Angels 'stunned' by magician who wows club with 'mind-blowing' tricks
Rhett Bollinger
@RhettBollingerTEMPE, Ariz. -- What’s baseball without a little bit of magic?
The Angels found out in a fun way on Wednesday when magician Shlomo Levinger visited the clubhouse to perform a set that wowed players and coaches alike. It was a way to escape the grind of Spring Training, and the performance had players buzzing as they left the clubhouse in awe.
“The whole goal is really to just give them a little break from the high intensity and anxiety of Spring Training,” Levinger said. “You want to let them sit, relax and enjoy a very fun show. And my show, personally, it's magic and mindreading, and I like for the magic to be strong, but I focus on the lightness of it. I want the guys to laugh.”
Levinger, 27, had his first big break in 2021 with the help of Angels superstar Mike Trout, who followed him on Instagram after seeing a few of his posts. Levinger, who grew up a big baseball fan in New York, initially didn’t believe it was really Trout. But once he realized it was his official account, he sent him a message, after which Trout surprised him even more by responding and indicating interest in seeing him live.
Levinger then made the trip to Angel Stadium to see the Angels and Yankees play in late August 2021, and he performed an hour-long set in the players’ parking lot after the game for several players such as Trout, Justin Upton, Dexter Fowler, Alex Cobb and Anthony Rizzo. He posted it to YouTube and it went viral, and other players such as Alex Bregman reached out to have Levinger perform in person.
Levinger performed several charity events from there -- including ones for Joe Smith and Walker Buehler -- and made a connection with Angels lefty Reid Detmers. Levinger made headlines last Spring Training when he wowed the Dodgers, and he joked that now more teams are after him after they won the World Series. But when Detmers found out Levinger was planning to head to Arizona again this spring, he made sure Levinger visited the Angels.
“What he does is awesome,” Detmers said. “You’re always amazed. I can’t catch on to it. I don’t know how he does it. I’ve seen him do it hundreds of times and it’s something different every time. It blows my mind.”
Levinger’s set for the Angels was roughly 30 minutes, but it was enough time to leave several players and coaches speechless. To show off his skills as a mentalist, he had first baseman Nolan Schanuel use Wikipedia to search anything he could think of, then he correctly surmised he searched Brad Pitt.
“He thought of Brad Pitt, and boom, he had Brad Pitt written down,” said reliever Michael Peterson. “It makes no sense to me.”
Levinger also had a ball tossed randomly to prospect Ryan Johnson and batting practice pitcher Mike Ashman, and he had them each think of a number between 1 and 100 and correlated their choices to a list of celebrities and food items he had saved in the notes app on his phone. The No. 99, chosen by Johnson, lined up with Shaquille O’Neal, while the No. 77, chosen by Ashman, matched up with pancakes. And when Johnson opened up the baseball he had thrown to him, it had a picture of Shaq eating pancakes.
“Stunned,” said reliever Garrett McDaniels. “Absolutely in awe. Just blown away. Thought he was gonna go somewhere with it, and then went completely somewhere else. And it was just mind blowing.”
In another unbelievable act, Levinger wrote an X on Trout’s palm with a marker and had infield coach Ryan Goins stand several feet away from him with a closed fist. And after he took the ink off Trout’s hand, he had Goins open his fist, where he then had an X written on his palm.
“I don't understand how that world works,” Peterson said. “I would love to, but he was doing stuff like he transferred ink from one hand to another. I've never seen anything like it. And so my mind was just like, 'This is witchcraft.'”
For Levinger's grand finale, he had Zach Neto hold onto an envelope he gave him at the start of his act, and he had several players pick a number from 1 to 100. He then multiplied all those numbers together and it exactly matched the 12114751219 he had written down on a piece of paper in the envelope. And then he showed how those numbers spell out "LA Angels" when correlated to the alphabet.
It left the clubhouse in disbelief and had players joking if maybe Levinger could join the coaching staff to read what other teams are doing.
“We might need him on the staff,” McDaniels said. “Our team mentalist. He can do our scouting reports.”