To the best of Matt English’s memory, the genesis of his tweet might have come as he sat on his toilet watching baseball highlights. It wasn’t any grand, well-thought-out narrative. In English’s words, he was “s—posting.” In this case, quite literally.

English acknowledges he’s not the first person to recognize the Angels continually lose despite employing two once-in-a-lifetime players in Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani.

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But he described it in such a way on that May 17, 2021, night that it resonated.

every time I see an Angels highlight it's like "Mike Trout hit three homes runs and raised his average to .528 while Shohei Ohtani did something that hasn't been done since 'Tungsten Arm' O'Doyle of the 1921 Akron Groomsmen, as the Tigers defeated the Angels 8-3"

— ℳatt (@matttomic) May 18, 2021

The tweet reads: “Every time I see an Angels highlight it’s like ‘Mike Trout hit three homes runs and raised his average to .528 while Shohei Ohtani did something that hasn’t been done since ‘Tungsten Arm’ O’Doyle of the 1921 Akron Groomsmen, as the Tigers defeated the Angels 8-3.’”

Neither the player nor the team ever existed. The name “Tungsten Arm” O’Doyle was born of a need to find an old-time-baseball type of name. It feels as though every game Ohtani plays in he’s credited for doing something not done in a century.

The name “Akron Groomsmen” came as a result of the word “Akron” sounding funny and being a perfect Midwestern baseball city from the 20th century. As for “Groomsmen,” English simply thought it was funny — playing off the old 1890s “Brooklyn Bridegrooms,” a team that later became the Dodgers.

A year later, English’s tweet is only growing in popularity, with more than 10,000 retweets and nearly 50,000 likes.

“I just fired off the tweet, and I thought, ‘Ya know, I’ve got a few followers, maybe this will get 10, 20 likes,’” English said. “Maybe a few retweets. Just something I would fire off. I didn’t think that it would have legs like this.”

It’s funny, sure. But in many ways, it’s an embodiment of what the Angels are this year. It’s satirical but also rooted in some very uncomfortable facts for the Angels.

Trout has 24 home runs and a .974 OPS. Ohtani has 19 homers and an .842 OPS to go along with a 2.44 ERA and 111 strikeouts in 81 innings. They are two of the American League’s starters for the All-Star Game.

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The Angels are 38-49. A season the team believed would be competitive is in disarray. The Angels played a Tungsten game Friday, losing 5-4 to the Orioles despite home runs from Trout and Ohtani.

“It’s just tough,” Trout told reporters in Baltimore. “It’s just one of those nights.”

Whether or not it’s what Trout meant, “those nights” haven’t been incredibly rare this season. There have been a number of games in recent weeks that have only elevated the Tungsten legend.

There have been two games in which Ohtani has homered twice — May 29 versus Toronto and June 21 versus Kansas City — and the Angels lost. There was a game on April 23 when Trout homered twice and the Angels lost.

On July 8 and June 28, Trout and Ohtani homered. The Angels lost both games.

In that loss to Kansas City, Ohtani drove in eight runs. The Angels never had the lead. On Friday night in Baltimore, the duo drove in all four runs only to see the bullpen allow five in the final three frames. On June 28 against the White Sox, both homered, but the Angels still lost 11-4.

Those are just the Tungsten games. As a whole, the two players are theoretically in the MVP conversation as the Angels sit 19 games out of first place in the division and seven games out of wild-card position after a 1-8 trip.

Tungsten games amid a Tungsten season.

“To be a ‘Tungsten Arm’ game, Ohtani — preferably Ohtani and Trout — but one or the other have to do something amazing,” English said. “And the Angels have to lose, preferably to a bad team. That, I think, is the platonic ideal ‘Tungsten Arm’ game.”

Trout and Ohtani have struggled at times this year. There’s no doubt about that. Trout right now is mired in a slump.

But there’s also no doubt they’re an oasis in the desert that is this Angels team. That’s not to say every other player is not doing well or is having a bad season. That is not the case. But there’s just not enough to back up the superstar power on the roster.

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Only four other position players have an OPS over .700. One of them, Michael Stefanic, has been in the majors for just a week. Another, Monte Harrison, has just two hits this season. The team has scored four runs or fewer in 33 of 43 games dating to May 25 and is 11-32 in that span.

The Angels’ bullpen ERA was 4.07 entering Sunday. That’s in the bottom half of the league. The Angels have gone 6-25 since the second game of the doubleheader on June 2. Ohtani lost the first game that day.

Four of those six wins came in Seattle, where Trout homered five times in one series and carried the team to victory.

The Angels have gone 5-0 in Ohtani starts since June 2. He has an 0.27 ERA during that stretch.

The latter two examples might run counter to the Tungsten narrative. But on the contrary, it’s an example of how the Angels almost never win recently without being carried by their two stars. And sometimes they even lose despite those performances.

Ohtani has never expressed resentment about that reality but does seem to place pressure on himself to produce at all times.

“Obviously the home run at-bats were good, but I feel like I could have done a better job on the two sac fly at-bats,” Ohtani said after that aforementioned eight-RBI game in a losing effort last month. “The result could have been different if I had come up with big hits there.”

The rest of the team combined to drive in three runs as the pitching staff cratered in the 12-11 loss. Ohtani pitched eight shutout innings the next night. That’s probably something that not even “Tungsten Arm” O’Doyle could imagine, yet Ohtani wanted even more.

The man who imagined Tungsten is not an Angels fan. He doesn’t even live in the United States. English resides in Toronto and works for a charity. He’s a big Blue Jays fan. He has no connection to the Angels or their fan base. He has a modest following on Twitter and mostly does not post about baseball.

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But he’s embraced his connection to the team. He even got a shirt designed and printed with a cartoon depiction of “‘Tungsten Arm’ O’Doyle” and a “1921 Akron Groomsmen” emblem. He plans to wear it to a game when the Angels visit the Blue Jays in August.

He doesn’t watch every Angels game. But he knows the Tungsten games happen when he wakes up to hundreds of notifications. His post was retweeted a bunch in the days immediately after it was posted. But it has continued to blow up.

In some circles, it is celebrated and joked about. In others — typically involving Angels fans — it is not liked. Many of them are sick of the (mostly fair) narrative that the Angels are wasting their superstar talent.

The irony, though, is English is not among that group. He says he has “no ill will toward the good people of the greater Orange County Anaheim of Los Angeles area.”

“I’m not going to say it’s an innocent tweet,” English said. “It is crapping on the Angels. The reason it keeps getting retweeted is because it keeps happening.”

But he added an important and nuanced perspective — one that, even as the Angels flounder in perfect Tungsten fashion, can be appreciated by a fan base that desperately wants to see wins.

“I don’t think it’s wasted for the fans of that team to get to watch generational talents and get to cheer for them on their team,” English said. “I don’t like the idea that players are wasted. Because it’s not wasted.

“I got to watch Roy Halladay in Toronto, and the Jays were crap that whole time. Was Roy Halladay’s time wasted in Toronto? No, it wasn’t wasted for me. Because I got to cheer for him.

“So I’m sure if you’re an (Angels) fan, Trout is not being wasted in Anaheim for the fans that get to buy his jersey and watch him play. That’s the best time of their lives.”

(Top photo: Richard Mackson / USA Today)