ON AN UNCOMMONLY crisp afternoon in the middle of December, new Los Angeles Angels manager Ron Washington arrived in Bridgeton, New Jersey, for his first meeting with his most important player. Washington, hired a month earlier, drove up to Mike Trout‘s sprawling, custom-built mansion alongside his two new outfield coaches, Bo Porter and Eric Young Sr. They toured Trout’s expansive basement workout room, put up some shots in the neighboring basketball court and settled into the den for a conversation that lasted close to four hours.
Trout, 32, was coming off a ninth consecutive playoff-less season and a third consecutive injury-shortened one. Less than a week earlier, Shohei Ohtani, who once provided Trout his best chance at the October runs that famously elude him, had left to join the crosstown Los Angeles Dodgers. But Trout, those who attended the meeting said, didn’t spend much time lamenting. He pushed forward. He prodded the new staff about its vision, talked constantly about a desire to run the bases more freely and emphasized what he has consistently said publicly:
That he not only yearns to win, but that he wants to do so with — and only with — the Angels.
“This man has a lot invested in here,” Porter said, “and it showed.”
The speculation around Trout playing somewhere other than the Angels seems to intensify with every irrelevant month of September. It isn’t just fans and pundits; it’s players, coaches, scouts and executives who regularly wonder why the three-time MVP won’t demand a trade from the organization that has thus far failed to capitalize on his prime. Trout, however, remains unwavering in his commitment. Some have taken it as an indication that winning isn’t enough of a priority, a suggestion those who know him scoff at. Nobody, they say, is more competitive. Nobody is more hellbent on changing the narrative.
“He wants to stay,” said Torii Hunter, the longtime major league outfielder who once played with Trout and is now an Angels special assistant. “For the people that say he should get traded — it’s not their decision. It’s Trout’s decision. For people to say that he doesn’t want to win a championship — that’s 100% false. This guy’s always had fire and a desire to win.”
Since their initial meeting, Washington, Porter and Young have seen a man resolute on proving something, to both himself and those around him. In their first spring training together, they talked about him being first in drills and never shy about speaking out and consistently projecting joy. They noticed him setting a tone for everybody else.
“He’s been the one leading the charge out here, every single day — getting after it, having fun in the clubhouse, talking to the players, enjoying the work that we’ve been doing out here,” Washington said from Tempe, Arizona, last month. “His enjoying the work is making everyone else enjoy the work.”
A dozen years ago, Hunter mentored Trout during the historic rookie season that put him on a path to potentially — before injuries slowed the trajectory — become the greatest baseball player who ever lived. Hunter still sees elements of the ebullient 20-year-old who peppered him with questions about center field and ribbed him about his Dallas Cowboys. Now, though, he also sees more fight. More edge. More urgency to not only prove he’s still elite, but that he can do what few believe he can: lead the Ohtani-less Angels into the playoffs.
In Hunter’s words, “His ‘why’ is starting to become bigger.”
IF THERE’S ONE thing almost universally known about Trout, it’s that he’s loyal. It comes from his parents, he said, “and how I was brought up.” It’s a loyalty shown through his family and his closest friends, many of whom date back to grade school, and extends…
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