As an aside, we had a good chuckle about what happened when Ohtani reached 40-40 at True Blue LA as Tony Voda (previously identified as “Mitt Man”) dropped the ball, which was picked up by Tampa Bay Rays outfielder Jose Siri and tossed back into the stands to be collected by Bakersfield resident Troy Buenteo.
Voda was identified earlier this month after giving an interview to Bill Plaschke of the Los Angeles Times. Voda, a Minneapolis insurance analyst who moonlights as an amateur ballhawk, chasing home balls, was generally a good sport about the whole situation, sharing the support he received from other fans and ballparks for his failure.
Ohtani’s pace to reach a 50-50 season makes the above likely moot in the next three weeks.
Shohei Ohtani is very likely to win the National League Most Valuable Player in 2024. A lot of unjustified agita is coming from the East Coast about the New York Mets’ Francisco Lindor somehow being robbed of the title. For those who like irony, the current situation is much like last year when people were foaming at the mouth about the Atlanta Braves Ronald Acuña Jr. winning the award unanimously over Mookie Betts.
Not to take anything away from Betts or Lindor, but like Acuña in 2023, Ohtani is literally doing something never before seen in the sport.
As a Dodger fan and writer, I have a selfish request for Ohtani:
Ohtani-san, bubbe…take care of the home runs in Atlanta, because I do not want to sit in the outfield at loanDepot Park.
Where we last left off, I was signing off for the year from field coverage after a nice weekend in St. Louis with my mother. I had originally scheduled a trip to Miami to finally, properly review loanDepot Park at the beginning of the year. Barring a major, unexpected change in circumstances, Miami was just going to have to wait until next year.
Said major, unexpected change in circumstances will arrive at the start of next month, so Miami is back on the itinerary, which is my first visit to the Magic City since July 2021.
Accordingly, it would be preferable to not sit in the outfield with the ballhawks when the Dodgers come to visit with Adric and me in tow. However, he should probably stop swinging at pitches at his eyeballs.
It is a bittersweet return for me. It is an anecdote of personal embarrassment stemming from a memory involving a tropical storm, baseball, and my lowest point as a Dodger chaser. Admittedly, I likely do not come off very well in this anecdote, but considering the circumstances, I feel it is worth sharing.
“He knew right then he was too far from home.”
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It was late May 2021 and I had just started with my last private firm. I lived in Oakland, about 15 minutes by car from the decaying, soon-to-be-abandoned Oakland Coliseum.
At the time, I was prepping to move to be closer to my new job on the peninsula in San Mateo. Imagine a one-way 90-minute commute becoming a one-way ten-minute commute. I had scheduled my movers to come out on July 6th at noon. Everything was already packed and boxed up from three weeks of effort.
All the while, I looked at the 2021 Dodgers’ schedule, after the binge of games that was #SaveEli and its sequel, and had possibly the dumbest idea I ever had:
I had never been to loanDepot Park and I had all these reward points for hotel and flights from my travels so far in 2021. Maybe I should fly out to Miami on a redeye on July 4th, watch the Dodgers/Marlins game on July 5th (which was the observed holiday), and fly back first thing on the morning of the 6th and leave the move to my movers.
Now if you looked at the above paragraph and thought: “No, Michael, that idea as described is a very stupid idea,” you would be quite correct in hindsight. I omitted one key fact in that paragraph, which makes the above idea worse.
At the time, Hurricane Elsa was barreling towards the Flordia coast and was well on track to make direct landfall in Miami. The storm ultimately missed Miami and was a tropical storm once it came ashore, but that fact was not known before when I booked the flight.
If you are facepalming right now in mortification, I would not blame you.
And logically, I understood that the entire proposed trip was a likely farce, a fiasco waiting to happen either en route or coming back. I had multiple opportunities to turn back or opt-out. But I was obsessed with an idea, which I did not even realize until it was much too late, and accordingly, I had some stuff to work through.
And like a fool, I plunged ahead and dodged the storm, posting on True Blue LA that I was heading into the madness. Before I left for Miami, I heard that the storm would miss the city, and I landed without incident making it to my hotel.
I cannot even claim the trip was to scratch visiting Miami off my places to visit list. It was not, as I had been there four years prior in October 2017 to celebrate my completing the California Bar Exam. There was a disturbance at the other Miami McDonalds during the Rick and Morty Szechuan Sauce fiasco — mine just lied to me about having the sauce. I had the sauce later on, and it was not even that good, even as a bit!
The barometric pressure was a special kind of hell on my joints throughout almost the entirety of my stay. The moment that broke me emotionally was not even during the game, it was a few hours before. I was resting on the top floor of my hotel near the airport, as there are no hotels near LoanDepot Park when I got an urgent Tornado Watch.
I called the front desk, who explained the difference between a Watch and a Warning and explained that the hotel’s windows were rated for a Class 4 hurricane and that I would likely be okay as long as I stayed away from the windows. I was then asked if I was standing by the window.
I said no — you know, like a liar.
Then I hung up and then emotionally broke down. Of course, the irony that I would not know at the time is that only a couple of years later, I would be in another hotel room fearing a tornado warning, this time with my mother, but that anecdote was one for another day.
During this breakdown, unbidden as if often the case, the lyric from the Bob Seger song Hollywood Nights popped into my head. I realized I was trying to compensate for the then-deficiencies in my life by seeking attention and validation for going to Dodger games.
That night, I relearned a painful truth.
Happiness does not come from the validation of others. It helps, but ultimately, happiness comes from within. The Dodgers ultimately do not care what you specifically do, whether you traverse literal hell or high water to see them. If you get snarky on the internet though, apparently, it is more noteworthy than you might think, but that examination is one for another day. After all, that story does not drive engagement.
But if the team wants to open up the stadium to a literal dog, everyone pays attention.
I was in physical agony until it started to rain. This game has absolutely nothing memorable about it, sans one thing. If you wanted Cody Bellinger sans his power, this game had it in spades in a mostly empty ballpark. I had no idea, it would actually get worse for Bellinger.
As a literal insult to injury, the Dodgers lost, and I raced back to California the following morning, beating my movers by about an hour. My plan worked when it really should not have, but served as a cautionary tale going forward.
Sometimes, one should heed all the red flags and learn to live to fight and adventure another day, which is a lesson I have taken to heart in subsequent seasons.
Missing baseball due to injury and illness is not fun, but the alternative is to put myself or others in harm’s way, which is just not okay.
As a reward for my hubris, I was exhausted and sore for about a week and realized that I needed to take a break from going to Dodger baseball. So as a moral, if you feel you are going to baseball games for any other reason than enjoyment, you should stop, reassess, and re-center yourself.
Now I return to Miami to properly evaluate the experience of going to loanDepot Park. While the weather will likely be wet and rainy, the stadium is domed and no one is expecting any severe weather.