If Shohei Ohtani wanted to avoid media distractions, he chose the wrong team

Even in a city full of stars, Shohei Ohtani cannot hide. While he was able to do that to some degree when he played for the Los Angeles Angels, that is no longer an option now that he decided to sign that gargantuan contract with the Los Angeles Dodgers. Factor in the embarrassing interpreter gambling scandal, Ohtani's camp has fallen out of the frying pan and into the fire. Welcome to hell!

While there are 700 million reasons why Ohtani is not destined for Skid Row, he is about to face more scrutiny than he ever has in his life. Baseball's former golden boy is now being mentioned in the same breath as Pete Rose and Shoeless Joe Jackson. Ohtani and his handlers can play the ignorance card all they want, but don't cry crocodile tears if you do get caught. No more Sandy Lyle bagpipes for you!

As this story gets weirder by the nanosecond, how is this not an episode of Arrested Development? Like The Bluth Company, Ohtani has no earthly idea where millions upon millions of dollars go. All I know is they are not lining the banana stand on some Angeleno boardwalk somewhere, because we all know those things can only fit around $250K. With inflation, that is not even enough for a banana!

Ohtani wanted to play for a winner, but leaving a Quad-A team for Mickey Mouse has consequences.

Shohei Ohtani picked the wrong MLB team to play baseball anonymously

I have to be honest, it is hard to fly below the radar in baseball. Most of the league's 26 metro areas are fairly large. But for every Cincinnati, Kansas City and Pittsburgh, there are cities with multiple teams. Chicago, Los Angeles and New York. Even the Bay Area technically has two ... for now. To be frank, Ohtani had it made with the Halos. He could get to Cooperstown and play in relative obscurity.

Outside of the Oakland Athletics for maybe another year or two, there is not another little brother franchise where you can hide and just play ball. The Chicago White Sox are a major brand, and the New York Mets get as much coverage as the New York Yankees. Trust me, the amount of exposure these two-team towns get can be smothering. But the Angels, they actually kind of have it made.

We all remember that Rally Monkey from 2002. It was cute, completely schticky and enough of a prop to give the Halos their one World Series championship to date. But since 2014, the Angels have not made the postseason, despite employing two of the game's greatest players in Ohtani and Mike Trout, as well as three of the highest paid, if we wanted to include the cash-grabber Anthony Rendon.

But the more I think about it, Ohtani could never really have it both ways. He could never have his cake and eat it, too. See, Trout sacrificed the notion of ever winning a damn thing because he'd rather get paid a ton of cash and play relatively anonymously good baseball in Orange County until he turns 40 and moves on with his life. If you have mega talent and you want to win, you have to make the leap.

Rather than moving to anywhere else in the country, Ohtani kept his bags packed and opted to play for The Boys in Blue. I get it. The Dodgers are a great baseball team. However, they have one world championship since 1988, and it came after a 60-game COVID season in 2020. The pressure to win a more legitimate title with this core has this team on the brink. Ohtani's scandal could make it crack.

As the late, great Ben Parker once prophesied, "With great power comes great responsibility." The Dodgers aren't just paying Ohtani close to a billion dollars over a decade to be a great baseball player. They are paying him to be a leader of men, one who will get this perennial playoff underachiever over the top. Language barriers be damned, you've got nowhere to run and nowhere to hide, bud. Wake up!

He may never asked for this, but this is what you signed up for by agreeing to go play for the Dodgers.