Shohei Ohtani Joins the 50/50 Club (and Has One of the Best Single-Game Performances in Baseball History)

Shoehei Ohtani makes a habit of doing things that none of us have ever seen before.

During today's game, he became the inaugural member of the "50/50 Club", as he now has both 50+ home runs and 50+ stolen bases this year. No member of the 50-home-run club had ever stolen even as many as 30 bases before.

He also joined the club in spectular fashion today with a game for the ages. Ohtani's performance today was one of the best single-game performances in Major League Baseball history. He went 6 for 6 with 2 doubles, 3 home runs, 10 runs batted in, 4 runs, and 2 stolen bases. There have been only 16 games in Baseball history in which a player has 10+ RBIs; this is the first one by a Dodger. This is the first time in Baseball history that a player has had 3+ home runs and 2+ stolen bases in the same game.

Since the RBI became an official statistic in 1920, Shohei Ohtani is now the only player in Baseball history who has a game — any game, so they each can occur in different games — in their career with 10+ RBIs, 6+ hits, 5+ extra-base hits, 3+ HRs, and 2+ SBs. Any game. Ohtani did them all in the same game. Amazing!

I have never seen any game like this in my life before.

(P.S. The Dodgers clinched a playoff berth with their victory today.)

Los Angeles Without Smog

This picture is amazing!

Los Angeles with no smog..

Aerial view of downtown from Silverlake via @alanwdang pic.twitter.com/qOxAAzDzmX

— Bill Gross (@Bill_Gross) April 10, 2020

(Tip of the cap to Predrag Cvitanovic.)

Amazing Sculptures from Tightly-Rolled Newspapers

These are incredible!

Japanese Artist Tightly Rolls Newspaper To Create Incredibly Realistic Animal Sculptures https://t.co/wgxGL3848A

— Archpng (@archpng) June 8, 2019

Amazing Visual Illusion: A Dynamic Müller–Lyer Illusion

This visual illusion is amazing. It is a dynamic Müller–Lyer illusion.

This is probably the best illusion I've ever seen. The blue and red lines are all the same length; none is moving or changing size, and they’re all at the same level. Only the arrowheads are moving. https://t.co/bDyeOKXgbC pic.twitter.com/V6KrmLkiPr

— Steve Stewart-Williams (@SteveStuWill) October 4, 2018

(Tip of the cap to Marcel Salathe.)

German Caricature Map from 1914

This German caricature map from the onset of World War I is fancy.

(Tip of the cap to I Fucking Love Maps.)

The Bee Nailed It

Bee removes a nail to make a nest in a wall 🐝 pic.twitter.com/CXSjZAkVLA

— Vala Afshar (@ValaAfshar) September 12, 2017

(I saw this Tweet because Sabine Hossenfelder liked it.)

Epic-Level "Doodling" (Sometimes in 3D)

This art is amazing! The website Bored Panda described it as "doodling", though it is awesome, epic-level art (whatever you want to call it).

Wow! These pieces!

Cambodian Artist Takes Doodling To Another Level.https://t.co/xnqP9VQxsM pic.twitter.com/pJPDCxXQJF

— Bradley P. Beaulieu (@bbeaulieu) June 3, 2017

Conway's Game of Life In Real Life (on an Ocellated Lizard)

Wow! This is amazing!

Here is the blurb on the Facebook post that goes with the Physics Today article (though I added the hyperlink): The ocellated lizard develops an intricate, ever-changing pattern of black and green spots when it matures. Now researchers have determined that the patterns on the animals' backs update according to a well-defined algorithm: Over a period of a month or so, a given scale will change color—from green to black or black to green—with a probability that depends on the colors of the scales around it. In essence, the reptile is the embodiment of a cellular automaton, a type of discretized model made popular by John Conway’s Game of Life and used to simulate the spread of wildfires, the firing of neurons, and other phenomena.

Physics Today's article is about a recent article in Nature called "A living mesoscopic cellular automaton made of skin scales".

They Ain't Afraid of No Goat (Cubs Win)

The deciding Game 7 of the 2016 World Series just ended. (I blogged about it yesterday.)

The Chicago Cubs won today's game (and thus the World Series) by a score of 8 to 7 in 10 innings (and a brief rain delay). Wow! The last time the Cubs had won a World Series was 1908(!), and they hadn't even gotten into the World Series since 1945. Their curse is over, and they ain't afraid of no goat. (The Cubs were down 3 games to 1 and game back to win an exciting and historic series. Back to the Future, Part II was off by only one year.)

The Cleveland Indians, the opponents of the Cubs, also have a long drought, having not won a World Series since 1948.

Both teams (and especially the Cubs, who are a juggernaut) have built teams that are going to be great for several years. The Cubs were the favorites before the season even started, and rightly so.

Wow!

Update: Here is the box score for the game.

Update: Wow, an old Harry Caray commercial for Budweiser just aired. Cool!

Update: Ben Zobrist has been named the World Series MVP.

Update (11/03/16): And take a look at this tweet from 2014. (Tip of the cap to Boing Boing.)

Update (11/04/16): The victory parade was apparently the 7th-largest gathering in human history. Very cool! Choice quote (you provide the joke): "The Cubs celebration crowd even beat out the 3.5 million people who went to Rod Stewart's 1994 concert in Rio." (Tip of the cap to Doug Pearson for his post on Facebook, which I saw through Chris Howland's 'like'.)

Kershaw's Strikeout:Walk Dominance

Clayton Kershaw has been especially dominant so far this year and last night reached 100 strikeouts with only 5 walks, the fewest walks with 100 strikeouts in the modern (i.e., post-1900) era. Wow!

Kershaw's career has been historically dominant so far.

Note: The use of 'modern' is a hedge, simply because Major League Baseball record-keeping was much sketchier before 1900. It's not that we know another player did this, but basically that people don't know and are being cautious about the phrasing.