It’s your typical Hollywood story.
The Los Angeles Dodgers pay you $700 million to pitch and hit for them, you bribe your new teammate’s wife with a Porsche to hold on to your jersey number and you somehow end up being trolled by one of the biggest punk rock bands of all time.
Stop me if you’ve heard this before.
After Shohei Ohtani signed the biggest contract in sports history, he wanted his No. 17 uniform. The thing was, it was currently being used by pitcher Joe Kelly.
After his wife, Ashley, had been publicly vying for Ohtani to join the Dodgers during his free agency, she had made it apparent she would be happy to give up the number should he sign with the team.
That’s right — happy wife, happy life.
The next thing you know, there’s a Porsche in her driveway — a gift from Ohtani.
That’s not all …
Kelly stopped by the Baseball is Boring podcast to say Blink 182 frontman Mark Hoppus trolled him after the fact.
“My good friend Mark, Mark Hoppus — for anyone who doesn’t know music, Blink 182 — sent me a photo — I think he was kind of stunting on me with his home gym — sent me a photo of him working out,” Kelly told Rob Bradford. “And, in all fairness, he said he didn’t buy it, his wife bought it, but he was kind of sentimental in his text, he said ‘You’ll always be the real number 17 in my heart, to me,” and he sent me a photo of him working out in his gym with a little Ohtani.”
.@markhoppus gave Joe Kelly a uniform number reality check. Joe explains on today's podcast:
🎙️https://t.co/DW0c4zzr06 pic.twitter.com/zcbmFpC8pP— Baseball Isn’t Boring (@BBisntBoring) January 26, 2024
Don’t worry, Kelly plans on sending Hoppus a new jersey to rep his friend.
“I’ll send you a No. 99 Kelly, but the problem is I’m going to have to go to like some kind of mall and go to the booth down in the middle where they’ll use their Cricut and then just kind of melt the number on,” he continued. “So I’m going to go buy a Dodger shirt and be like ‘Hey, can you put 99 Kelly on this?’ Because obviously they don’t sell those in stores.”
It turns out all the small things truly do care.
