Weekend sports highlights

A weekend built for highlight reels stretched from Major League Baseball to the National Basketball Association, with Shohei Ohtani, Jackson Merrill, the Tampa Bay Rays and Clint Capela all delivering clips that spread fast online. (mlb.com 1) (mlb.com 2) (mlb.com 3) (nba.com) Ohtani’s loudest early-April swing came on April 5, when the Los Angeles Dodgers star hit a solo home run 438 feet to center field against Washington on a cutter from Mason Griffin. Major League Baseball’s video page listed the ball at 114.6 miles per hour off the bat. (mlb.com) That swing landed four days after Ohtani’s 2026 pitching debut on April 1, when he threw six scoreless innings with six strikeouts against Cleveland in a 4-1 Dodgers win. The same week gave fans another reminder that the Dodgers are again using him as a two-way player. (mlb.com) Merrill’s featured moment came on April 5 at Fenway Park, where the San Diego Padres outfielder hit an eighth-inning go-ahead home run in an 8-6 win over Boston. The Padres’ recap said Merrill’s blast put San Diego ahead 7-6 after Boston had tied the game. (mlb.com) That game also marked San Diego’s highest run total and hit total of the season at that point, with eight runs and 12 hits. The Padres entered that Sunday tied for last in the majors with 24 runs through eight games before breaking out offensively at Fenway. (mlb.com) In Tampa Bay, the Rays finished a three-game sweep of the New York Yankees over April 10 through April 12. The club’s scoreboard showed 5-4 wins on April 11 and April 12 after a win on April 10. (mlb.com 1) (mlb.com 2) (mlb.com 3) The sweep came early in the American League East race, with Tampa Bay sitting at 6-7 on April 13 and New York at 8-5 when the teams met again Monday. That kept the Rays’ weekend from being just a viral footnote and turned it into a standings boost. (mlb.com) The National Basketball Association clip was stranger: Capela, a 6-foot-10 center, made the first three-pointer of his career on April 12 in Houston’s 132-101 win over Memphis. The National Basketball Association’s game recap said he had missed his first seven career three-point attempts before hitting that shot early in the fourth quarter. (nba.com) Basketball-Reference listed Sunday as Capela’s 738th regular-season game, which means the shot arrived in his 739th appearance if that game is included. He paired the make with a season-high 23 points and 13 rebounds as Houston rested several starters after locking up the Western Conference’s fifth seed. (basketball-reference.com) (nba.com) The thread running through all four moments was timing: Ohtani is back pitching and hitting, Merrill is helping lift a slow Padres offense, the Rays used close wins to sweep a division rival, and Capela found a new line for his stat page on the last day of the regular season. By Sunday night, one sports weekend had produced clips from two leagues and four very different kinds of milestones. (mlb.com 1) (mlb.com 2) (mlb.com 3) (nba.com)