LOS ANGELES — There were two baseball games in La La Land on Monday night.

One was played at Dodger Stadium. The other happened in the Twilight Zone. Shohei Ohtani defined the former and, as a result, was allowed absolutely no agency in the latter.

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Game 3 of the World Series, which the Dodgers won 6-5, was an unforgettable classic. It survived for 18 innings, endured, enthralled and exhausted for 6 hours and 39 minutes. This was the type of postseason contest that forces casuals to tune in and diehards to perspire profusely. Scorecards get ruined. Sleep schedules are turned upside down. There will be bleary eyes in Canada and California on Tuesday. One hundred thousand souls will say they saw it live, even though just 52,654 were actually there.

You’ll remember it forever. The players will, too.

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But the outright absurdity of Game 3’s second act was made possible only by Ohtani’s brilliance in the first. The Dodgers’ two-way supernova — who, by the way, will start Game 4 on the mound Tuesday — finished the evening 4-for-4 with 2 home runs, 2 doubles and 5 walks, 4 of which were intentional. That performance represented most of Los Angeles’ offensive output before extra innings. Teoscar Hernández poked a solo shot in the second, and Freddie Freeman stroked a game-tying RBI single in the fifth, but the rest — at least, until Freeman hit a walk-off solo blast in the bottom of the 18th — was all Ohtani.

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“Our starting pitcher tomorrow got on base nine times tonight,” Freeman said afterward with a laugh. “Just incredible. It’s just kind of — when you’re that hot, and you’re hitting balls right-center, left-center like Shohei was tonight, you just knew he was feeling good.”

Ohtani’s list of statistical superlatives from Game 3 is downright comical. His two blasts made him the first player ever with three multi-homer games in a single postseason. He became the first player in playoff history to go 4-for-4 with two homers and two doubles. He now has eight home runs this October, tying the all-time Dodgers playoff record. His four extra-base hits in a game tied the Fall Classic record. His intentional walk in the ninth inning was just the second bases-empty free pass in World Series history, followed by the third in the 11th and the fourth in the 15th.

Ohtani started relatively small in this contest, with a ground-rule double to lead off the bottom of the first. Two frames later, he blistered one over the fence, dispatching a Max Scherzer elevated fastball into the right-field seats. In the fifth, with the Dodgers trailing by two, Ohtani curled an RBI double into the backside gap and then scored the tying run on Freeman’s single.

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His final contribution also came with Los Angeles behind. With one out in the seventh and the Jays up one, Toronto pitching coach Pete Walker strolled to the mound for a visit with reliever Seranthony Domínguez. It was an atypical time for a conference, considering that Domínguez had just retired the inning’s leadoff hitter, Andy Pages, on a lazy flyout. Usually, mid-inning visits are reserved for struggling pitchers or pinch-hitters. But for whatever reason, Walker made the walk.

It made absolutely zero difference. On the very first pitch, Domínguez grooved a fastball right down the middle. Ohtani did not miss it, driving one deep and gone to even the score 5-5. It was a quintessential Ohtani swing, a preposterous hack in a phenomenal moment, one that sent Dodger Stadium into revelrous disbelief. It was also the final swing of Ohtani’s night and the last run scored for 11 innings.

With that, John Schneider, Toronto’s endearingly honest skipper, had thoroughly learned his lesson. His club might lose, but Ohtani was not going to beat the Jays again. Schneider proceeded to issue four consecutive free passes — in the ninth, 11th, 13th and 15th innings — to the three-time MVP. It marked the first time in a World Series game and the 10th time in MLB history that a player was intentionally walked four times. Each free pass elicited a wave of groans and boos from the frustrated, sold-out crowd. But each IBB was a no-brainer. Schneider simply wasn’t going to let Ohtani dictate the outcome anymore. It was bad theater but sound strategy.

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“We’ve been talking about him since he got here in 2018,” Freeman said postgame. “We’re still running out of words to describe a once-in-a-10-generational player.”

Then the game lasted long enough and entered into such an outrageous realm that Schneider was somehow given the opportunity to change his mind — kind of. In the top of the 17th, with two outs and a runner on first, Toronto southpaw Brendan Little was allowed to face Ohtani. The thinking, you’d imagine, was that Little held the platoon advantage against the DH and that Mookie Betts, the on-deck batter, was a worse matchup. Little walked Ohtani on four pitches anyway before retiring Betts on a pop-up.

When it all finally ended, Ohtani ran out with his teammates to swarm Freeman at home and celebrate the Dodgers’ epic victory and 2-1 series lead.

To add to the absurdity, Ohtani will, less than 18 hours after the final out, toe the slab in Game 4 for the first World Series pitching appearance of his career.

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“I want to go to sleep as soon as possible so I can get ready [for Game 4],” he said postgame on the Fox broadcast.

That reality, combined with the abnormal circumstances of the evening, meant Ohtani was not made available to speak to reporters after Game 3. But as is often the case with baseball’s leading man, his on-field exploits told the story.

“He’s spent,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said postgame. “He’s elated. But, yeah, he’s taking the mound tomorrow. He’ll be ready.”

Ohtani’s performance Monday was equally outrageous and inevitable, unfathomable and destined. This player so regularly redefines our baseball reality, but what he accomplished in Game 3, truly on the sport’s biggest stage, was a cut above.

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Ohtani captured his first World Series ring last October, in his first season with the Dodgers. But his performance in that Fall Classic was relatively forgettable, even though it ended in confetti. He provided no signature moment or game or swing. He felt like a centerpiece of the title run because he is a cultural behemoth, a baseball aircraft carrier, but the glory of 2024 was more Freddie’s and Mookie’s and Walker Buehler’s than Ohtani’s.

Monday was a different story. The marathon didn’t end with Ohtani, but it was made possible by him.