The artist envisioned a giant mural paying tribute to the Kings on the large wall facing north — “because a lot of the players live in the South Bay area,” he said — and another one that featured both the Dodgers and Lakers on the smaller wall facing south.
But just as Zermeño was getting ready to start the project earlier this month, something huge happened that altered his plans:
The Dodgers signed Shohei Ohtani.
Zermeño knew what he had to do.
“I was like, ‘OK, let’s put Ohtani on this side and make this Kings-Dodgers, then we’ll do Lakers on the opposite end,’” Zermeño told The Times on Tuesday while standing on a ladder outside Oceanview Liquor.
(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
As he spoke, Zermeño was painting in the color on the Kings portion of the mural, which features images of Drew Doughty and Dustin Brown. To their right is the already completed Dodgers portion, which features images of Mookie Betts and the star of the show, Ohtani.
“I already kind of had the idea, at least the direction of where I wanted to take the mural,” Zermeño said, “so right when they signed Ohtani, I was like, ‘OK, let’s just plug these in and make him the focal point of the project.’”
Zermeño’s painting is one of at least two murals of Ohtani in his new uniform that popped up in Los Angeles County after the Japanese superstar signed a 10-year, $700-million deal with the Dodgers less than two weeks ago.
Prociety sports merchandise store owner Eric Park had already arranged for artist Jonas Never to paint a sports-themed mural outside his shop in the Fashion District of downtown L.A. when the Dodgers’ big news broke.
“We were gonna decide between the Dodgers, Lakers or any of the local teams,” Park told The Times in a phone interview Tuesday. “And then just right when we were talking about it, Shohei announced his signing, so we’re just like, ‘Oh, we have to do this.’”
With some help from fellow mural artist Droyce, Never quickly completed his larger-than-life portrait of Ohtani in his No. 17 Dodgers jersey with a bat on his left shoulder while standing in front of the word “Sho-Time” in giant letters.
“Had to welcome @shoheiohtani to LA the only way we know how,” Never wrote on Instagram along with photos of the mural.
Fan Kazuo Imai wore a Shohei Ohtani Dodgers jersey when he paid a visit to the new mural outside Prociety in downtown Los Angeles.
(Michael Blackshire / Los Angeles Times)
The mural was finished on Dec. 16, and Park said it already has attracted a lot of attention.
“There’s been a bunch of people that [have] been coming by the building, just taking pictures, taking selfies and we even had a couple major Japanese news networks come by and interview us,” Park said. “We were even contacted by Japanese tour groups that wanted to come by.”
Zermeño said a number of enthusiastic fans have stopped by to check out his work this week as well.
“These past four days have been pretty wild,” Zermeño said.
People stop to take photos of a mural featuring Dodgers’ Shohei Ohtani, left, and Mookie Betts outside Oceanview Liquor in Hermosa Beach on Tuesday.
(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
One of those excited visitors was Manhattan Beach resident and lifelong Dodgers fan Colin Sako, who said he had to come by and get pictures of himself in front of the Ohtani portion of the mural to post on social media and send to his friends in Hawaii.
“For me, it’s just he’s the best baseball player in the history of baseball,” Sako said. “And for him to come to L.A., it’s huge — huge!”