\tThe first time I saw Mike Trout play at Angel Stadium, two White Sox fans threatened to pummel me in the name of Alsip \u2014 or East Hazel Crest, one of those Hawk Harrelson towns. The second time, the team was giving away Foam Trout Hats at the gates. The third time, during the pandemic, I saw Trout and Shohei Ohtani hit back-to-back home runs from the eighth row in rather empty surroundings.<\/p>\n
\t\u201cHistory,\u201d I said to my friend.<\/p>\n
\tIt is astonishingly sad of the baseball gods that Trout still plays for the same awful team \u2014 after so many injuries that we\u2019ve lost track, after Ohtani left to win two World Series and more trophies with the Dodgers, having made the postseason only once in 2014 without even a victory \u2014 and how his career has been wasted in Orange County. The owner, Arte Moreno, must sell the Angels after settling Tyler Skaggs\u2019 wrongful death lawsuit. No one is certain what future arrangements will bring in Anaheim, which seems eight planetary stops from Dodger Stadium. And yet, there was Trout on Tuesday night, hitting his 11th homer of the season \u2014 in the same ballpark, against the same White Sox \u2014 and 415th of his career.<\/p>\n
\tHis on-base percentage figure (.436) ranks second in the major leagues. At 34, looking healthy, Trout would be the victim of an all-time sports crime if he remains with a 14-23 club beyond the trade deadline. Please. Try the Phillies, near where he grew up in south New Jersey, where he is a building a golf course \u2014 Trout National, The Reserve \u2014 with the help of Tiger Woods. Try the Yankees, who should return to the World Series. It is beyond belief that this man, once considered a Top 10 player of our lives, is stuck.<\/p>\n
\tIt will require a special team to spend around $175 million for the remainder of his deal, which lasts four years and change. That team must be out there, because if we\u2019ve almost seen everything in baseball, we haven\u2019t seen Trout win a real game in October. Last month, he hit five homers during a four-game series at Yankee Stadium. That had never happened in the Bronx, from Babe Ruth to Aaron Judge.<\/p>\n
\t\u201cI heard that after the game,\u201d Trout said. \u201cIt\u2019s pretty surreal. All the great players that came through here, so it\u2019s pretty cool.\u201d<\/p>\n
\tYou don\u2019t think Judge wants him in the lineup? \u201cHe\u2019s the greatest, the greatest of all time,\u201d he said. \u201cI know he\u2019s had some tough injuries over the years, but to see himself back in a better spot this year \u2014 he puts on a show. I hate to see it, but it\u2019s fun competing against a guy like that.\u201d<\/p>\n
\tNot that his teammates are surprised. \u201cAt this point it\u2019s vintage Mike Trout,\u201d Jo Adell said. \u201cWhen he\u2019s healthy and feeling good, there\u2019s nothing like it. It\u2019s special. It\u2019s one of a kind. So for all of us to experience it, it\u2019s special.\u201d<\/p>\n
\t\u201cHonestly, not surprising,\u201d manager Kurt Suzuki said. \u201cWhen you\u2019re with Mike every day, there\u2019s nothing that you believe that he can\u2019t do. He\u2019s unbelievable. He really is.\u201d<\/p>\n
\tNever should we set Trout aside when we speak of history. He needs what could be called the most dramatic reset in baseball lore. The Phillies are having a down year. The Yankees make the most sense, just up the road from Millville. Can you imagine him in that lineup? in the month of October?<\/p>\n
\tAgainst the Dodgers, with Ohtani pitching?<\/p>\n
\tNext time I go to Angel Stadium, I need a new uniform. Or I will stop going.<\/p>\n
\t###<\/p>\n
\tJay Mariotti, called \u201cwithout question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,\u2019\u2019 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The first time I saw Mike Trout play at Angel Stadium, two White Sox fans threatened to pummel…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":131734,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,165,164],"class_list":["post-302784","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-anaheim","tag-anaheim","tag-anaheim-headlines","tag-anaheim-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302784","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=302784"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302784\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/131734"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=302784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=302784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=302784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}