Homers, Hoagies and History in Chavez Ravine

Scenes from Dodger Stadium the night Shohei Ohtani grabbed the game controller.

Listen to the story, read by me. If you prefer…

At some point amidst the chaos at Friday night’s Dodgers game, I turned to my 11-year-old son, and at the risk of making the rest of his years seem somewhat pointless said, “You’ll never see anything like this again.”

Trying to describe both the game — Shohei’s game — and my experience of it since, has been almost impossible. As the two have merged more and more, into a wild and lucid dream. Seemingly unreal, yet stunningly vivid.

We were seated in the bleachers behind left field, I remember that, as I’d never sat there before. My son requested that section. Home run territory, he called it. I just wanted to share a playoff game with him.

Shortly after taking our seats, Shohei Ohtani appeared right before us. Or was it a buck deer in a clearing? Huge and majestic, out of place away from the mound or home plate. Exposed. Warming up his pitching arm before the game, he stared up into the crowd, calmly, as if observing the sun through leaves in a forest. My son waved a baseball-gloved hand, to no avail.

Off to our right, stood a man who looked like he had painted his entire bald head and face. But upon inspection seemed to be wearing a custom-moulded, white rubber mask, covered in Dodgers iconography and the words “Sho Time!”. Left open only for his ears, wrapping all the way around his lips and jaw. That’s what I think I saw, anyway. Mostly he sacred me.

After countdowns, ceremonial pitches, the anthem, plus a lot of other visual and audio noise, the first pitch came as sweet relief. Ohtani walked the first batter he faced, which seems comical now. He struck out the next three batters, immediately rushing off the mound to change into his batting pads and gloves.

Were the usual celebrities in attendance? Maybe. But not in the bleachers. Every second of game-free attention belonged to an anonymous, team-hired hype man, who bounced around the stand’s tight confines. Sometimes with a marching band drum, sometimes with a camera crew following him, often with a lucky kid tagging along. Adding needlessly to the growing frenzy in one’s mind.

Ohtani returned to lead off the bottom of the first inning, and hit a home run so effortlessly, yet so convincingly, it felt inevitable. It’s the crack that first alerts the mind to a great hit. A “bomb”, as my son would say. But the real reward of being there live is watching the ball fly. This was no exception. It shot low and fast off the bat, slashing a line through the packed stands opposite us. We all rose as one and watched it splash into clambering fans in the right field bleachers. We high-fived strangers. Drinks were spilled. Personal effects dropped. Inhibitions lost. The game was on. Like in any dream, time became meaningless. Minutes felt packed with hours.

A man wandered down the aisle beside us carrying a dog wearing a lai necklace and LA-branded sunglasses. People posed for photographs. Pushing and shoving to get beside the cool pup. The sunglasses fell. A stranger replaced them. The dog didn’t care. I turned back to the game, then looked for the dog again, but it had disappeared. The owner was now arguing with a fan. They patched it up. The show went on.

Ohtani recorded more outs. Two courtesy of a double play by Kiké Hernandez, who burst from the ground right below us like a tiger in the film Gladiator. He made a running catch, kept running, faster still, jumped, and hurled the ball to first base for the second out, before his feet hit the ground. Throw me a ball! my son called to him. Where do you get your sliding mitts? Are those Oakleys? He looked at me!

Ohtani’s next home run looked easier than the first and yet flew further than any ball at Dodger Stadium in a decade. An estimated 469 feet, across the mild October air (all-in-all he hit the ball a quarter mile that night). I literally waved at it, then lost sight. Apparently it bounced off the pavilion roof. We all bounced in unison. More high fives followed. Smiling strangers, young and old, yet all childlike in nearly every way. Everywhere you looked.

At some point I risked missing something by sneaking out for a beer and a leak. I weaved through a crowd of young fans, all dressed in their Dodger whites, entirely barricading the tunnel between the stands and the concourse. Why? Below I saw a man with what looked like an entire platter of BBQ meat and fixings. Did I? Sure enough, the menu above me read “Full BBQ Platter… $99.99”. This was a night to celebrate. To gorge.

On my way back I pushed through the hoard of standing fans again and had to duck beneath the huge, soft head of the official Dodgers mascot as I passed. He patted me on the back of my blue silk jacket, and I returned the gesture, for a split-second feeling his furry elbow against the palm of my hand.

My son was where I left him, craning his neck, trying to spot the churro vendor. His appetite piqued by the crowd chanting “Churro!” at the Brewers outfielder Jackson Chourio, stationed wearily before us, nursing a strained hamstring and battered ego. The mob switched to yelling “Chorizo!” They wouldn’t let it go. I told my son to leave that nonsense for the middle school bullies. The man was suffering enough.

The third and final home run came shortly after Ohtani had handed the ball off to the relieving pitchers, his 6+ inning shut-out cemented. It entered our stand, just left of center field, at the opposite end of the bleachers. By then the hat trick felt both impossible and routine. Like a dream of flying. People rolled toward its drop point en masse, pinballs in a machine on tilt. I was finally standing on my seat this time, hands raised high. I didn’t know what else to do.

A fan in front of us barely retained his grasp on a baseball bat-shaped, two-foot-tall plastic beer mug, then went on sipping in celebration. While a young man a few rows back was cradling the remaining half of a two-foot hoagie. The crowd soon realized that it had defeated him, and wouldn’t accept the loss. Not here. Not tonight. “Eat it, eat it, eat it…” they chanted. He laughed and dizzily turned back to the sandwich.

Time shifted back into place, as all dreams end. This one in a 5-1 win, fireworks, a World Series berth, and the strains of Randy Newman’s unofficial Dodgers anthem, “I Love LA”. Next, staging was rolled across the outfield in preparation for the Pennant presentation, the formal logistics in stark contrast to the athletic wizardry we had just witnessed. A wake-up as mundane as any cheap alarm clock. What could anybody possibly say? The Sho’ was over. We turned to leave.

“Did that guy finish the hoagie?” I asked my son.

“Nope,” he replied. “He had two more bites, but he was beat.”

There would be only one victor that night. And I still can’t quite believe he’s real.