THEY’RE TOO POLITE TO SAY SO, BUT OHTANI AND TROUT ARE SCREWED

At some point, baseball’s biggest names will realize they’re Angels in hell, incapable of reaching October — much less winning a World Series — with a franchise wasting their supertalents

     Call them what they are: icons, ambassadors, rock stars, saviors, gifts to humanity. They’re the best two reasons to invest in a waning American experience, a day or night at a Major League Baseball game. Even when one is hurt, the other is why you make an appointment Tuesday evening to watch the All-Star Game, as Shohei Ohtani appears in concert with Clayton Kershaw and Aaron Judge in the Dodger Stadium sunshine.

     The Sho-Hey Kid and Mike Trout — notice how Ohtani has leapfrogged into first billing — would win any name-recognition contest regarding the industry’s best-known and most popular players. They’re eminently likable and humble, too, no small feat in a sports world filled with malcontents and trade-demanders. Ohtani is among the most compelling baseball stories ever, already one-upping Babe Ruth as a two-way, double-trouble force whose pitching mastery is working in potent harmony with his slugging exploits. Trout, simply, will be remembered as one of the greatest players of his generation. Both are on track to be first-ballot Hall of Famers.

     When I attended a game last season, with 9,205 others in a coronavirus-restricted environment, they hit back-to-back home runs that rocketed past me down the first-base line. I told the person beside me, not a baseball fan, to stand and cheer and savor the moment until death.

     In what seemed a fortuitous confluence of kismet, both were dropped by the gods onto the same plot of green grass, in southern California, just down the street from an amusement park known as “The Happiest Place on Earth.” The Ohtani/Trout show should be the biggest extravaganza in sports, a rare collaboration of complimentary superstars who’ve combined for four American League MVP awards and countless oohs and ahhs.

     There’s just one very bizarre, confounding and unfixable problem here. Their time with the Angels, who claim Los Angeles as an address though they play 30 miles away in Anaheim, has been a devilish descent through hell for both. It’s beyond painful watching Ohtani and Trout make history while the team assembled around them crashes, season after season, with the current mess entering the All-Star break at a gobsmacking 39-53 after a 24-13 start. It means the Angels once again will miss the playoffs and suffer a seventh straight losing season. It means Trout, subjected to this abysmal crud for a dozen years, still will have reached the postseason just once, when the Angels were swept in their only 2014 series. It means Ohtani will return to Japan immediately after the regular season for the fifth time. It means Angel Stadium is The Unhappiest Place in Baseball.

     It also prolongs the most galling waste of talent in modern sports, an exercise in failed team construction that is stunning in its repeated failure. In a sport that needs all the positive thrills and story lines it can load into a mostly empty canister, doesn’t it figure that baseball’s two hottest names — still more celebrated nationally (and globally) than Judge, and more accomplished than Juan Soto and his insufficient $440-million contract offer — are forced to annually step off stage when the largest audience is watching?

     Needless to say, the Angels aren’t worthy of either. A cursed franchise has placed a pox on two mega-talents who otherwise are unstoppable. At some point, Ohtani and Trout will realize they might never play autumn baseball — much less reach the World Series — with a dysfunctional operation. Trout, in particular, is starting to be worn down by the losing, which is manifesting in peculiar ways. He can’t stay healthy, with upper-back spasms and left ribcage inflammation sidelining him for the All-Star Game — he’s on the 10-day injured list, again — after he missed most of last season with a calf strain. He’d planned to have his 2-year-old son, Beckham, at the game as a child begins to grasp his father’s magnitude. That experience still will happen, which shouldn’t surprise anyone who knows Trout. He keeps his promises, to his boy and his fans.

     “This will be my first time bringing my son onto the field. I think that’s a special moment for me,’’ Trout told the media Monday. “The fans voted me in, and they’re spending their hard-earned money for tickets, which are expensive. So to be able to be here and interact with them as much as I can, it means a lot to them. It means a lot to me.”

     When the first pitch arrives, Trout might wonder what is happening to his championship dreams, while Ohtani entertains viewers as the American League’s starting designated hitter for the second straight year. This time, he and his representatives have decided he won’t pitch, though he likely would have started on the mound. He’ll open the game facing Kershaw, the homeboy legend — with phone videos and flashes lighting up the storied ballpark — and try to break an 0-for-8 personal drought against the lefty. “I don’t know how I got him out,” Kershaw said. “I guess I’ll try to get him out again tomorrow and see what happens.”

     Trout’s bounceback season was rudely interrupted by a fantasy-football fiasco that engulfed a sports nation, when Tommy Pham slapped Joc Pederson, then called Trout a bad commissioner. Next thing you knew, Trout was being exposed on high fastballs, enduring two long slumps and striking out with alarming regularity. He still was Mike Trout at home, with a major-league best OPS of 1.194, but in road games, he was Mike Pout, his OPS dropping to .738. In the last three weeks, he has managed one multi-hit game and six total RBIs. The team’s general manager, Perry Minasian, fired manager Joe Maddon, who’d exhibited he could overcome curses by winning a World Series with the Cubs, and the Angels have continued their chronic losing under interim Phil Nevin. The low point came when Trout, a consummate team player, mocked reliever Elvis Peguero for tipping pitches during a blowout loss.

     Elvis left the building. Sometime soon, might Trout join him?

     Never, ever would Trout join the defection mob that petulantly demands an escape hatch out of sour situations. He is loyal, in a sports culture of betrayers, and knows he’s in the fourth season of a 12-year, $426.5 million contract. The deal has no opt-out clause, so if he wanted out, he’d have to kick and scream and go public. He is not one to kick and scream, even if he privately might ponder life in Philadelphia, near his boyhood home in New Jersey. Or if the Yankees, with the best record in the majors, would routinely serve his October interests.

     “I signed the contract, and this is where I want to be," Trout said in his only recent comments on the subject. "A lot of people are like, ‘Oh, he wants to be traded. Do this. Do that.’ I want to win. Everybody knows that. Going into the year, this isn't where we wanted to be, obviously. Everybody knows that.”

     Of the Minasian regime, he said diplomatically: “Obviously, this isn't the way they wanted it. I know it's not. They've got a winning mindset up there. They are doing everything they can to put a winning team out there. We've gotta go out there and play. That's the biggest thing. It falls on the players. We're not performing.”

     If he broke down and politely asked for a new address, everyone would understand. Beyond the losing, the Angels are a troubled operation run by an owner, Arte Moreno, who spends money but doesn’t get bang for his bucks and can’t avoid crises. How did Moreno not know that a public-relations staffer, Eric Kay, was supplying players with drugs — including pitcher Tyler Skaggs, who died of an overdose (a mixture of “alcohol, fentanyl and oxycodone,” per the toxicology report) on a Texas road trip in 2019? Skaggs’ family is suing the Angels in a case that continues to haunt the team. Their ancient stadium needs a substantial overhaul, but Moreno can’t make a deal with Anaheim’s city fathers, including a mayor who ran afoul of the FBI in a corruption scandal and resigned. The only element saving the Angels is a massive population base, but they’ve never seemed less relevant in the shadow of the Dodgers, who’ve spent a fortune on modernizing their Chavez Ravine cathedral and annually contend for championships.

     Maybe Trout, still 30, has a little time to wait for Minasian, who arrived last year and addressed a longtime weakness — pitching — by selecting pitchers with all 20 of his picks in last year’s draft. The strategy already is paying dividends, with arm skill helping the Angels’ Class AA affiliate to the Southern League’s first-half title. But Ohtani has more urgency. He is eligible for free agency after the 2023 season, and with Soto’s contract likely to crash the $500-million barrier after the Washington Nationals trade him, Ohtani can make an airtight case for more money.

     He offers two All-Star forces, after all, in one body. Having just turned 28, couldn’t he demand $600 million? I am not joking. And wouldn’t money-bagging Mets owner Steve Cohen give it consideration in New York, even if his brethren castrate him? Wouldn’t the Yankees weigh it if Judge leaves this offseason? The Guggenheim Dodgers would think about it. Though his agents insist Ohtani is happy, his only words on the topic — last offseason, before he won the AL’s MVP award — hang thick by the Big A sign in the stadium parking lot.

     Said Ohtani: “I really like the team. 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. I’ll leave it at that.” He spoke further Monday, remaining non-committal about his future when he told the Los Angeles Times in Japanese: “As long as I’m with the Angels, I want to do my job the best I can. I don’t know what’s going to happen in the future, but, like I said, I’d like to focus game by game on what I have to do, pitching and hitting.”

     Since May 15, the Angels have lost 40 of 55 games. They’re 10 games out of the AL’s third and final wild-card spot. As the media gather in L.A. for the All-Star Game, rumors will fly about Ohtani’s future. How possibly can he be happy? During the recent losing streaks, he somehow went 6-0 as a starter and pieced together a 31-inning scoreless run, with double-digit strikeout performances in each of his last four starts. Tampa Bay’s Shane McClanahan was numerically deserving as the All-Star starter, but screw the data. America wanted Ohtani vs. Kershaw, if just for an inning, and AL manager Dusty Baker was willing.

     No-tani, said Shohei, who is lined up to pitch the Angels’ first game after the break Friday in Atlanta. “He’s not just an All-Star — he’s a megastar,” Baker said. “I mean, he’s one of the top offensive players and one of the top pitchers around. And he’s smart. I can tell by the way he plays the game that he’s not only talented but he’s smart.” Ohtani is ingrained in American sports culture now, to the point the Japanese people are asking why their native son is bulked up like a football player.

     “In the last five years his body has become bigger and stronger. We see that he’s become an American — not a Japanese,” Fumihiro Fujisawa, president of Japan’s Association of American Baseball Research, told the Associated Press.

     You can be sure Ohtani will be front and center in the event of a tie after nine innings Tuesday night. In what we’ll call the Bud Selig Rule — remember when the ex-commissioner declared the 2002 All-Star Game a 7-7 tie after both teams ran out of pitchers, a black eye for the sport — a Home Run Derby would break the deadlock and decide a winner. Surely, Ohtani will be one of six sluggers — three from each league — to take three swings apiece. Imagine if he determines the outcome.

     The Sho-Hey Kid won’t be the 14th player to win back-to-back MVPs, as long as Judge dominates the season in the Bronx. But the fact he’s in the conversation, with an awful team, speaks volumes for his character and unprecedented impact. He will not give up on the season, even if Moreno gently nudges Minasian to hear out trade proposals for either player. If that sounds preposterous, remember that the absence of loyalty works two ways in sports. Who ever thought the Atlanta Braves would wave goodbye to franchise icon Freddie Freeman, after he led them to a World Series title, and let him escape to the rival Dodgers? For now, the Angels are trying to calm fans who have no faith in Moreno and his revolving door of GMs.

     “There’s definitely a formula to win around them and it’s a deeper team,” Minasian said of Ohtani and Trout. “I definitely see a roadmap to putting a competitive team on the field with those guys. They're great players, they've really performed well. I think they deserve all the accolades they get daily. I think they're two of the best players in baseball and we're lucky to have them.”

     Still, he stopped short of saying he wouldn’t listen to rival executives. “If there's really good players on your team, for the most part, you get called and asked about them,” Minasian said. “So you don't hang up the phone per se, but some players are harder to trade than others, obviously.”

     Know how far the Angels have plunged? Their colossal collapse, their skid into the gutter with two all-time greats, has become a meme. A few weeks ago, a social-media smartass named Matt English was watching highlights when he posted a tweet: “Every time I see an Angels highlight it’s like ‘Mike Trout hit three home runs and raised his average to .528 while Shohei Ohtani did something that hasn’t been done since ‘Tungsten Arm’ O’Doyle of the 1921 Akron Groomsmen, as the Tigers defeated the Angels 8-3.’ ’’

     Never has an Internet lie been more perfect. His ‘Tungsten Arm’ O’Doyle character never existed, nor did the Akron Groomsmen.

     But we get it. So do Ohtani and Trout.

     They are tired of being part of punchlines. Legendary baseball careers, like back-to-back home runs, are a terrible thing to waste.

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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.