#17| Shohei Ohtani

Moving Back to the Oc

5:00am EST

"It's good to be home"

As much as I have loved living in New York and enjoyed the East Coast. I am well aware it is not my coast, my home is the West Coast. I was born and raised in beautiful but expensive sunny California, specifically in Orange County. SoCal is all I know from the high desert of Barstow to the costal beaches of Los Angeles to San Diego. The area I grew up in has everything, Disneyland, Knotts, and even the Angel Stadium. The big stadium that I have always driven by and could hear fireworks from my house every time the Angels won a game.

All through grade school I lived with my parents, that was until I got accepted into NYU and decided to major in business and minor in communications. At the age of 18 I moved to the big city of New York and began my new life. At the beginning it was quite difficult living on my own. Moving to a whole new Coast all alone was very scary. I had to leave my entire life in the West and start a new one in the East. Though what I truly missed while living in NYC was my family. I could not imagine life without them. Especially without my older sister Ro, even if she was 5 years older than me.

She has always been there for me.

When I was a freshman in high school she met Mike Trout at a MLB convention in Anaheim while being an intern for a sports journalist company. They started seeing each other a lot after that and somehow really hit it off. They began dating when I was about to end my freshman year. Since then I have been to many Angel games and have attended many of their practices. All through high school I would do homework from the clubhouse or the stadium seats. I was there almost every practice because Ro at the time was my ride home from school and she would always stop by the stadium to visit Mike. From my sophomore to senior year that baseball team basically watched me grow up and because of that I am very close to some of them.

The summer I graduated my sister and Mike got married, having been engaged a year prior. Since Ro was really involved in Mike's baseball life, when I would call her she was usually at the Angels practices, this gave me a chance to talk to the guys. I really missed them and enjoyed seeing them when I would come home during break, but that was very rare. This made me very excited to finally come home and possibly for good this time.

~
5am est

It is currently 5am Eastern standard time and I am in an Uber on my way to John F. Kennedy International airport. My flight leaves at 8:30am but coming from immigrant Hispanic parents I always like to be at the airport around two or three hours earlier.

I have a big suitcase filled with the rest of my belongings that weren't on the road to California in the moving truck. I still own my apartment in NYC and would like to have it as a staycation type place. I may not live in New York anymore but I do plan on visiting from time to time. My second life is there.

I arrived at the airport at 6am, checked in, went through security, etc and am now sitting at my gate. The flight isn't too long only 6 hours, and I'm lucky enough to have a direct flight. If I do the math right I should arrive at 12 or 1pm PST. I'm not too sure,the whole three hour time change always confuses me. I just know it's going to be good to be home.