Sometime after his 18th birthday, Lucas Giolito created a list of desired tattoos that he carried on a notes app on his phone. The veteran pitcher began tackling that chore a few years ago, transforming his 31-year-old frame into a canvas to commemorate a life well lived, not only by himself but the generations that came before him.

“Some of them have no meaning,” Giolito said earlier this week, “but a lot of them do.”

Giolito couldn’t pick a favorite between two that have deep ties to his family’s history. On his lower right leg, there is a depiction of the windmill that his maternal great-great grandfather built on Big Bowman Pond in upstate New York, where his parents have since retired.

Giolito also pays homage to grandfather Silvio Giolito’s Olympic foil fencing career on the inside of his left biceps with the recreation of a picture that hung above his grandparents’ mantel. An artist sketched Silvio Giolito dueling in the Olympics and gifted it to him after a match.

“When I was a kid, I didn’t know anything about fencing,” Giolito said. “I just remember going to my grandparents’ house — ‘Oh look at this cool sword!’ I’m swinging the sword around and that sketch was always up there. Eventually, I learned the history and that he was Olympic athlete (in 1948 and 1952). When I started getting tattoos, my parents were visiting my grandmother and I had them snap a nice clear picture of that sketch, and a tattoo artist did it perfectly.”

Not all tattoos are as well thought out as Giolito’s.

Bryce Johnson was a senior in high school when he decided to have “Faith” — for no particular reason — inked into the side of his arm.

“Mine was just random,” he said. “I just wanted to get one, and that’s what I got.”

A few years ago, Griffin Canning got a tattoo of a UFO abducting a person.

“I just thought it was funny,” he said.

The idea of it, anyway.

The execution? Not so much. In fact, Canning said he’d rather not show it off until he figures out how to improve upon a rendering from a Hollywood Boulevard tattoo artist that “was not in a good headspace to be giving tattoos.”

Jase Bowen and his brother Connor had a plan to get tattoos of their birthdays in Roman numerals. Connor “chickened out,” Jase Bowen said with a laugh, “and I still went out and did it.”

Among Jackson Merrill’s many tattoos, the doves on his forearm representing nieces Lily and Kali are dear to him. Likewise, Joe Musgrove has initials for each of his grandfathers on each wrist, as well as a heart with family members’ initials inside. Adrián Morejón also considers his huskies on his leg — Jade and Tiger — family, too.

Walker Buehler’s favorite tattoo — on his ribs — is the handwriting of an uncle who died from cancer when the pitcher was young. The most prominent of his body art, however, is sprawled across his back. There are nods to his wife and daughter as well as snakes and a big eagle. There’s also a depiction of St. Christopher, the patron saint of travelers, as a callback to the necklace gifted to him by a great-grandfather as a child. Buehler commuted two hours every other weekend between his separated parents’ homes.

“I wore one of those for a long time,” Buehler said. “But I kept losing them, so I just got a tattoo of him.”

The Roman numerals on David Morgan’s neck — V, XIV, XXII — represent Alyssa Altobelli, John Altobelli and Jourdan Watanabe, respectively. Morgan played for John Altobelli (No. 14) at Orange Coast College and the long-time wore No. 22 to honor Watanabe, a player who died unexpectedly in 2009. John Altobelli and his daughter Alyssa (No. 5) died in the helicopter crash that killed Lakers star Kobe Bryant and his daughter Gianna in January 2020, while Morgan was playing for the OCC program.

“They changed my life,” Morgan said, “my views on how I show up every day, the way that I work and also changed the trajectory of what I wanted to do with my life.”

Ty France also has family-oriented tattoos on his arms and one representing his college coach at San Diego State — a cross with angels’ wings, baseball seams, the No. 19 and a “T.G.” for Tony Gwynn — on his chest.

“They are all my favorite,” France said. “I wouldn’t get a tattoo unless it had deep meaning.”