Shohei Ohtani’s powerful arms and boyish face, looking up from under a Dodger blue helmet, loom 15 stories over Los Angeles’ Little Tokyo neighborhood from the side of the Miyako Hotel.
Unveiled in late March, it’s one of many tributes to baseball’s two-way supernova that have appeared across Los Angeles since he signed with the Dodgers in December. The record-breaking deal pushed Ohtani into the next stratosphere of celebrity, even among sportsmen and even in a town bursting with the rich and famous.
A player that good and that sought after tends to be claimed by most baseball fans, but none more than those with roots in his home country, Japan, where he has been called "a being above the clouds.” The Little Tokyo mural is larger than life, much like Ohtani’s monumental stature among Japanese Americans in Los Angeles.