YouTube Gold: One Of The Greatest Performances In Sports History Took Place Thursday Night

A staggering level of unparalleled greatness

Let’s face it - baseball is not what it used to be.

Up until the 1960’s, it was the most popular game in the United States, but now it’s fallen into third place we believe, behind basketball and well behind football, which has supplanted it.

Professional baseball started in 1869, just four years after the Civil War. The National League formed a few years later, in 1876. The American League came along in 1901 and baseball assumed its place in American culture. The Black Sox scandal nearly killed it in 1919, but the mighty Babe Ruth assumed a larger-than-life position in the sport and culture and baseball grew more popular than ever.

Today it’s still very popular around major league cities, but in the rest of the country, the kids don’t play baseball as much.

Shohei Ohtani may change that, because he’s had an incredible year and on Thursday night, he had one of the greatest performances in the long history of the sport.

Ohtani hit six for six, had three home runs, 10 RBIs and two steals. And he also became the first player ever to hit at least 50 homers and steal 50 bases in a season.

Think of the players who never did that - Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Ty Cobb, Mickey Mantle, Pete Rose, Jackie Robinson, Joe DiMaggio, Roberto Clemente - it’s an amazing accomplishment.

Baseball is a stupidly run sport so they’ll almost certainly fail to take advantage of this, as they usually fail, but maybe some young players, whether here or around the world, will be inspired by this and try to reach greatness themselves. It’ll be very tough to match what he accomplished Thursday night and this season though. What an amazing player.