OMLB manufacturing stamp can easily be photo-matched to images of Mendoza holding the ball in selfies and photos with fans at the game. This is Ohtani’s second home run ball with 100% certainty. There is video footage of a witness who saw Carlo Mendoza get the ball. Several photos of Mendoza holding up this ball at Dodger Stadium shortly after the home run have gone viral. Not one person has come forward to dispute its rightful ownership. Carlo even passed a polygraph test, the results of which will be provided to the winning bidder. Mendoza’s signed letter of provenance, which has been notarized, is essentially a time-lined affidavit of events leading up to the moment. It is uploaded for full transparency.

The Dodgers went on to win an epic seven-game Fall Classic over the Blue Jays to become the NL’s first back-to-back World Series champs in a half century. After Shohei’s 50/50 ball broke the bank at $4.39 million in October 2024 and Freddie Freeman’s World Series walk-off grand slam ball sold for $1.56 million (by SCP Auctions) last December, what will the longest homer from Ohtani’s Magnum Opus bring? That’s the multimillion-dollar question.

View news articles about the ball here: 

• The Athletic

• Bleacher Report

• Yahoo Sports