Los Angeles Angels’ Mike Trout Mastering Pokemon Go

Los Angeles Angels outfielder Mike Trout is the greatest baseball player on the planet and is now extending his talents to Pokemon Go.

If you’ve been out of the house any time in the past couple weeks, you’ve seen them. They walk around looking at their cell phones, then aim it at something invisible to the naked eye. At first you didn’t know what they were doing. It was bizarre. You felt like you were missing out on something. When you were surrounded by them, you felt like you were in a movie in which everyone around you had been taken over by some ethereal force. Maybe zombies. Maybe aliens. It turns out it was neither of those. It was Pokemon Go!

Pokemon Go is the hottest thing on the planet right now, so it’s no surprise that it has made its way into Major League Baseball. The best player on the planet, the Los Angeles Angels’ Mike Trout, was recently seen running around the clubhouse looking for Pokemon.

Mike Trout is not the first professional athlete to fall under the spell of Pokemon. In the NFL, the Carolina Panthers and Chicago Bears have tweeted pictures of Zubat and Rattata. In the NBA Summer League, Rudy Gobert of the Utah Jazz tweeted a picture of Spearow. Major League Soccer player Matt Hedges found Mankey as he was boarding a bus.

If you don’t know who Zubat, Rattata, Mankey, or Spearow are, you must be over 35 years old. Pokemon Go is a younger man’s game, which is perfect for the 24-year-old Mike Trout. He’s a millennial, after all, and Pokemon Go is big with that group. It has replaced Bernie Sanders as their favorite thing in the world.

The game’s popularity is astounding. It was released on July 6^th and has already surpassed Twitter in daily users, with people spending more time using the app than on Facebook. A report from Survey Monkey said Pokemon Go has become the “biggest mobile game in U.S. history,” beating such games as Candy Crush (2013), and Draw Something (2012).

According to this article, fans on Reddit have compiled a list of the six toughest finds in Pokemon Go. In fact, these six Pokemon have yet to be found since the release of the app. These as yet uncatchable characters are Mew, Mewtwo, Moltres, Zapdos, Articuno and Ditto. Consider them the Mount Rushmore (plus two) of Pokemon. If these Pokemon were baseball players, they’d be among the best in the game.

Historically, Mew is one of the hardest monsters to find and capture. As such, its presence has been surrounded by rumors and myth. It is considered to be the single ancestor of all other Pokemon and can learn any move that can be taught and can transform into other Pokemon. If MLB players were Pokemon, Mike Trout would be Mew. He’s the gold standard, the five-tool player, the irresistible force that destroys the immovable object. If MLB were to clone a baseball player, they would clone Mike Trout.

Mewtwo means “second of Mew” and derives its existence as a genetic duplicate of the original Mew. Mewtwo stands 6’7” tall and is strong and powerful. In the original game, Mewtwo is intended to be the strongest Pokemon ever. His baseball equivalent can only be Giancarlo Stanton, who leads all of baseball in exit velocity and home run distance. Giancarlo displayed his strength and power at the All-Star Game Home Run Derby, when he swatted a record 61 home runs in three rounds.

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Moltres is a large bird that is consumed in flames, like the legendary Phoenix, and often lives in hot regions. This sounds like none other than Paul Goldschmidt of the Arizona Diamondbacks, who also resides in the hot region of Phoenix during the baseball season.

Zapdos’ name comes from the combination of the English word “zap”, relating to electricity, and “dos”, which is two in Spanish. It is a large bird with black and yellow plumage and is said to shed lightning bolts when airborne. The electricity and black and yellow combination can only mean that Starling Marte of the Pittsburgh Pirates is the baseball equivalent of Zapdos.

Articuno gets its name from “Arctic” and “uno.” It is a large bird with blue plumage and a bluish-white-feathered chest. It can create and manipulate ice freely by freezing the moisture in the air. Of course, freezing batters with his masterful curve ball is one of the many skills of Clayton Kershaw, and Kershaw does wear blue and white, so he is officially Articuno in the Pokemon world.

The last of the six as yet uncatchable Pokemon is Ditto, who has the ability to rearrange its cellular structure into anything and usually uses this ability to change into any nearby Pokemon. It was also given the ability to breed with any Pokemon. Yeah, I don’t really know which MLB player that would be.

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With Mike Trout becoming an avid Pokemon Go trainer, perhaps we’ll see the Angels organization embrace it. They could have Pokemon uniforms night, with everyone on the team dressed as Pikachu. Perhaps they could persuade Nintendo to make Angels Stadium a Pokemon gym to attract fans who want to train and battle their Pokemon against fellow trainers. And, of course, is there any doubt that Pokemon Go fans would love to replace the Rally Monkey with the Rally Mankey?