Shohei Ohtani is at home and focused on baseball. Dodgers fans are relieved.

The top deck of Dodger Stadium is far from the action but may have the best view in baseball. Straight ahead are the San Gabriel Mountains. During the night game, as the sun sets, the sky begins to glow pink. Below, the full choreography of the game is displayed, offering a panoramic view away from the movie stars and moguls who fill the stands behind home plate.

And on Thursday morning, fans headed to those cheap seats made a new contribution to the ballpark: an eight-foot stone lantern that was given as a gift to the Dodgers in the 1960s by Sotaro Suzuki, a famous Japanese sports columnist Was, who helped attract the Dodgers. Went to Japan for a goodwill tour in 1956, two years before the team left Brooklyn for Los Angeles.

For longtime Dodger fan Kimi Ago, the lantern has a special meaning, and she cried when she saw it: her father was a close friend of Suzuki, and before her father died in 2000, they had spent years Took care of the stone. The lantern, which was then hidden in a hill beyond the outfield bleachers, and the plants and bushes around it were cut down.

“Tears of joy,” said Ego, a retired schoolteacher who has been coming to Dodgers games since the 1960s. “My father worked very hard to take care of the garden.”

The memorial is a tribute to the team’s past and present.

In December, the Dodgers signed the world’s biggest baseball star, two-way sensation Shohei Ohtani, to the richest contract in sports history, $700 million over 10 years. For good measure, the team signed another Japanese superstar, pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto, for $325 million over a dozen years. It was the most lucrative contract ever for a pitcher.

On Thursday, as Los Angeles got a glimpse of its newest megastar, Ohtani’s influence was evident even before he stepped onto the field: new ads for Asian companies — an airline, a retail chain, yogurt drinks, skin-care products — Were scattered in the stadium. A local newscaster – in pregame coverage that began while most Angelenos were eating breakfast, or stuck in traffic – compared Ohtani to Taylor Swift, saying that the Dodgers were baseball’s version of the Eras Tour. And a new addition to the stadium menu is the Japanese Fried Octopus Fritters which is being promoted as one of Ohtani’s favorite dishes.

In a vast area connected by freeways, where traffic patterns dictate the pace of daily life and where it is easy to feel disconnected, the Dodgers bring people together: The team regularly tops the major leagues in attendance, nearly 50,000 people pack the stands each night. On the field, the team has enjoyed more than a decade of regular season excellence, almost always followed by disappointment in October — with the exception of the World Series title won after the pandemic-shortened 2020 season.

Looks like it will be different this year.

“After the failure of last season, we were disappointed about it,” said season-ticket holder Manny Palomo, who asked his boss three months ago if he could take Thursdays off. “And then we got Ohtani, and it rejuvenated the fan base.”

However, this being Hollywood, a dramatic plot twist was inserted into the Dodgers’ story: Last week, when the team played two regular season games against the San Diego Padres in Seoul, Ohtani and his longtime interpreter, Ippei Mizuhara News reports emerged linking the For a gambling scandal.

The first take suggested that Mizuhara had loaned millions to an illegal bookmaker and that Ohtani had bailed out his friend. But the story quickly changed, with Mizuhara accused of stealing from Ohtani’s bank account to pay the bookie.

Before Ohtani played a game that counted in front of his new fan base, Major League Baseball and the IRS announced an investigation into the matter. Then, on Monday afternoon as the team prepared to play a late spring training game, Ohtani finally spoke.

He said he has never bet on sports, much less on baseball, and that he has been cheated by Mizuhara – who, he said, “has been lying the whole time.”

“To summarize how I feel right now, I’m extremely shocked,” he said, reading a prepared statement in front of about 75 journalists, many of whom were from Japan, gathered in an interview room inside the stadium. I was in the crowd. , “It’s really hard to explain how I’m feeling right now.”

His demeanor was calm, direct, forceful and comprehensive, even though many questions remained unanswered. This was good enough for his teammates and his manager.

“I heard what I needed to hear, and I know the players feel the same way,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said.

Despite all his global fame, Ohtani, a cartoonishly powerful slugger who is also an All-Star pitcher—something the game hasn’t seen since Babe Ruth—remains largely a mystery, even though he He played six seasons with the Angels, also a field team running back. A perception, perhaps a myth, of him as a baseball monk – he was known in Japan as Yaku Shonen, or a baseball boy who eats, sleeps and breathes the game – has persisted over the years. grew, and that reputation followed him to America.

David Vasegh, the voice of “Dodgers Talk” on the radio, said, “Nobody knows Ohtani.”

Baseball is about connection to the past and to each other, passing from one generation to the next. This week, hours after Ohtani’s news conference, two fathers stood in the right field bleachers, where many of the slugger’s home run balls would surely land.

AJ Lester, whose 8-year-old daughter, Mackenzie, had just been hit by a player, said that when he heard the news of the gambling scandal, he thought: “This could be really bad, right ? Like, he could get suspended. That could be terrible.”

Now he feels relieved, and so does his friend Roy Cruz, who is from Britain and who fell in love with baseball after marrying a Santa Monica woman years ago. Cruz’s son, Ollie, was celebrating his ninth birthday at the ballpark.

Lester said, “It feels like he was so dedicated to his art that he never would have even thought about going that route.” “I felt like he was being honest, that he was swindled or whatever you want to call it.”

And so, with the drama of the gambling story over with — at least for now — it’s time to, as Roberts said, “just focus on baseball.”

The crowd of 52,667 began booing loudly when actor Bryan Cranston introduced Ohtani walking out over the center field fence onto a blue carpet before the game. (“I thought the walk was a little long, but the ceremony went well,” Ohtani said after the game.) When he stepped into the box for his first at-bat, everyone was on their feet, and a Hit a double to right field. , And they appreciated his aggression when he was tagged out while trying to triple that double.

For Dodgers fans, the day ended as spectacularly as it had begun: Ohtani had another hit, ending the day 2 for 3, as the Dodgers defeated the St. Louis Cardinals 7–1. defeated.

Eric Carros, a former first baseman who hit more home runs than any Dodger since the team moved to Los Angeles and whose son is a Dodgers minor leaguer, called Opening Day a “celebration” and a “spiritual beginning.” ” said which goes beyond merely playing a game. Which ultimately counts in the standings.

“This is the beginning,” he said. “You are ready to begin. Everything is at zero. This is fresh. A clean slate.”

For those who love baseball, or play the game, Inauguration Day is a time for nostalgia.

“I think it reminds me of growing up and playing Little League,” said Palomo, a season-ticket holder in the top deck. “I just want to live it again.”

Several levels down in the stadium, Kyle Hurt was feeling the same way. Hurt, a rookie pitcher for the Dodgers who grew up in Southern California, was preparing for his first starting day as a big leaguer.

“It feels like early days in Little League, I’ll be honest with you,” he said. “Just nervous. It makes you feel like a kid again.”

For veteran utility infielder Miguel Rojas, it was during a trip to Seoul that he fully absorbed the Dodgers’ global fame. Wherever the team went, from the airport to the hotel and the ballpark, the crowd welcomed them.

“It’s going to feel different throughout the year,” he said, “because we’ll have a lot of cameras, a lot of attention.”