WE WISH OHTANI ALL THE BEST IN MARRIAGE, BUT IN L.A., PAPARAZZI AWAIT

Life in America has been wonderful until he went public about his new wife, who becomes a target for Japanese media following the Dodgers and might make hell for Shohei on his 10-year journey

    Let’s hope there is only one Eddie Waitkus and only one Ruth Ann Steinhagen. When I hear of a bond as curious as Shohei Ohtani’s recent marriage to a “normal Japanese woman,” why do oddball thoughts crash my brainwaves? In June 1949, Steinhagen was an unhinged admirer who paid $5 to a bellhop delivering her note to Waitkus, a Phillies first baseman and former Cub staying in Chicago.

     “I keep thinking,” she later told a felony court, “that I will never get him and if I can’t have him nobody else can.”

     When she asked Waitkus to meet at her room in the Edgewater Beach Hotel, she shot him with a .22-caliber rifle bought at a pawn shop. “For two years, you’ve been bothering me and now you’re going to die,” she said. The bullet was removed from his lung, allowing him to play six more years in the major leagues. At 19, she was put away in Kankakee State Hospital, where she was allowed to leave three years later. You may have seen a version of the plot in “The Natural,” starring Robert Redford as Roy Hobbs.

     “She had the coldest-looking face I ever saw,” Waitkus said. “No expression.”

     We have every reason to think Ohtani, who seeks perpetual sublimity as history’s greatest two-way baseball player, only has married the girl of his dreams. Why would someone who makes $700 million for 10 years with the Los Angeles Dodgers — and is comfortable enough to defer $680 million — not choose a mate who will gainfully support him as he attempts to hit 74 home runs and win 20 games in one season? Or something like that, across the sea in America, where he owns baseball and controls sports culture.

     “Not only have I begun a new chapter in my career with the Dodgers, but I also have begun a new life with someone from my native country of Japan who is very special to me and I wanted everyone to know I am now married,” said Ohtani, who adds of his anonymous bride, “There wasn’t one thing. It’s her overall vibe. I think we’re a match.”

     He seems to have more fun with her than bashing shots off Lance Lynn. “It’s fun to be together. I was able to imagine being together for a long time,” Ohtani said. They will be joined his dog, Dekopin, known as Decoy in our parts, of whom he said, “We hope the two of us — and one animal — will work together.”

     She also grasps the strain of his double-edged gig, which makes him the planet’s foremost athlete and a torrential storm in his awestruck homeland. “She has a great understanding of my profession. She’s willing to be wherever I want to play at,” he said. “The feeling was that she would go anywhere with me. So it was completely unrelated to that. The No. 1 priority was where I wanted to play.”

     My concern, wrapped in 2024 reality, concerns how Ohtani’s fans will handle the news. His private life was submerged until Thursday morning, when he mentioned meeting her three or four years ago and falling in love together. Now, back in Japan, people are crushed that he has broken hearts and ruined chances with their ballfield Harry Styles. In their world, they don’t gush over sex symbols as Americans fantasize about Jeremy Allen White, Timothee Chalamet and — why am I saying this? — Travis Kelce. But Ohtani is their biggest celebrity ever, advancing the lifestyle while making more money in our country than our own athletes do. He is bigger than them globally, including Mahomes and LeBron. Folks with longer, 80-year-old memories might love it.

     He won’t supply her name. He’ll never take her on public dates, here or there or anywhere. And there is worry that Ohtani, as pointed out by Dylan Hernandez in the Los Angeles Times, might not handle matters well if her identity is publicized by one of 80 Japanese reporters following the Dodgers. You don’t think some will follow him home, wherever he lives? How will she and Ohtani respond if her name is outed? One reason: The country’s most beloved athlete, before Ohtani, was figure skater Yuzuru Hanyu. He said he was married last year, posting it on social media. The relationship lasted three months after a tabloid magazine spilled goods about his wife. “When I thought about my future,” Hanyu wrote in Japanese, “I wanted my spouse to be happy, to have limitless happiness, so I made the decision to divorce.”

     The media wrecked them, targeting Hanyu’s “former partner, who is a private individual,” he said, along with “her family and acquaintances but also my family and acquaintances.” In Los Angeles — where paparazzi still get much work thanks to the Kardashians and hotspots such as Nobu in Malibu — calls from Tokyo will be made to frantic photo shooters. Find Ohtani’s wife, they will be told. Has he inquired about a secluded ride home from Dodger Stadium each day and night? A helicopter? A mask? Someone will find her. He isn’t in Anaheim anymore, where a celebrity moat exists on I-5 through Orange County. When she’s located, the frown on noted interpreter Ippei Mizuhara’s face might turn mean and ugly. Who would blame them for anger?

     And how his performance might be impacted?

     Remember, it wasn’t long ago when Ohtani was asked about life in the long term. “Including marriage and children — how do I say this? — I’d like to live in peace,” he said. “I think having a peaceful soul is better than anything. I’d like my private life to be like that.”

     Is such souldom even possible in his new kingdom, where everybody wants to be around him and wear his jersey and even touch him? Sadly, some also want to drag him down. The Dodgers might be the best ballclub ever, but Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman and Yoshinobu Yamamoto can’t stop an a-hole with a lengthy lens. Hopefully, the lovebirds will be thrilled as Ohtani inspires us for 10 years.

     But a man who wants peace might lure pieces of crap.

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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.