A BILLION DOLLARS BETTER BE ENOUGH FOR THE DODGERS, AS THE "OMG" METS WIN
All eyeballs will be on Ohtani and Yamamoto, who are worth 149.4 billion yen, and they are pressured to survive an epic Game 5 after the crazy Mets advanced to the NLCS with a Lindor grand slam
They are worth more than $1 billion, or 149.4 billion yen. Do we understand what should be expected from Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto on a Friday night in Los Angeles? These are the highest-paid teammates in the history of baseball, in the history of sport, in the history of Planet Earth with affluence that should place them in the Guggenheim Museum when they are paid by Guggenheim Partners.
Yet, what if Yamamoto tips pitches for his $325 million? His manager, Dave Roberts, yelped after Game 1: “I think at second base they had some things with his glove and giving away some pitches. We're going to clean that up. It's on us to not give away what pitch he's going to throw." For his $325 million, he gave up a home run, a double and a walk while a runner was on second base.
So, with relievers who have pitched 15 scoreless innings in two victories, why not return to the bullpen? Why use Yamamoto when starters have combined for a 10.14 earned-run average? Who cares about management brainlessness when the Dodgers handed him the biggest contract made by a pitcher? Another bullpen game?
“It’s a good thought,” Roberts said.
Yamamoto will pitch in Game 5 if he doesn’t start. Ohtani is 2-for-13 with seven strikeouts since he hit a home run in the series opener. Wednesday night, he screamed at third-base umpire Mark Ripperger when a ball bounced off him directly to Manny Machado, who threw out Ohtani at home plate. He is feeling the stress.
Imagine, if you can, the thought that Ohtani chose the wrong damned ballclub? What if he can’t win a World Series for the Dodgers, who have triumphed only in a pandemic since 1988 and might be considered a godforsaken drag pit for Japanese disasters? A “sabi-reta,” they would shout back home. Should he have looked south, to San Diego? Where Petco Park has been a rascally stage that has Mike Shildt — a sober manager for years in the Midwest — discussing “parties” as “Beat LA” garb is sold by the shiploads?
Or, does Ohtani have one more night to hit three more home runs and drive in 10?
One team or the other will advance in the postseason, at Dodger Stadium, where LAPD cops should abandon all projects except murders. Last weekend, the Padres mocked the home team and caused fans to throw hard objects on the field, such as injurious baseballs and beer cans. If Ohtani loses an untamed series where nothing is predictable, including a reliever-daffy 8-0 win by the Dodgers, Roberts will be dislodged as a manager for cultural salvation. And we’ll wonder why the reigning guru of slugging and basestealing can’t win in October for his $700 million.
Or, does Ohtani have one more evening to rally humankind to his side?
“I’m proud. Your desire’s got to be more than your opponent’s,” Roberts said. “It’s win or go home, and that kind of fight or flight mentality. I know they’re not scared of the moment. It makes me excited about Game 5.”
Baseball should be bonkers. When football has the biggest eyeballs and the baddest gamblers, why not summon the zanies? If the Mets are symbolized by a purple mascot named Grimace, the Padres might send the wagging tongue of Fernando Tatis Jr. to kiss him. The National League championship series will be Mets vs. Dodgers or Mets vs. Padres, both bicoastal and neither believable. And if the winner somehow plays the Detroit Tigers in the World Series, well, crowds should arrive in the nude to celebrate irrationality.
There will be days in Philadelphia when Bryce Harper wonders if he’ll never win a championship. For now, focus on the Mets’ clubhouse, where champagne and beer were accompanied by the “OMG” signs while New York looks for the McDonald’s goof. A seat in Citi Field is painted purple. Trains leave from Hudson Yards with all 11 cars featuring the creature who threw a first pitch on June 12 and managed to reverse a losing season.
The Grimace Effect, they call it, along with a pumpkin and Jose Iglesias’ team-bonding anthem. The Mets are on a 72-42 roll when entranced.
Sure beats when the Astros cheated with electronic sign-stealing.
“Nobody has us anywhere near close to this moment. We will continue to believe,” said manager Carlos Mendoza, hugged by owner Steve Cohen, who transformed in one season from a hedge-fund clown to a playoff king. “The whole time, I was like this is who we are. This is part of the story. This is part of the book, the movie, whatever you want to call it.”
“I came here to win the World Series,” said Francisco Lindor, whose sixth-inning grand slam Wednesday left his team eight victories from his drama.
“Let's keep this thing rolling!" slugger Pete Alonso said. “So proud of this group. We've overcome so much."
It’s still a possibility, too grotesque for most Americans, that the Mets and Yankees will play in a Subway Series. The Yankees should get past an inferior American League field and send Aaron Judge to a place where, hopefully, he’ll match Ohtani in an all-time power surge. First, the Dodgers must survive pitcher Yu Darvish, who was brilliant in a 10-2 victory in Game 2 and starts Game 5. Before the game, Roberts asked Max Muncy if the team was ready.
“I told him, ‘Hey, we got this,’ ’’ he said.
“We have a bunch of grinders, a bunch of fighters,” Mookie Betts said after another first-inning home run. “I’m not trying to win the game for us. We got plenty of guys who can win games for us.”
“We have the players and the people that can make this happen,” Teoscar Hernandez said. “And I trust every single guy in that clubhouse.”
Such a dream would come at the expense of the Padres, who have turned San Diego into their own priestdom. “It's good to get two, but it doesn't matter until we get three,” Shildt said. You worry more about the psychos in the Los Angeles mob than the Padres, who showed they could win and disrupt the mood. Machado threw a between-innings ball at Roberts, who was protected by a net, and Shildt defended his veteran. “That team over there, they like the villain-type kind of role,” Roberts said.
The next few hours will bring more lunacy. The Mets, meanwhile, will rest and thank Cohen for spending $341 million on Lindor. “That 341 is looking pretty freakin’ good right now,” the owner said.
Now we wait to see how the $700 million player and the $325 million pitcher fare.
A billion bucks, for one night, with the fans ready to celebrate or devour.
###
Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.