Editor’s Note: This is the second in a series of stories where Dodger broadcasters reflect on their favorite call from 2025.
Previous story:
Joe Davis on Freeman’s World Series walk-off
by Megan Garcia
The Event:
Shohei Ohtani’s second home run during his masterful performance in Game 4 of the National League Championship Series against the Brewers.
On the Call:
José Mota
The Call:
“Tres y uno va al derechó. ¿Dónde va a caer esta?
¡Sayōnara! Se lo llevó todo. Todo, todo, todo. Por el derecho, Shohei Ohtani. ¡Increible!”
José Mota, Dodger Spanish broadcaster, marveled at the second home run by Shohei Ohtani during a balmy postseason night in October. It sounded different from his leadoff homer, and by the looks of it, a lot farther, too.
He wondered just how far it went.
He remembered seeing Willie Stargell (1969, 1973), Mike Piazza (1997) and Giancarlo Stanton (2015) crushing home runs out of Dodger Stadium with similar distance.
Heck, he saw Kyle Schwarber do it just the week before with the Phillies.
So, Mota looked to his computer and quickly pulled up the Statcast data:
- Distance: 469 feet
- Exit Velocity: 117 mph
The ball was hit out of Dodger Stadium. The veteran play-by-play announcer sat in his seat in the Jaime Jarrín Spanish Broadcast Booth bewildered.
“Oh, my goodness.” Mota thought to himself. “How is he doing this?”
The only sounds heard on the airwaves were the Dodger Stadium crowd roaring with jubilee. The roar, cheer and applause painted the picture perfectly of Ohtani’s fourth-inning home run in Game 4 of the National League Championship Series.
Mota was intentional with his silence on the microphone. He wanted fans to speak to the moment, not him. And they were unknowingly at the halfway point of one of the greatest postseason games by a single player.
That’s why it’s his favorite call of the 2025 season.
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“I want to let the crowd speak. I want to let the moment breathe, and it gets amplified,” Mota said. “You can hear the ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’ from the fans. And this is the most ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’ I’ve heard in almost 30 years of broadcasting.”
The call needed to be natural. But he also wanted to capture the significance of the moment. While also analyzing the ball’s trajectory into right center field.
All of these thoughts raced through his head in six seconds — from the crack of Ohtani’s bat to the ball flying over the roof.
“I want fans to feel like they’re right there next to me, but (I) have to be disconnected emotionally, otherwise your calls are not going to be natural,” Mota said. “You’ve got to keep the flow, understand the moment. You cannot prepare for this. You cannot be mechanical or robotic. We’re the instrument.”
Ohtani, as the Dodgers’ designated hitter, had already homered and walked against the Brewers when he stepped up to the plate in the fourth inning on Oct. 17. His first-inning home run measured 446 feet, his fifth-longest homer of the year at that point.
Ohtani, as the Dodgers’ starting pitcher, was scoreless through four innings with six strikeouts.
The Dodgers had a 3–0 lead entering the fourth inning. They also had the same lead in the series. Another win would make them the first reigning champion to return to the World Series in 25 years.
To accomplish that feat in four games, Ohtani’s performance was going to take center stage as the №4 starter and leadoff hitter. Mota remembered one of the main concerns by sports media leading up to the night: Ohtani’s .158 batting average (6-for-38) in nine postseason games.
For Mota, who has been front row for Ohtani’s career since his 2018 debut with the Angels, he knew the offensive tides would turn eventually.
“People were talking about moving him (down in the lineup) and all these things, and I’m like, ‘Leave the man alone,’” Mota said. “Shohei doesn’t want his name to be associated with anything else but excellence, preparation and results. It’s not about one guy; it’s about nine guys.
“He was going to flip the switch, and the script, too.”
Ohtani added another homer to his Game 4 ledger in the seventh. He went 3-for-3 with one walk at the plate. On the mound, he tossed six scoreless innings with 10 strikeouts. He was eventually crowned the NLCS Most Valuable Player.
Once the confetti settled in the celebration aftermath, Mota’s curious mind took him to Los Dodgers on Instagram. He wondered how his call of Ohtani’s second home run sounded.
Relief washed over him.
“Oh, man — what a moment,” Mota said. “I was there, man. I was a broadcaster for it.”
Behind the Mic: José Mota calls Ohtani’s moonshot and masterpiece was originally published in Dodger Insider on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.