The year in sports: It has been a time of ‘I can’t believe I just saw that’
- The San Juan Daily Star
- 2 days ago
- 8 min read
By LIZ ROBBINS
On a clear October night in Los Angeles, 52,883 fans inside Dodger Stadium witnessed the Japanese phenom Shohei Ohtani do something no baseball player — not even Babe Ruth — had ever accomplished.
Ohtani blasted three home runs for the Dodgers and pitched six shutout innings while striking out 10 Milwaukee Brewers in Game 4 of the National League Championship Series. The performance vaulted Los Angeles into the World Series, where they defeated the Toronto Blue Jays in a spectacular seven-game thriller.
“It’s, in my opinion, the greatest game ever played,” the Dodgers president of baseball operations, Andrew Friedman, said in an interview, still in disbelief.
This was the night that defined sports in 2025, a year full of versatile generational athletes dazzling us all with the seasons of their lives.
Ohtani, 31, won his fourth National League Most Valuable Player Award in his eighth season in the majors. A’ja Wilson, the 6-foot-4 center for the Las Vegas Aces, also won her fourth MVP award for the Women’s National Basketball Association. She lifted her team to its third championship, in a year when women’s sports continued to surge in popularity around the globe.
Tadej Pogacar, the 27-year-old Slovenian cyclist who can climb, descend and dominate grand tours — all with a VO2 max (the maximum volume of oxygen your body can consume while exercising) that’s off the charts — won his fourth Tour de France.
The 20-something tennis stars Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner split the four majors, producing mesmerizing rallies that filled the void left by the retirement of legends Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal. And Rory McIlroy, 36, earned golf’s career Grand Slam when he captured the Masters in a playoff over Justin Rose.
Even if 2025 cemented Hall of Fame legacies, there was more than enough marveling left for the wunderkinds. Eighteen-year-old Spanish footballer Lamine Yamal, still in braces, donned the famed No. 10 jersey for Barcelona, once worn by Lionel Messi and Diego Maradona. He finished second in the Ballon d’Or to Paris Saint-Germain’s Ousmane Dembélé. With his blazing speed and preternatural ball control, Yamal again won soccer’s Kopa Trophy for best under-21 player.
No wonder he draws the inevitable comparisons to the legend Messi, who, at 38, led Inter Miami of Major League Soccer to its first league title this month. Speaking to “60 Minutes,” Yamal predicted World Cup glory for Spain in 2026. The clash of generations awaits.
It’s hard not to be wowed by France’s Victor Wembanyama, who turns 22 next month, and plays center for the San Antonio Spurs. He is at least 7-feet-4 inches tall, depending on your ruler. Nicknamed “Alien” by LeBron James and “Wemby” to the rest of us, he has turned his genetic gifts into must-see TV.
At a time when elite athletes are benefiting from advancing technology and training to improve performance, there are still those unicorns who stand out, for their genes and for their joy. Science can explain it, but only up to a point.
“When it’s so over-the-top like that, it just blows my mind,” Scott Delp, director of the Wu Tsai Human Performance Alliance at Stanford University, said in an interview, referring to Ohtani’s performance. “Even I kind of lose my scientist hat and just say, ‘What we just saw, may never happen again.’ ”
Ohtani is the only two-way player in Major League Baseball. And he only just returned to the mound in June after elbow surgery in 2023.
Entering Game 4 of the NLCS, Ohtani had been mired in an uncharacteristic batting slump (3-for-29 in seven previous games) that prompted more than a few (social media) doubts. He went to the batting cage to find the swing that hit 55 home runs and delivered 102 RBIs in the regular season.
Ohtani walked the first batter he faced and then struck out the next three to end the inning, his four-seam fastball reaching 100 mph. Ohtani then hit a leadoff home run (measured at 446 feet). No starting pitcher has ever done that in a playoff game.
He hit another home run in the fourth inning, this time sending it 469 feet over the pavilion roof and out of the park. The ball’s velocity off his bat registered 116.9 mph. Then in the seventh, Ohtani belted his final home run a mere 426 feet. He was named the series MVP.
“I do think it’s partly explained by two things: Obviously Ohtani is a generational athlete, like Willie Mays and Babe Ruth, but he has all the genetic capabilities,” Delp said. “Then he’s really a highly trained athlete like those other generational athletes were not.”
But there’s one other intangible factor that science may not fully explain, Delp added.
“What I do believe is going on is kind of like a vibe,” he said. “Like there’s him, this is happening, and then it builds his confidence, and then he’s utilizing his extreme intrinsic capability, plus all his training to deliver in the moment. And that ability to deliver in the moment is also trained, for sure.”
What’s next?
“If you ask him, it’s eight more World Series championships,” Friedman said of the years left on Ohtani’s $700 million contract with the Dodgers.
But beyond his two-way dominance, Ohtani is low key, a team player. In conversations with manager Dave Roberts and Dodgers’ hitting coaches, Friedman said Ohtani told them he would hit anywhere in the lineup to help the team win.
“He backs it up every day with his actions,” Friedman said. “He’s just the most unassuming superstar player that I’ve ever been around.”
Humility, then, is a championship trait. Take the WNBA star Wilson, who became the first player in the league to ever win four Most Valuable Player Awards. She also became the first to win a championship, be named a Co-Defensive Player of the Year and win a Finals MVP in the same season. And Time magazine named her Athlete of the Year.
After Wilson, 29, led the Aces to their third title in four years, the coach, Becky Hammon, told her to forget talk of Mount Rushmore: “You are the only one. You’re Everest.”
“There’s nobody that’s done what she’s done, what she’s accomplished; she’s not even 30 yet,” Hammon said in a recent interview. “She’s such a deep well of talent, of work ethic, a deep person, a realistic person, a humble person. And I think that humility is part of what makes her so great; the humility allows her to come back better every year.”
When the Aces sunk to a .500 record this past summer, Wilson motivated her teammates not to accept mediocrity. They reeled off 16 straight victories to end the regular season. Wilson led the league in points per game (23.4) and blocks (2.3) and finished with 10.2 rebounds and 3.1 assists.
She’s explosive around the basket and yet can handle the ball like a guard. It’s common to see Wilson block a shot and then go coast to coast for a bucket. Or hit a buzzer-beater — because she can do it all.
“I’m watching film as a coach, but she makes me want to get my fan hands out and give her a standing ovation,” Hammon said. “Because some of the stuff she does, I don’t think the natural eye sometimes catches it, like how good her hands are, how good her feet are, and how rare it is to have it all.”
Who else has it all? Pogacar became the youngest rider to win the Tour de France four times. In 2025, these were among his other standout accomplishments: the World Championships, the European Championships, the Tour of Flanders and his fifth straight Il Lombardia title. (He skipped the Giro d’Italia.)
While Ohtani brought comparisons to Ruth, Pogacar’s all-around dominance, and his attacking style of riding, has evoked debates about whether he is better than Eddy Merckx. The Belgian superstar won the Tour de France five times from 1969 to 1974, in the era before helmets, carbon-fiber bicycles and sports nutritionists.
“He’s just playing in the sand like he’s a kid,” Slovenian cyclist Matej Mohoric said of Pogacar. “Cycling is all he cares about. Not much else. But he just wants to wake up every day, ride his bike and then wake up and go riding the next day.”
In this era, Pogacar’s joy speaks the same language as Ohtani and Wilson.
Look beyond popular team sports, though, to find examples of transcendent athletes. Pole-vaulter Mondo Duplantis, who was born in Louisiana and competes for Sweden, won his third straight pole vault world championship in Tokyo. He soared into the sky to break his own world record — clearing the bar at 6.30 meters, or 20 feet, 8 inches. For the second straight year, he went undefeated in 16 competitions.
Duplantis earned World Athletics’ award for the best male athlete. “I have an immense passion and joy for what I do,” he said, accepting the award. “I’m so obsessed with pole vaulting, and I love pushing myself.”
Sprinter Syndey McLaughlin-Levrone of the United States was named World Athletics’ top female athlete. She, too, has been undefeated for the last two years in her two events: the 400 meters and the 400-meter hurdles.
As 2025 honored these athletes of superhuman talent, it also exposed human fallibility.
Sinner won the Australian Open in January, but was suspended for three months by the World Anti-Doping Agency. Two of his tests in 2024 showed trace amounts of an anabolic steroid. Sinner denied using performance-enhancing drugs and claimed the substance entered his body because of a healing spray his former physiotherapist used on a cut finger before massaging him. Sinner, 24, won the ATP Tour Finals, but lost the year-end No. 1 ranking to Alcaraz.
Illegal gambling scandals involving NBA and Major League Baseball players rocked sports, even as legalized sports betting expanded in the United States. Chauncey Billups, the Portland Trail Blazers coach and a Hall of Fame point guard, was arrested in October as part of a wide-ranging FBI sting into an illegal poker ring run by the Mafia.
Former NBA player Damon Jones was also arrested in connection with his role in that scheme. In a separate federal case, Jones was also charged with passing insider knowledge about NBA players during games. Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier was arrested on the same charge in that case.
Cleveland Guardians pitchers Emmanuel Clase and Luis Ortiz were arrested on charges of fraud, conspiracy and bribery. Federal prosecutors said they threw rigged pitches that allowed bettors to win large amounts of money.
The availability of legal sports gambling — even during games inside arenas and stadiums where fans bet from their phones — raises the probability of more scandals as the lines continue to blur. Athletes, who use social media to build their personal brands, are also frequent targets, often from irate betters.
Technology, of course, has two sides. It has also been responsible for innovation and elevated performances across sports. How much better will athletes get as science advances?
Consider their future competition. At the Humanoid Robot Games held in Beijing this past summer, the robots kept falling down.
For now, we can celebrate the real thing.
