IN DODGER STADIUM, SECURITY STORMS A FAN WITH A FAMOUS OHTANI BALL
Why attend a game when staffers surround you in the outfield, demanding you give up a historic home-run ball for a low price, while Ohtani claims to have talked with you when a meeting never happened?
Outside the ravine at 1000 Vin Scully Avenue, where an elementary school was buried in a 1960s parking lot and not disassembled, the police seem to take Dodger Dog breaks. Troublemaking happens. Thuggery wreaks. Attackers almost killed a Giants fan and left him with brain damage.
But inside the home of the Los Angeles Dodgers, don’t mess with the security staff when you’re holding a famous baseball. You might be physically separated from your husband and forced to make a life decision. Bryan Stow, who was beaten beyond the stadium gates 13 years ago, must wonder why the cops were so quick to reach Ambar Roman in the outfield pavilion Wednesday night.
She knew the souvenir at her feet had been ripped by Shohei Ohtani, who finally celebrated his first home run for his new team as a gambling investigation messed with his mind. When she picked up the ball, Roman suddenly was fenced off from her husband, Alexis Valenzuela, and forced to deal with lowballing cops who wanted to give her merely two Ohtani-signed caps — wait, where’s the monstrous goody bag? — for the history she was clutching.
This is the richest superstar in North American team sports, with a $700 million contract. An illegal bookmaker in Orange County wonders if Ohtani was gambling on sports with his since-fired interpreter. The Dodgers should have provided loads of future tickets in box seats along with Ohtani-licensed jerseys, bats, balls, caps and apparel along with a post-game dugout photo with the star and a lifetime supply of grilled hot dogs. If a wife and husband had managed to authenticate the magic ball, they would have earned at least hundreds of thousands. None of that happened.
Instead, Roman was tricked into giving up the ball for two signed caps, a signed bat and some phony ball. Who knew security people were such gyppers? Once Valenzuela realized he wouldn’t be tossed in jail, he said they felt swindled as joyous fans of the Dodgers. “We’re not trying to extort anyone. It’s not that we’re money hungry. It’s just that it’s a special moment, it’s a special ball,” he told the Athletic. “I just think it’s fair for it to be equally rewarded. I was disappointed that a team that I hold so dear pulled a quote-unquote ‘quick one’ on us.”
Worse? How did Ohtani handle the scene afterward? Through his new interpreter, Will Ireton, he said merrily, “I was able to talk to the fan, and was able to get it back. Obviously, it’s a very special ball, a lot of feelings toward it. I’m very grateful that it’s back.” News flash: He did not talk to either fan, both of whom are 28. A meeting never happened. Security gave him the baseball. Life carried on, though without those warm and fuzzy feelings of Dodger Blue on game telecasts.
“They really took advantage of her,” Valenzuela said. “There were a bunch of (security) guys around her. They wouldn’t let me talk to her or give her any advice. There was no way for us to leave. They had her pretty much cornered in the back.”
“They didn’t want him to influence my decision. At least that’s how I took it,” Roman said. “It was a little pressuring. Especially because it was like, ‘I need you to give me an answer like right now. You gotta make up your mind.’ ’’
So far, after two weeks in a regular-season uniform, Ohtani has been a disaster in Dodger Stadium. He has yet to explain publicly how nine wire transfers containing his name were used by Ippei Mizuhara, totaling $4.5 million when some ask if Ohtani was gambling as well. Is he playing dumb for his longtime friend? Will we ever know what happened? Aren’t the Guggenheim ownership crew and MLB commissioner Rob Manfred hoping this goes away before they find out? Now, the team can’t handle one fan situation without a farce.
“Where was the Dodger love that we see every day, every time we go,” Valenzuela said. “It just disappeared. We were kind of left stranded. It’s not necessarily that we wanted a million. Just something nice. Take care of your fans. Especially when they got something that’s way more valuable.”
Fans? The team doesn’t care about fans. They show up to pay Ohtani’s money, and if they don’t give up the ball, they might be knifed in the belly. Meanwhile, out in the parking lot, someone might need security’s help — such as Bryan Stow, who remembers the friend who dove on him.
“He said, ‘Bryan, I saw your brain.’ My skull was split open that much that he saw my brain,” he said. “I had five cardiac arrests that night in the hospital.”
Never mind. Shohei got his baseball. Dodger Dogs await the cops!
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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.