Chicago sports media personality Julie DiCaro sent out an interesting tweet that I thought didn’t apply to affable me: “Do you have a nemesis? Does your nemesis know he/she is your nemesis?”
Then I remembered that I do have one and he has no idea about it. He is Mike Scioscia, manager of the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim.
This is a tale about how some things are out of your control and just aren’t meant to be. Unrequited love, the promotion that’s just out of reach, a kid catching Santa Claus enjoying the milk and cookies left on the kitchen table on Christmas Eve. And now, joining the ranks of these sad situations because of the power Scioscia wields as Angels manager: me getting to see Shohei Ohtani, the Orange County club’s dual threat in pitching and hitting, do something cool in a baseball game.
What’s crazy is that Scioscia has foiled me twice this season—once in each coast.
Scioscia inflicted his first defeat on me in May, when the Angels traveled to New York to face the Yankees in a Memorial Day weekend series. When I browsed the Angels’ schedule during spring training, I circled this series as my first chance to see Ohtani in action. As someone who latched onto MLB as a middle school student in 2003, when the Chicago Cubs had that run-in with the Florida Marlins in the National League Championship Series, it was the pitching duo of Kerry Wood and Mark Prior who drew me in. My affinity for pitching continues today, and so my preference was to see Ohtani pitch in a game in this series in the Bronx.
A lot of stars needed to align for Ohtani to get a chance to pitch in Yankee Stadium, but I started my preparation for the Angels’ trip to New York in the first series of the regular season. After Ohtani pitched his first game in the bigs—tossing 6.0 innings on April Fool’s Day en route to his first career MLB win, a 7-4 victory over the Athletics—I took note of how the Angels would manage Ohtani’s game time. Pitch every sixth game, with no hitting in the game before and after he pitches.
After Ohtani’s second start as a pitcher—a 7.0 inning, 12 strikeout performance to notch a second win over the Athletics on April 8—I made projections for his playing time all the way out to the May 25-27 series against the Yankees. I opened the calendar view of the Angels schedule on their official website and counted the rotation for Ohtani’s starts like a kindergartener: 1-2-3-4-5-PITCH-1-2-3-4-5-PITCH.
If all went according to plan, Ohtani would start against the Yankees on Sunday, May 27. In fact, I was so confident in my projection, I bought tickets to that game on April 28. Ohtani kept his spot in the rotation through April and into May, with the Angels winning three of his four starts between April 17 and May 13. When Ohtani got through his May 20 start against the Tampa Bay Rays unscathed (a 5-2 win for the Angels), it looked like I would hit the jackpot in the following week.
Enter Mike Scioscia.
In the Angels’ victory over the Rays, Ohtani threw 110 pitches in 7.2 innings—the most pitches he’s thrown to date in MLB, only seven days after he hurled 103 pitches in 6.1 innings against the Minnesota Twins.
Because Ohtani went consecutive starts throwing more than 100 pitches, Scioscia declared that it was time for his Japanese phenom to slow down. On May 24, the Angels manager announced that Ohtani would skip his next scheduled start. On May 27. Against the Yankees. The game I had tickets for.
Ack. I get it: Ohtani’s long term health is of utmost importance. The impeccable timing dismayed me, though. Scioscia even had cute corporate buzz words to describe Ohtani skipping this start: “workload management.”
On one hand, Ohtani dropping out of the rotation for the Yankees game allowed him to DH that afternoon. On the other hand, Masahiro Tanaka, the Yankees pitcher taking the mound that day, owned Ohtani in Japan. In the 11 at-bats Ohtani recorded against Tanaka in Japan, Ohtani struck out six times and went hitless in the other five.
The pattern established in Japan followed both players to Yankee Stadium. In the three plate appearances Ohtani faced Tanaka, Ohtani struck out, walked, then struck out again. Ohtani left New York with a career line of 0-13, seven strikeouts, and one walk against Tanaka in the Angels’s 3-1 loss to the Bronx Bombers. I try to see things on the bright side, though, and left New York content with seeing Ohtani in action in uniform, even though he had a game to forget.
Fast forward to the first weekend in July, when Scioscia inflicted a more painful defeat on me. In this weekend, all of the Los Angeles region suffered under a blistering heat wave—hello, temperatures of 113 degrees Fahrenheit in the San Fernando Valley—and I just happened to be in town for it. (Yes, in the hard hit San Fernando Valley.) Part of my trip to Southern California that weekend was to see my first Freeway Series game—I love you, 5 Freeway—between the traveling Dodgers and hosting Angels on July 8. This was also a good opportunity to see Ohtani and Mike Trout again, as well as Yasiel Puig and maybe Clayton Kershaw on the mound.
I bought my ticket to the Freeway Series match on June 6. Ohtani went down in the DL two days later for a Grade 2 sprain of his UCL.
For the rest of June, I resigned myself to the idea that Ohtani would be out for the Freeway Series. But then life seemed to throw a make-up call to me for Ohtani skipping that start in May. On July 3, Ohtani traded the DL for the DH spot in a game against the Mariners. He couldn’t pitch, but he’d be healthy enough for some at-bats.
Ohtani promptly went hitless in his first game returning from injury.
Whatever. The hope began to spring again! I might get to see Ohtani after all!
Five days after Ohtani’s return to health, I arrived at Angel Stadium two hours before first pitch, heat wave be damned. (I regret wearing jeans to the game.) To combat the heat baking Angel Stadium before first pitch, I bought a souvenir cup filled with cold Vitamin Water. As I sipped my drink, I checked the Angels line-up on Twitter and saw Albert Pujols replaced Ohtani as DH for the day.
Figures.
A deeper dive into the Twitter informed me that Ohtani was “day to day” after fouling a ball off his shin the night before. Fair enough. I can enjoy Trout and Puig and the traffic visible on the 57 Freeway running just beyond the outfield and the parking lot of The Big A. Heck, Puig even treated the crowd to a 3-run homer to center field for making it out here in this heat wave. The Dodgers fans who traveled down the 5 turned Angel Stadium into Dodger Stadium South, cheering louder for their team’s good deeds than the Angels fans did for their own successes.
All right, I can get through this game without seeing Ohtani get on the field.
By the sixth inning, all that Vitamin Water I drank earlier called for a bathroom break. Since Ohtani didn’t start and didn’t displace Pujols in the games the latter started, I thought I could go at any time. So I held it until after the crowd sang the 7th Inning Stretch, figuring I could use bathroom and then take a quick detour to pick up an ice cream sundae in a plastic Angels cap before rejoining the crowd.
As soon as this Southern California blend of red and blue finished belting out “1-2-3 strikes you’re out at the old ball game,” I dashed to the nearest restroom. Like any Los Angeles freeway during rush hour, the line for the two urinals was backed up. I waited behind a kid and an older guy who was not his dad for what was probably three minutes, though it felt like 10.
I left the restroom refreshed and found a concourse that seemed perked up. The stadium crowd also seemed louder than normal. I looked up at a TV above a concession stand, saw an Angels player with No. 17—oh, oh no, Ohtani—trotting from Third Base to Home, then doing some celebratory dance with a teammate by the on-deck circle.
Crap.
I waited around and watched the replay to confirm my suspicions: Ohtani came on and hit a pinch hit solo home run to break a 3-3 tie. The Angels now led 4-3 on the back of Ohtani’s seventh homer of the season. I missed it because I drank too much Vitamin Water. And that Mike Scioscia just had to pick the moment I used the bathroom to randomly throw Ohtani into the rare pinch hitting situation.
Damn you, heat. Damn your good decision making, Mike.
I forgot about my ice cream sundae and returned to my seat, sitting as silent and in shock as the Dodgers fans surrounding me. A cursory Google search showed that by my count, Ohtani had only pinch hit twice before hitting what turned out to be the game-winning homer against the Dodgers. I refreshed Twitter over and over again until a gif of Ohtani’s homer showed up. A shot to centerfield.
After watching the gif on multiple loops, I imagined how the homer would have looked like if I stayed in my seat for it. It looked a lot like Puig’s home run from earlier in the game. I texted a friend that “I committed the worst mistake” in my years of watching sports by not waiting until the Dodgers batted to use the bathroom. Then I went back down to grab my ice cream sundae as a consolation prize.
I’ve made my peace with missing the home run, but I’m still not over it, if that makes sense. But the worst part has yet to happen. According to The Athletic, Scioscia is stepping down from the Angels’ managerial hot seat after this season. Scioscia saved his greatest victory over me for the end: walking off before I get a chance to redeem myself and my poor timing with the Angels.
The Masthead 