SPORT’S GREATEST “WOW” EXPERIENCE — OHTANI — BELONGS IN HOLLYWOOD

After another night of historic wonderment, it’s obvious the two-way marvel must be showcased on a bigger stage than Anaheim, with Dodger Stadium and a career of Octobers beckoning only 31 miles away

     Orange County isn’t Hollywood, nor does it want to be. Maybe Shohei Ohtani is content with life on the quieter side of southern California’s cultural moat, where he lives in a simple three-bedroom apartment near the ballpark and doesn’t have to encounter a single Kardashian or hate crime. Maybe he loves a subdued media corps and well-behaved fans who’ve come to chant “MVP!” with regularity, though he shares a dugout with another all-time great, Mike Trout.

     “It’s always a good feeling to hear that,” Ohtani said through his mop-topped interpreter, Ippei Mizuhara, who is becoming well-known in his own right. “It gives me a lot of motivation to do better.”

     But if the Angels continue to waste the Ohtani Era and miss the playoffs for the sixth straight season — and even if they do slip in via an American League wild-card berth — Anaheim is not a stage worthy of his eminence. What we’re witnessing is sport at its historic apex, a marvel who routinely hits and pitches and relentlessly excels at both functions without a hint of slippage, a spectacle astounding and sensational enough to keep one-upping itself. “We’re seeing things every day that we’ve never seen before, and you try not to take it for granted. I don’t think many of us do,” said his manager, Phil Nevin, who is gobsmacked at this point.

     “It’s a wow factor.”

     Ohtani has revolutionized the art form of double-dipping, not only in baseball but throughout the athletic kingdom. Babe Ruth? The Show Hey Kid blew away that comparison a while ago, as he reminded again Tuesday night, hitting two home runs and pitching 6 1/3 innings of one-run ball in a 4-2 victory over the Chicago White Sox. One of those belts came shortly after he was forced to abandon his mound duties, leaving with a cracked nail on his middle finger. His strikeout total: 10. “That actually happened a couple of innings earlier, and he was fine,” Nevin said.

     “It was a small crack before the game and gradually got worse. I came out of the game before it got too bad, so the plan is to go on schedule,” said Ohtani, unfazed and preparing for his next start in San Diego.

     No one will accuse him of flipping the bird toward Angel Stadium if he flees in free agency after the season, as anticipated. We all can agree that his wonders must be showcased on a higher platform, where he’ll be appropriately hyped in a national context — global, actually — and not be dropped to the fourth-story hole on “SportsCenter” because he plays beside a snarl of freeways somewhere near Disneyland and Knott’s Berry Farm. The obvious destination is 31 miles away, in Chavez Ravine, where the Dodgers have made the playoffs the past 10 seasons, winning a World Series and three National League pennants since 2017. Dodger Stadium is baseball Hollywood. Ohtani should be there, in blue, if not in New York, which he wouldn’t like because the weather is cold and too many fans are loons. 

     Thus, I’m assuming he’ll ditch the apartment and head northwest, up I-5, based on something he said two years ago. “I really like the team,” he said then. “I love the fans. I love the atmosphere of the team. But more than that, I want to win. That’s the biggest thing for me. So I’ll leave it at that.” We’ll read between the polite lines: Ohtani is tired of returning to Japan at the start of every October. He wants to conquer October — just as he conquered the planet at the World Baseball Classic — and he can’t do that with the Angels as long as Arte Moreno is their clumsy owner. They haven’t made the playoffs since 2014, when they were swept in their only series, and haven’t had a winning record since 2015, which is unconscionable when he has played with Trout for six seasons.

     They don’t draw the way they should, with attendance dropping to 2.4 million last year — 1.5 million fewer than the Dodgers — in a bland, aging ballpark. And the franchise has been rocked by turmoil ranging from corrupt politics in Anaheim to the drug death of pitcher Tyler Skaggs, who choked on his own vomit with a cocktail of fentanyl, oxycodone and alcohol in his system — drugs provided to him and other players by the team’s communications director, Eric Kay, who was sentenced to 22 years in prison last October. It’s only natural, given the resources and tradition of the Dodgers, to simply change uniforms and stay in SoCal, with its warmer weather and convenient access to his native Japan. Guggenheim Baseball hasn’t hid a desire to spend upwards of $600 million on Ohtani, choosing not to pay Trea Turner or buy a high-priced pitcher last winter while promoting a semi-youth movement this season. The Dodgers are waiting for Shohei. Even manager Dave Roberts couldn’t resist a slight acknowledgment.

     “I don’t think there’s a manager that wouldn’t love Shohei,” he said when asked last week. “But right now he’s an Angel, so I want to get hits off him and I want him to get out four times. That’s what I want. And I can’t afford tampering charges.”

     As for Ohtani, he continues to be the team player and tip-toe through inquiries about his future. “This is my last year and I’m aware of that,” he said. “As of now, I’m an Angel and that’s all I’m going to focus on. I haven’t really thought too far ahead.” At present, the Angels are 44-37 and locked in a challenging race for the AL’s final two wild-cards with the Yankees, Blue Jays and Astros. Two of those four teams won’t qualify. If the Angels miss again, it will make zero sense to stay in a place where only 33,637 showed up on a pleasant June evening to watch more history. Dodger Stadium would have been sold out. There should be a greater appreciation for his unprecedented exploits — he leads the major leagues in OPS (1.039), home runs (28) and RBIs (64) as a batter; no pitcher has allowed a lower batting average (.180) and only two have more strikeouts (127) to go with a 3.02 ERA. His wins above replacement number, 5.7, is MLB’s best by far.

     So why is this phenomenon playing out at a county fair? “Every game somehow seems to get even crazier watching him play,” Angels catcher Chad Wallach said. Shohei turns 29 next week, giving him a reasonable five seasons of two-way mastery before falling off, perhaps, as a workhorse starting pitcher. Injuries always will be in the conversation, given his uncommon wear and tear, which is all the more reason why the Show Hey Kid must be maximized in a place worthy of his stature.

     That would be Hollywood. Smile for the cameras. Ignore the Kardashians.

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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.