Ohtani Orchestrates Game 1 as Friars Silence Bays

Sammy Linedriv - TABL Beat Writer

October baseball in San Diego doesn’t feel like pressure. It feels like theater. The breeze soft off the bay, the crowd leaning forward, the lights turning Petco Park into a stage. And on that stage, Shohei Ohtani didn’t just play baseball, he performed it.

From the first inning, it was clear this was his show. Four hits. Two doubles. A stolen base. And a home run that looked like it had a boarding pass, slow to leave, elegant in its flight, the kind that makes the crowd gasp before they cheer.

By the end of the night, San Francisco’s dugout was left shaking their heads, wondering how to defend against a player who can seemingly do everything but sell tickets at the gate.

Behind him, Zac Gallen gave a lesson in composure. No theatrics, no wasted pitches, just clean, methodical execution.

The right-hander scattered one hit over five and two-thirds innings, his pace unchanging even when the Bays loaded the bases in the sixth. That’s when reliever Griffin Jax entered, threw one perfect strike, and turned Petco’s lower deck into a roar that rolled all the way to the Gaslamp.

The Friars didn’t overwhelm; they suffocated. Their offense moved like the tide, slow, steady, inevitable. In the third, Freddy Fermín doubled, Ohtani singled, and Carlos Correa’s sharp grounder through the right side broke the seal. Bryce Harper’s sacrifice fly made it 2–0, and from that moment forward, the game felt less like competition and more like choreography.

When Ohtani stepped to the plate again in the fifth, he caught a ball so cleanly it sounded like a drumbeat.

The home run, high, deep, and certain, made it 3–0 and sent the Friar faithful into a kind of reverent disbelief.

By the seventh, San Diego had turned a taut game into a showcase: another Ohtani double, another Correa line drive, another Harper RBI. Every hit carried the calm assurance of a team that knows exactly who it is.

San Francisco, meanwhile, could manage only two hits. Their bats looked tentative, their rhythm off just enough to matter.

The final score, San Diego 5, San Francisco 0 tells the story cleanly. But the way it looked told you more: confidence without arrogance, precision without panic, and one superstar at the center of it all.

Ohtani didn’t just lead; he conducted. W – Gallen (1–0)

L – Peterson (0–1)

HR – Ohtani (1)

Series – San Diego leads 1–0