You've never seen an Ohtani 'homer' quite like this one

ANAHEIM -- Shohei Ohtani just kept running.

He had just driven a ball into the right-field corner, where it landed fair, but looked like it was going to bounce out of play. Angels right fielder Jo Adell threw his hands up as the ball hit the netting, then dropped back into the field of play.

One run crossed the plate, then another. Ohtani kept motoring around the bases all the while. Adell threw the ball back into the infield, where it trickled toward the plate as Ohtani slid home safely. Angels manager Kurt Suzuki argued that it was a dead ball, but to no avail: The umpires gathered and confirmed that the ball had been live the whole time, and the play was scored a triple and E-9.

Then Mookie Betts went back-to-back with a long ball that required no verification as the Dodgers piled on late in an eventual 15-2 rout of the Angels on Saturday night. The Dodgers have won four in a row and could sweep the Anaheim edition of the Freeway Series in Sunday afternoon's finale.

Prior to Ohtani's Little League homer off Alek Manoah in the eighth inning, the Dodgers hadn't done a whole lot of hitting to get on the board. They opened the scoring on Will Smith's first-inning sacrifice fly, then plated five runs on four walks, two hit batsmen and a base hit in the sixth inning. But this Dodgers lineup is capable of a lot of pop, and they provided that late.

The ball Ohtani hit in the eighth inning remained live according to the universal ground rules for all 30 ballparks: "A live ball (batted, thrown or otherwise) striking any screen or protective netting set on the field facing a wall or railing (e.g., a backstop or protective netting along the first- or third-base lines) and rebounding onto the field is live and in play."

It was Ohtani's first Little League home run in the Major Leagues, and he wasn't done, bringing home another trio of runs on a bases-clearing double as part of a five-run ninth inning for the Dodgers. That gave them a season-high 15 runs, a strong performance for an offense looking to put a recent team-wide slump in the past.