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Williard (Bill) Christine Jr., a multiple award-winning journalist who spent 23 years covering horse racing for the Los Angeles Times, died on Monday (Aug. 25) after being diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia three years ago. He died at his home in Hermosa Beach, with family by his side. He was 87.

While Christine was known in Southern California as the Times’ voice of horse racing, it was really just the end of a storied career that saw him at seven different newspapers over 42 years that also contained a stopover in racing pubic relations.

Former Los Angeles Times reporter Bill Christine.

(Christine family)

He was the author of three books, one on Roberto Clemente, another on jockey Bill Hartack and one on a pair of songwriters. After leaving newspapers, he liked to investigate and write about true crime, especially in his hometown of East St. Louis.

Christine won Eclipse Awards for outstanding writing about horse racing, in 1984 and 2004. In 2000, he was given Walter Haight Award for career excellence in turf writing. He won the David F. Woods Memorial Award in 1991 and 1992 for his coverage of the Preakness Stakes.

He was also president of the National Turf Writers and Broadcasters, a group that also includes public relations people, from 1990 to 1992.

“Bill was an old school journalist,” said Mike Willman the former longtime media relations executive at Santa Anita. “He kept copious notes and was a contrarian by nature. He was fair and extremely knowledgeable.

“He really enjoyed being around the people in racing. You could take issue with something he wrote and then debate it and there was never any animus. I really respected him for that.”

Even after he retired, Christine would write emails to friends and colleagues recounting people and events from his career in racing and baseball.

Born in Illinois, he attended Southern Illinois Carbondale where he graduated in 1963 and wrote for the college newspaper. His first job out of college was at the East St. Louis Journal, where he covered baseball among other sports. After two years he moved to the Baltimore News American, followed by the Louisville Times, Pittsburgh Press, Chicago Daily News and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, where he was briefly the sports editor.

It was then that he switched to public relations taking the top media job at Commodore Downs in Pennsylvania, followed by four years as the assistant to the executive vice president at the National Thoroughbred Racing Assn.

The Times rarely hires people from the public relations side, but then sports editor Bill Dwyre decided to take a chance.

“Bill Christine was my first hire as sports editor of The Times, and being the first, it was a big deal not only for me, but for people watching me and trying to figure out what I was thinking and how I would cover each sport,” said Dwyre, who later went on to cover horse racing for The Times.

Former Los Angeles Times reporter Bill Christine receives an Eclipse Award honoring his horse racing reporting.

(Christine family)

“It was 1981. I interviewed some of the best national turf writers, including Maryjean Wall, Jennie Rees and Jack Mann, as well as Christine. I knew Bill better than the others because I had been his roommate at API (American Press Institute). … I liked that Bill was a great story-teller and that his newspaper experience went beyond just turf writing — he had covered lots of baseball on deadline and had also been the sports editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

“When he came to The Times, Santa Anita and Hollywood Park and Del Mar were booming and he worked tirelessly to give the sport the coverage it deserved.”

Bob Mieszerski, who has reported and handicapped horse racing in Southern California for many years and worked alongside Christine after Mieszerski came to the Times and added a full page of racing daily, echoed Dwyre’s sentiment about his abilities and presence.

“He was very welcoming to me when I joined the Times and I always appreciated that,” Mieszerski said. “He was a great storyteller and I Ioved hearing him recall anecdotes about different people — both in and out of racing — that he encountered.”

Dan Smith, the retired marketing and media head at Del Mar, remembers Christine for his very distinctive laugh.

“It was like ghee, ghee, ghee,” Smith said struggling to duplicate the sound. “It was very distinctive and very unique.

“He was also a big movie buff. He and his wife went to a lot of movies. And we loved to discuss movies. He followed all of that very closely.”

Christine was known for his strong opinions, which sometimes put him at odds with the people he covered.

Christine’s most notable feud was with Wayne Lukas, who didn’t speak to the reporter for several years after something Christine wrote.

“He wasn’t reluctant to discuss his opinions, which a lot of people didn’t agree with, but that was OK,” Smith said.

Dwyre, who would often change beats every year, once offered Christine the Dodgers job, arguably the best job in the department, because Christine had been complaining about needing something new. But in the end, Christine decided he would rather cover racing.

“He really knew his baseball and had a Hall of Fame ballot,” Willman remembers. “You might have your own opinion and if it disagreed with Bill’s, he had all the ammunition to show you why he was right.”

Even if Christine’s daily coverage was often buried on a page deep in the section, surrounded by handicapping and small-type results, Christine would rise to the occasion and give you a well crafted non-obvious story.

“I remember often doing critiques for my staff, especially those who had put out the previous morning’s paper,” Dwyre said. “I would hold up the sports section and ask which story that was in the section should have been on the front page and wasn’t. Invariably, it was a Christine horse racing story.”

The press box at Del Mar, named in honor of Dan Smith, has a wall where the pictures of deceased turf writers go.

“I guess his picture will go on the wall soon,” Smith said. “We’ve still got a few spots left and hope we don’t fill them anytime soon.”

Christine is survived by his wife of 43 years, Pat, and two twin daughters, Laura and Leslie, his first wife, Dianne, and stepson Chris.

Christine asked that his body be donated to USC for medical research. After the cremains are returned, there will be a small celebration of life.

SOUTH WILLIAMSPORT, Pa. — Lin Chin-Tse retired the first 13 batters he faced and gave up just one hit in five innings as Taiwan beat Nevada 7-0 in the Little League World Series championship Sunday, ending a 29-year title drought for the Taiwanese.

Taiwan won its first LLWS since 1996, although its 18 titles are the most of any country beside the United States, including five straight from 1977 to 1981.

Lin, a 5-foot-8 right hander, also smashed a three-run triple in Taiwan’s five-run fifth. The 12-year-old from Taipei hit more than 80 mph with his fastball multiple times during the tournament, which to batters looks much faster because the plate in this level of baseball is only 46 feet away. His velocity looked much the same Sunday.

Taiwan’s Jian Zih-De celebrates in front of Nevada’s Luke D’Ambrosio during the second inning of Taiwan’s 7-0 victory in the Little League World Series championship game.

(Patrick Smith / Getty Images)

Lin’s longest start before Sunday was three innings in Taiwan’s opening game against Mexico. He gave up only one hit in a subsequent victory over Venezuela.

Garrett Gallegos broke up the perfect game with a single into left field in the fifth inning but was caught in a double play when Grayson Miranda lined out to second. Nevada was appearing in its first championship game.

Offensively, Taiwan capitalized on four wild pitches and a passed ball. Jian Zih-De worked a walk leading off the bottom of the second and later scored when he beat the throw home after the wild pitches.

Chen Shi-Rong scored Taiwan’s second run in the bottom of the third when he ran home on a Nevada throwing error to first base.

The last international team to win the tournament title was Japan in 2017.

SAN DIEGO — The home team was one strike from victory Friday night, when the Petco Park video board suddenly erupted in hues of pink and mint, flashing the preferred accompaniment to any game against the Dodgers: BEAT LA.

Then came the 102-mph fastball, then a swing and a miss, and the San Diego Padres had indeed beaten the Dodgers.

For Dodgers fans who thought the National League West had been won last weekend at Dodger Stadium, this just in from San Diego: The NL West is tied.

These were words in this publication just five days ago: “The Dodgers now lead the National League West by two games, but it feels like 20.”

The Dodgers had just swept the Padres, their only competition for the division title. The Dodgers were 8-2 against the Padres this season. There was a blue wave of emotion. The thing that happened last is the thing you remember best.

“It’s natural,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “That’s the great thing about fandom. People get excited. That’s a great thing about sports.”

The feeling in the clubhouse last weekend?

“In here? We played a great series, but there’s still a lot of baseball left to play,” Roberts said. “It wasn’t going to be won or lost then, and it’s not going to be won or lost this weekend.”

The trouble is not with the emotion. The trouble is with the schedule.

The number of games left after this weekend: 31. The number of Dodgers-Padres games left after this weekend: 0.

This is baseball’s best rivalry, with a division title and potential first-round playoff bye on the line. The Dodgers and Padres should be facing each other to wrap up the season, with all that emotion bursting forth.

Instead, the Dodgers finish the regular season against another traditional rival, the (checks notes) Seattle Mariners.

There has been plenty of emotion among the Dodgers and Padres fan bases already this year, mostly in the form of angst.

The Dodgers won the winter, and Padres fans wondered why their team was not keeping up with the competition.

The Padres won the trade deadline, and Dodgers fans wondered why their team was not keeping up with the competition.

For the Dodgers, the cliche is about to be put to a real-life test: Getting a player off the injured list is just like getting a player in a trade.

Reliever Tanner Scott was activated Friday. Reliever Kirby Yates could be activated as soon as Saturday.

Infielder/outfielder Kiké Hernández could be activated next week, followed in some order by relievers Michael Kopech and Brock Stewart, infielder/outfielder Hyeseong Kim, infielder/outfielder Tommy Edman and third baseman Max Muncy.

On Friday, infielder Alex Freeland hit his first major league home run, but infielder Buddy Kennedy (.287 OPS) went hitless, and the Dodgers burned their backup catcher to bat for him. They trusted outfielder Justin Dean to pinch-run and play center field, but not to bat.

Alex Freeland celebrates after hitting a solo home run in the third inning of a 2-1 loss to the Padres on Friday.

(Sean M. Haffey / Getty Images)

“This is our club right now,” Roberts said. “We have guys coming back.”

On a hot August night, Petco Park was its usual lively self, with its usual sellout crowd, with Dodgers fans drowning out chants of “Let’s Go Padres” and Padres fans returning the favor at the sound of “Let’s Go Dodgers.”

Amid intensity fit for October, the Dodgers and Padres each let a strong starting pitcher — Blake Snell for L.A., Yu Darvish for San Diego — continue rather than reflexively remove him for the third time through the lineup.

How do you win in October, with pitchers like Snell and Darvish lined up?

Is it with the home run?

Only one major league team has more home runs than the Dodgers. The Dodgers scored their only run Friday on a home run.

Is it with small ball?

Only one major league team has fewer home runs than the Padres. The Padres scored both their runs in one inning Friday, with a rally that included three singles, a walk, a sacrifice bunt and a sacrifice fly.

The Padres dropped three sacrifice bunts Friday. They have 40 this season, the most in the majors. The Dodgers have eight, the fewest of any NL team.

Before the game, I spoke with Mason Miller, the former Athletics All-Star closer turned Padres eighth-inning setup man. To this point in his career, Miller said, the biggest game of his career has been closing the A’s final game in Oakland last September.

“I think I said it after that game: until I play in the playoffs, that will probably be my all-time baseball memory,” Miller said. “Now it doesn’t seem like I’ll have to wait that much longer to get that playoff taste.”

Not much longer at all. As of Friday morning, Baseball Prospectus put the Dodgers’ chance of making the playoffs at 99.8% and the Padres’ chance at 99.6%.

Maybe this weekend won’t mark the last Dodgers-Padres game this season. What we really want is the first NL Championship Series between the Dodgers and the Padres, with the winner advancing to the World Series: SoCal vs. the World.

DENVER — Edgardo Henriquez has a gift. He can throw a baseball faster than all but a few humans in history.

Yet he prefers to think of it as something he and God created together, not something that was just given to him.

“We’ve worked for that,” said Henriquez, who frequently uses the plural pronoun when talking about himself. “All the work, the effort, the physics. And God’s reward, most of all.”

Wherever the lightning in his right arm came from, he’s making good use of it. Of the 83 pitches he’s thrown this season entering Wednesday’s game, 28 have topped 101 miles per hour. The fastest hit 103.3 on the radar gun last Saturday, making it the hardest-thrown pitch by a Dodger since Statcast began tracking speed in 2015 and likely the fastest pitch in franchise history.

Henriquez, 23, shrugs and smiles at the numbers.

“Now we have to stay consistent,” he said in Spanish. “Even growing up in Venezuela, I always threw hard.”

What he didn’t do in Venezuela was pitch because when he signed as a 16-year-old in 2018, Henriquez was a catcher. The Dodgers moved him to the other side of the plate a year later, when they got him to their Dominican academy.

The process was not a smooth one. The right-hander allowed 22 runs in 30 innings in his first season then, after sitting out the summer of 2020 because of the coronavirus pandemic, he came to the U.S. a year later and went 2-3 with a 4.93 ERA in 13 games split between the Arizona Complex League and Single A Rancho Cucamonga.

The Dodgers projected him as a starter but after Henriquez missed the 2023 season to Tommy John surgery, he came back throwing gas and the team moved him to the bullpen. The results were spectacular, with Henriquez climbing four levels, from Low A Rancho Cucamonga to the majors, in six months to make his big-league debut in the final week of the regular season.

And he announced his presence with authority, topping 101 mph twice to earn the save in his third game.

Henriquez grew up in Cumaná, a historic beach city of about half a million people wedged between the Manzanares Rivers and Venezuela’s Caribbean coast, 250 miles east of Caracas. The oldest continuously-inhabited Spanish settlement in South America, it has been the birthplace and poets and presidents. But baseball players? Not so much.

Pitcher Armando Galarraga, who was robbed of a perfect game by an umpire’s call in 2010, is probably the best known of Cumaná’s big-leagues while Maracay, on the other end of the country, has produced more than two dozen players, among them all-stars Bobby Abreu, Miguel Cabrera and Elvis Andrus.

“Maracay, yes. They say that is the birthplace of baseball in Venezuela,” Henriquez said. “But the truth is it’s Cumaná.”

Henriquez took to the game at an early age, playing on local fields and sandlots. And because he was among the biggest of the neighborhood kids, he was put behind the plate. The Dodgers liked his size — he looks much bigger than the 6-foot-4 and 200 pounds he’s credited with on the roster — and arm so they offered him $80,000 to sign as an international free agent with the intention of making him a pitcher.

Before the elbow-reconstruction surgery, Henriquez touched 101 mph with this fastball but he came back throwing even harder, averaging 99 mph and reaching 104 in the minors last summer. That earned him a September promotion and a spot on the roster for the Dodgers’ first two postseason series.

He was also in line for a spot on the opening day roster this season before a metatarsal injury in his left foot landed him in a walking boot, sidelining him for most of spring training.

Neither the Dodgers nor Henriquez will talk about how the injury happened.

“I’d rather keep that to myself,” the pitcher said this week.

Yet that setback proved just another obstacle for Henriquez to overcome, and after striking out 36 batters in 23 2/3 innings for Triple A Oklahoma City, he was summoned back to the Dodgers a month ago.

In some ways, he was a different pitcher.

“He looks much more confident,” manager Dave Roberts said. “I think he was confident last year, but there was like a fake confidence, understandably. He knows his stuff plays here, so it’s good to see.”

His record-setting pitch came in his sixth of seven scoreless appearances when he struck out pinch-hitter Ryan O’Hearn out on a four-seam fastball in the seventh inning of a win over the San Diego Padres.

His parents, Edgar and Erika, where visiting from Venezuela and in the stands at Dodger Stadium for the pitch to O’Hearn, one that has generated a lot of attention on social media. As a result Roberts said pitching coach Mark Prior and bullpen coach Josh Bard are making sure Henriquez understands there’s more to pitching that just lighting up the radar gun.

As good as the four-seamer is, however, it may not be Henriquez’s best pitch. His cutter, which sits in the mid-90s, can be all but unhitable and he also has a devastating slider. He’ll need every bit of that repertoire to succeed in the majors, said Chris Forbes, the senior director of player development for the Colorado Rockies, because the number of hard-throwers is growing.

“If there isn’t deception, there isn’t ride, [hitters] can catch up if you don’t have something else that they can think about,” he said.

So far the hitters aren’t catching up: In seven innings this summer entering Wednesday, Henriquez has allowed just three hits and walked one while striking out four. Opponents are hitting .120 against him.

It’s been a rapid rise for Henriquez, who has gone from teenage catcher to big-league reliever, surviving a global pandemic, Tommy John surgery and a fractured bone in his foot to pitch for a World Series champion. But there’s still one goal left, albeit one he talks about only grudgingly.

On a team without set bullpen roles, Henriquez wants to be a closer, using his blazing fastball not just to demoralize hitters but to shut down games as well.

“Whatever God has in store for me. We’ll work wherever and keep going,” he said. “But yes, I’d like to be a closer.”

Mookie Betts offered a new perspective Tuesday afternoon on his season-long slump, which is that it wasn’t a season-long slump.

In his view, it actually extended back to last season.

“I really haven’t been right since I came back from my hand last year,” Betts said.

Betts fractured his left hand in mid-June last season when he was struck by a 98-mph fastball. He was sidelined for almost two months.

Dodgers shortstop Mookie Betts stares down at his batting gloves after flying out in the ninth inning against the Minnesota Twins at Dodger Stadium on July 22.

(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)

“Think about it,” Betts said. “Go and look at it. I haven’t been right since.”

Betts was a MVP candidate when he went down, hitting .304 at the time. He batted .263 after his return, including .185 over the final 17 games of the regular season.

The troubles from last year have carried into this year, in which he’s batting a career-worst .236.

Betts wanted to clarify the point he was trying to make.

“I wasn’t blaming it on my hand or anything,” he said. “I was just saying since coming back, I haven’t done anything. It’s not just this season.”

Betts even went out of his way to downplay the severity of the injury or how it has affected him since.

“It wasn’t like I obliterated my hand,” he said. “It was a fracture.”

Betts pointed to how his grip strength was measured in spring training. The readings showed his grip was stronger than he was the previous year.

Dodgers shortstop Mookie Betts makes a play during a game against the St. Louis Cardinals at Dodger Stadium on Aug. 4.

(Luke Johnson/Los Angeles Times)

“There’s no correlation to anything,” he said. “I wish I could blame it on something, but nah.”

My visit to Dodger Stadium on Tuesday was prompted by what Betts told reporters after a weekend series in Tampa. The remarks in question were made when Betts was hitless in his last four games; the streak extended to a career-high five after another hitless game on Monday against the St. Louis Cardinals.

“I’ve done everything I can possibly do,” Betts told reporters. “It’s up to God at this point.”

In print, at least, he sounded defeated. His quotes, I told him, were depressing.

“I don’t know if you’re watching what’s going on, but it is depressing,” Betts said with a smile.

So he still had a sense of humor.

Which isn’t to say he’s not baffled or frustrated by his lack of production.

“It’s unexplainable,” Betts said. “I don’t know. It sucks. You know how in Space Jam, they take your superpowers away? Kind of what it feels like. I’ve never been there, never done that, so to have that happen, I don’t know how to get out of it.”

Without any specific answers, he’s doubled down on the general philosophy that made him one of baseball’s greatest players.

He’s worked.

“That’s the only thing I can do,” he said. “The only thing I can control is my effort and my attitude.”

When Betts says he’s done everything he could do to recapture his old magic, what he’s really saying is that he’s doing everything he can.

“I hit for three or four hours a day,” he said. “At some point, your body breaks down, but I’d rather break down than not give the effort.”

Betts showed up at Dodger Stadium before 1:30 p.m. on Monday for the series opener against the Cardinals, which started at 7:10. He hit in the batting cages, worked on his defense on the field, and participated in batting practice. He returned to the batting cages at around 4:30 and stayed there until 6:15.

“Just trying to relearn, going to the basics, relearning myself,” he said. “I had to go back and think about what I used to do in the minor leagues, [those] types of things.”

Betts might not have yet figured out the adjustments required from him to break out of his slump, but he’s also not out of ideas. He acknowledged he’s purposely sounded more clueless than he actually is in order to avoid discussing changes he’s trying to implement.

“There’s a bunch of stuff that I’m working on,” he said. “That’s stuff that, no offense to you guys, but you guys wouldn’t understand.”

The former right fielder didn’t think the workload at shortstop was the source of his problems, and he didn’t think his batspeed had declined in the last couple of years, as data from baseball’s tracking system had indicated.

“I haven’t hit the ball solid,” Betts said. “Naturally, you slow down because you try to hit the ball solid.”

While the experiment of deploying Betts as a leadoff hitter ended after only two weeks, manager Dave Roberts said he was committed to batting him near the top of the lineup.

“If that’s not confidence from a manager to a player,” Roberts said, “I don’t know what is.”

Betts rewarded Roberts’ faith on Tuesday in a 12-6 victory over the Cardinals on Tuesday, as he was three for four with a double, a walk and three runs. The three-hit game was his first in almost two months.

Betts refused to read too much into the performance.

“It’s good to get the results, but it’s one game,” he said. “Every time we talk about [a good game], I go 0 for 20 after. So we’ll see about tomorrow.”

He departed the stadium uncertain of what the results would be the next day, but he knew what the process would be. He would continue to work and continue to search for answers.

The second in an occasional series of profiles on Southern California athletes who have flourished in their post-playing careers.

The expansion Los Angeles Angels were just 5 months old in September 1961 when the team called up three minor leaguers who would come to define the fledgling franchise’s early years.

Jim Fregosi, a teenage shortstop, would go on to make six All-Star teams and win a Gold Glove. Right-hander Dean Chance, who turned 20 that summer, would win Rookie of the Year and Cy Young awards and lead the American League in wins, ERA, shutouts and innings pitched. And Buck Rodgers would catch for nine big league seasons before managing at the minor and major league level for the Angels.

But only Dan Ardell, a light-hitting first baseman who was called up with them, would do something that had never been done before on Sept. 20 against the Detroit Tigers. In his first big league plate appearance, Ardell blooped a single to right field, only to see pinch-runner Ken McBride get caught rounding second base to end the game.

“I’m the only one to only get one hit. And the one hit was a walk-off loss,” he said. “Not easy to do.”

There were few witnesses since many in the crowd of 3,116 at Detroit’s Tiger Stadium had left long before the ninth inning. Ardell would appear in six more games, four as a pinch-runner, and make six more plate appearances without a hit, striking out twice, walking once and dropping down a sacrifice bunt to finish with a .250 lifetime batting average.

It wasn’t good enough to get him a plaque in the Hall of Fame but you can still find him listed there, alongside the other 20,964 men who have played in the majors.

“It’s a very low number,” Ardell said, acknowledging the accomplishment. “Very low.”

Yet more than six decades later, Ardell looks back on his month with the Angels with neither delight nor disappointment. He has gone on to live a rich life, one that has included well-paying jobs in banking and asset management, a 41-year marriage that produced four children and six grandchildren, and absolutely no regrets about a baseball career that was so short it’s remembered mostly for a teammate’s base-running blunder.

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1. Jim Fregosi during a game in Anaheim in 1965. (Transcendental Graphics / Getty Images) 2. Dean Chance won a Cy Young Award with the Angels. (Associated Press) 3. Rich Rollins of the Minnesota Twins swings and misses as Angels catcher Buck Rodgers catches the pitch in a 1962 game. All three players were called up to the Angels in September 1961 along with Dan Ardell, whose career only lasted seven games. (Hy Peskin Archive / Getty Images)

“I never had a desire to be a major league ballplayer,” said Ardell, a retired real estate executive who made $1,250 for his big league cameo. “I loved playing baseball, but once I started playing professionally, I was bored. I was disinterested.”

In fact, the bookish Ardell probably never should have been there at all. But after winning the College World Series as a sophomore at USC, he accepted a $37,500 bonus to leave school five semesters short of a degree to sign with the Angels.

Still, he hedged his bets just the same.

“They wanted to give me $35,000 and I said I need $37,500 because that would give me the $500 a semester [tuition] at ‘SC that I needed,” Ardell said.

The newly born Angels had just two minor league teams, so Ardell was sent to the Dodgers’ Class D farm club in Artesia, N.M. His manager was Spider Jorgensen, whose big league debut in 1947 had been somewhat overshadowed by teammate Jackie Robinson, who broke baseball’s color line that day. Since Jorgensen’s equipment never made it to the ballpark, he played third base that day using an infielder’s glove he borrowed from Robinson.

The team Jorgensen managed went 48-78 and finished last, 29½ games out of first in the Sophomore League — so bad that Sports Illustrated came to New Mexico to document its mediocrity. Ardell finished that first season with more strikeouts (32) than hits (30) in 125 at-bats, but he was big, left-handed and played first base — three attributes that were enough to get him a trial with an Angels team that entered September 30 games behind the league-leading Yankees.

“I basically played second string at ‘SC,” Ardell said. “So I go from second string to Class D ball — which wasn’t as good as our ‘SC team — to the big leagues all within 60 days. At age 20, it was an incredible roller coaster.”

It was a ride he quickly tired off. He didn’t drink and he was about to get married, so the frat house atmosphere of a professional baseball team wasn’t one he partook of. After three more minor league seasons, he retired at 23.

“I learned a lot about myself,” he said of those three mostly unhappy summers.

It wasn’t that he couldn’t do it. It was that he didn’t want to do it. Being a big league ballplayer may have been some kids’ dream, but it wasn’t his.

“I got no satisfaction out of it. And I was bored,” he said. “It just wasn’t that interesting to me once I had to make my living doing it.

“If you don’t love what you’re doing, if you don’t appreciate and like what you’re doing, it becomes hard work.”

At 84, Ardell has an easy smile and a quick, self-deprecating wit he employs often. He’s still at his playing weight of 190 pounds, but he says he’s lost 2 inches off a frame that once rose to 6-foot-2. And he no longer moves with the speed or grace that allowed him to steal seven bases in his first minor league season.

There is no memorabilia, no remnants of his short-lived career in his hillside home in Laguna Beach’s Bluebird Canyon, about a half-mile from the Pacific Ocean. He gave his gloves away during a garage sale shortly after he quit playing and a grandson took down the few pictures he had hung on the wall.

After retiring with a .252 average and 45 home runs in 389 minor league games, Ardell went back to college, then studied real estate, working for Union Bank and Wells Fargo. He eventually started a real estate asset management company with his twin brother Dave, an equally talented baseball player who played at UCLA, where he was the team captain.

After retiring with a .252 average and 45 home runs in 389 minor league games, Dan Ardell returned to school at USC, then studied real estate, working for Union Bank and Wells Fargo.

(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)

That anyone remembers he played at all is both flattering and befuddling for Ardell, who receives about a dozen autograph requests in the mail each year.

“I mean, how do they even know my address?” he asked.

Still, he answers every letter. Some fans send old photos or baseball cards that are necessarily homemade since Ardell never got a Topps bubblegum card of his own.

“In those days anybody who signed a bonus, Topps would sign,” he said. “So they came to Artesia, where I was playing, and said ‘we want to give you a Topps card. And we’ll pay you five bucks’.

“I said, ‘I think I need 10.’ So I’m the only only major leaguer who never had a Topps card.”

Which isn’t to say Ardell has no mementos from his career. A fastball he didn’t see on a poorly lit field in San José slipped under the bill of his batting helmet and struck him flush in the head one night.

“I woke up the next day. You could see the seam where the baseball hit. I still have a dent,” he said with a chuckle, pointing to a spot in the center of his forehead.

It wasn’t until three decades after he walked away from the game that Ardell came to appreciate what he had accomplished — and only then after marrying Jean Hastings, who would shortly become a nationally recognized baseball academic and writer.

Ardell and Hastings — a Brooklyn native who had always been a baseball fanatic — were living in the same Orange County neighborhood when a mutual friend suggested they go out on a date.

“She had just read ‘Ball Four,’” Ardell said, referencing Jim Bouton’s book about the raunchy, less-seemly side of baseball. “So she said no, baseball players are to look at, they’re not to touch.”

Dan Ardell says he receives about a dozen autograph requests in the mail each year, with some fans sending old photos or homemade baseball cards since Ardell never got a Topps card of his own. “I mean, how do they even know my address?” he said.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

She went on the date anyway, then married Ardell a couple of years later in 1981. Jean, 79, died in 2022 after a short, ferocious battle with leukemia, but in the more than 40 years she spent with Ardell, she slowly rekindled his love for a game he had all but forgotten.

They went to conferences and symposiums, where Jean spoke on the magic and the poetry of baseball. They visited the Hall of Fame, traveled to Arizona for spring training and attended countless Angels games, watching on TV the ones they couldn’t attend in person.

“It was definitely part of her,” grandson Garrett Tyler said.

Jean not only helped Ardell put his baseball career into perspective, she helped put his life in perspective. Shortly after they married, “I decided to have a mission statement,” Ardell said. “And my mission statement was to make a difference in the lives of others.”

“Ten years later,” he added “I changed it to make a positive difference.”

He saw that desire at work in Jean, a political liberal who, in addition to her baseball writing, also worked with a nonprofit called Braver Angels that seeks to bridge the political divide by bringing Democrats and Republicans together. It was a philosophy she lived by marrying Ardell, a lifelong Republican who cast his first presidential vote for Barry Goldwater but later drove a car sporting a “Republicans for Obama” bumper sticker.

Ardell was already working with Opportunity International, a global nonprofit that alleviates generational poverty by microfinancing community projects both in Southern California and abroad. But now the bridge that he and Jean built became apparent through the difference being made — not only in those affected communities, but in his own soul as well.

Tyler said he grew up playing catch with his grandfather, who attended all his Little League games. But it was his grandmother who told him about Ardell’s professional career.

“He was always a little bit reluctant to talk about it. My grandma was the one that kind of opened him up,” said Tyler, 25, who followed his grandparents into baseball, where he works as manager of concessions for the Amarillo Sod Poodles, the double A affiliate of the Arizona Diamondbacks.

“I’ve talked to him a lot about that. He told me that he just didn’t have the confidence. He knew that he was good, but I don’t think he really understood it. I don’t know if he necessarily misses it or feels like he missed out. I think he was more appreciative of the journey that it took him on and how he’s evolved into a different love for baseball.”

As he has grown older, Tyler said that’s the part of his grandfather’s journey that has stuck with him; the mission statement part that says it’s not about the destination or the accomplishments, but about the influence you have on those you meet along the way.

In that way, he said, Ardell’s short career is now having an outsized influence.

Tyler mentions a friend who is basically playing for free, stranded below the longest rung of the minor league ladder. But he still puts on a uniform every day.

“He plays for the love of the game and just because it’s all he knows,” Tyler said. “One of the things that Dan asks me that I ask my friend is, ‘do you like what you’re doing?’ And at that point it’s not about your career longevity or how much money you’re making.

“As long as you’re happy playing and you’re making ends meet, then go for it.”

Ardell wasn’t happy playing, so he walked away. Three decades later with the love and support of a wife who saw baseball not as a sport but as a metaphor for life, as a game where the goal is to get home safely, Ardell began to understand the magic, too.

His one month in the majors led him to a career prosperous enough that he could help others, one that still fills his mailbox with letters from fans and one that has given him the wisdom to counsel other 23-year-olds to keep putting on the uniform as long as it fits.

Make a positive difference in the lives of others.

“It was a very inconsequential part of my life that was very consequential to other people,” Ardell said of his one month in the majors.

“I think of it every day.”

So much for the Dodgers ruining baseball.

They won’t finish this season with the best record in history, as they could win every one of their remaining games and still not realize the 120-win season that was envisioned for them.

They might not even finish this season with the best record in the National League — or in their own division, for that matter.

The Dodgers look beatable.

Their perceived vulnerability didn’t necessarily inspire the frenzied action around baseball before the trade deadline, but it certainly didn’t discourage it either.

With blood in the water and the World Series field wide open, several contenders moved to prepare their rosters for October. No team changed as much as the San Diego Padres, who are suddenly positioned to turn the Dodgers’ title defense into a humiliation exercise.

“We went in knowing, OK, we have a team that can compete and play deep and ultimately we have these needs and let’s go fill them,” Padres general manager A.J. Preller said.

Mason Miller, who throws a fastball with an average velocity of 101 mph, will turbocharge what was already the No. 1 bullpen in baseball. Ramon Laureano and Ryan O’Hearn will improve the balance of a top-heavy lineup featuring Manny Machado and Fernando Tatis Jr. Freddy Fermin will address a hole at catcher. JP Sears and Nestor Cortes will add depth to a rotation on the mend.

Particularly revealing of the Padres’ ambitions was what Preller didn’t do. He didn’t trade closer Robert Suarez, an impending free agent. He didn’t trade underperforming former All-Star pitcher Dylan Cease, who will also hit the market this winter.

The Padres were only three games behind the Dodgers at the trade deadline, making Preller’s team a legitimate threat to overtake them in the division and cost them a top-two seed in the NL, for which the reward is a first-round bye in the playoffs.

The danger didn’t compel the Dodgers to act, their relative inactivity in this situation reflecting the contrasting philosophies of the two organizations.

The Dodgers make deals on their terms. When president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman overpay for players — the combined $85 million the Dodgers spent over the winter on relievers Tanner Scott and Kirby Yates is an example — it’s usually by accident.

The mentality often results in the market dictating to the Dodgers what they can and can’t do. For better or worse, the Padres have elected a proactive approach.

Landing Miller required to part with Leo De Vries, an 18-year-old shortstop who is widely considered one of the five best prospects in the entire sport.

Preller knew what he gave up.

“He’s going to be a very good major league player,” Preller said of De Vries.

Preller has done this before, He traded Max Fried and he traded Emmanuel Clase and he traded Josh Naylor. When he acquired Juan Soto at the 2022 trade deadline, he sent the Washington Nationals a package that included three future All-Stars in CJ Abrams, MacKenzie Gore and James Wood.

Impact players have considerable price tags, and they’re higher in some years than in others. The Dodgers examined the prices of the best relievers and outfielders available, and they settled for more affordable options. The Padres went for it, with Preller saying he was confident the team’s scouting and player development departments would once again replenish the farm system.

“In different points in time over the last few years, we’ve been able to be in this position, to be able to make these types of decisions and calls,” Preller said. “It’s just because we have good players that other teams want.”

The Padres weren’t alone. The two New York teams reconstructed their bullpens, the Philadelphia Phillies found a closer in Jhoan Duan and the Seattle Mariners added some pop to their lineup by dealing for Eugenio Suarez and Josh Naylor.

Why wouldn’t these teams be bold?

The Dodgers couldn’t make this a one-horse race. Their inability to separate themselves from the pack presented competitors with opportunities to pass them by at the trade deadline. Some of them might have.

A funny thing blocked the path to another Andrew Friedman midsummer triumph.

An Andrew Friedman midsummer failure.

The Dodgers and their renowned baseball boss came to bat at baseball’s trade deadline Thursday poised to knock another fat midseason pitch out of the park en route to a second consecutive World Series championship.

They never took the bat off their shoulder.

Strike out, staring.

The Dodgers needed a proven closer. Six teams picked up proven closers. The Dodgers weren’t one of them.

Mason Miller went to the San Diego Padres, Camilo Doval to the New York Yankees, Griffin Jax to the Tampa Bay Rays, Ryan Helsley to the New York Mets, Jhoan Duran to the Philadelphia Phillies and David Bednar to the New York Yankees.

Some other reliever went to the Dodgers. I think his name was Brock Stewart or something.

How does this make sense? Are they watching what we’re watching?

So you’re telling me they must forge ahead through the rest of the season hoping that Tanner Scott gets healthy or Kirby Yates gets consistent or Blake Treinen gets younger or, heck, maybe the Boston Red Sox cut Walker Buehler and he comes back for one more ninth inning! That’s crazy, but this entire situation is crazy, a $400-million roster with nobody to pitch the last out.

The Dodger also entered Thursday needing a defensive-minded outfielder. Four teams found one. The Dodgers did not.

Harrison Bader went to the Phillies, Mike Yastrzemski and Randal Grichuk to the Kansas City Royals, Austin Slater to the Yankees and Cedric Mullins to the Mets.

The Dodgers picked up an outfielder named Alex…is it Call?

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So now Dodger fans are haunted with the fear that Michael Conforto will lose a fly ball down the left-field line on Halloween with the season on the line.

This is all so weird. This is all so, well, arrogant.

Granted, the Dodgers have baseball’s best team on paper, but they’ve had its best team for several years and that hasn’t stopped Friedman from dominating the last week in July.

One could argue that Friedman actually won last year’s championship by brilliantly acquiring Jack Flaherty and Tommy Edman and Michael Kopech at the deadline.

This has always been Friedman’s strength, humbly adding talent to a group already possessing riches of talent.

Remember, this is the time of year he also once traded for Rich Hill, Yu Darvish, Manny Machado, Max Scherzer, Trea Turner and Evan Phillips, all of whom led them deep into the playoffs.

The only two years during which Friedman has fumbled the deadline? He failed to acquire pitching in 2022 and they were beaten by the Padres. He brought in only Lance Lynn in 2023 and they were swept by the Arizona Diamondbacks.

This suddenly feels like one of those years.

“We felt like this is an incredibly talented group that, as we get healthy and these guys hit their stride, we feel like we’re in a great position for another deep run into October,” general manager Brandon Gomes said on a conference call with reporters.

In other words, they think they’re good enough that they don’t need to trade any top prospects for win-now talent.

But are they? And even if they are, why take a chance?

Mookie Betts reacts after striking out against the Milwaukee Brewers on July 20.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

If there’s anything the first 109 games of this season has taught us is that the Dodgers’ greatness, like all greatness in a sport that hasn’t had consecutive champions in a quarter of a decade, can be fleeting.

The window suddenly seems to be slowly closing on the Hall of Fame careers of Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman. Shohei Ohtani has been so physically stressed that he’s leaving games with cramps.

Teoscar Hernández doesn’t look like last year’s revelation. Max Muncy can’t stay on the field. And Edman is batting aches that may last all season.

The rotation is also shaky, with fragile Tyler Glasnow and aging Clayton Kershaw and underwhelming Roki Sasaki and injured Blake Snell and, really, just one sure-fire starter is Yoshinobu Yamamoto.

“Obviously there was a lot of action today throughout the game, and a lot of teams improved, but we feel really good about this group,” Gomes said. “Coming into the year, felt like this was as talented of a roster as we’ve ever had. We’re in a position where we’re in first place, and I don’t even think we’ve played our best baseball yet. So as we continue to get some of our starters back, and then adding these pieces, and our guys just kind of playing up to their potential, we feel like it’s still a really, really strong team, and we don’t feel any differently about our aspirations than we did at the beginning of the year.”

Through their stunning inaction Thursday, the Dodger clearly made the statement that they’re good enough to a championship without any more help.

All those teams that greatly improved don’t agree.

The baseball world is sensing a Dodger vulnerability, as if there’s blue blood in the water.

Given a chance to dissuade everyone of that notion the Dodgers sighed, shrugged and passed.

A strikeout of a day, a turning point of a season?

With Cleveland Guardians closer Emmanuel Clase under investigation for baseball betting, fans that bet a combined $315,000 on him could be at risk of losing some or all of that investment.

Clase is the star attraction at Finlete, a San Diego company that offers fans the chance to invest in an athlete in exchange for a share of his future earnings.

The future earnings of Clase, 27, a three-time All-Star, could be influenced by Monday’s announcement that Major League Baseball had placed him on paid leave as part of what the league called a “sports betting investigation.” The sport in question is baseball, according to an official familiar with the probe but unauthorized to discuss it publicly.

In its offering statement, Finlete noted that Clase’s current contract extends through 2026 and guarantees him at least $13.3 million, if the Guardians decline a 2027 buyout. The Guardians hold an option for $10 million in 2027 and another for $10 million in 2028. Clase would be eligible for free agency if the Guardians decline either option, or after the option years have been exercised.

However, if the league determines Clase had bet on any baseball game in which his team participated, he could be declared permanently ineligible. If the league determines he had bet on any other baseball games, he could be banned for one year.

On July 14, Finlete announced on Instagram that it had raised more than $315,000 from “hundreds of investors in Emmanuel Clase’s career.”

In its offering, beyond the boilerplate warning that investors should not invest money they could not afford to lose, Finlete cited injuries, illnesses and work stoppages among risks that could derail payments to investors.

Finlete also warned that players “suspended or banned” from the league “would not receive amounts under their existing player contract and may not be able to secure future playing contracts.”

In his Clase sales pitch, Finlete co-founder Rob Connolly last year told Sportico: “Mariano Rivera was the best ever. And this guy’s in that conversation. So he’s got a full career in front of him. How the hell did we land this deal? It’s incredible.”

Finlete spelled that out in its offering: If you really want to make the big bucks as investors, Clase needs to sign a lucrative extension, or hit free agency and strike gold.

“The profitability of the Clase Agreement is substantially dependent on Mr. Clase entering into additional high-value MLB player contracts,” the offering read.

On its homepage, Finlete highlights seven baseball players with which it has agreements, Clase included. The other six are in the minor leagues.

Connolly did not immediately return a message seeking comment.

COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. — If you want someone for your next celebrity roast, Ichiro Suzuki could be your guy.

Mixing sneaky humor with heartfelt messages, the first Japanese-born player to be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame stole the show Sunday in Cooperstown.

Morning showers and gloomy skies delayed the ceremonies by an hour, but the moisture gave way to bright skies and warm temperatures. The sun seemed its brightest during Suzuki’s acceptance speech.

The outfielder was joined by pitcher CC Sabathia, also elected in his first year of eligibility, and closer Billy Wagner, who made it in his final try on the writers’ ballot. Suzuki fell one vote shy of being a unanimous selection and he took a jab at the unidentified sports writer who didn’t vote for him.

“Three thousand hits or 262 hits in one season are two achievements recognized by the writers. Well, all but one,” Suzuki said to roaring laughter.

“By the way, the offer for the writer to have dinner at my home has now expired,” he added, with emphasis on “expired” for good measure.

A pair of Era Committee selections rounded out the Class of 2025: Dave Parker, who earned the nickname Cobra during 20 big league seasons, and slugger Dick Allen. Parker died June 28, just a month before he was to be inducted.

An estimated 30,000 fans crowded onto the field adjacent to the Clark Sports Center, sun umbrellas and Japanese flags sprinkled around. Suzuki’s No. 51 was seemingly everywhere as fans, thousands of them Seattle Mariners boosters who made the trek from the Pacific Northwest, chanted “Ichiro” several times throughout the day. A sign that read “Thank You Ichiro! Forever a Legend” in English and Japanese summed up the admiration for Suzuki on his special day.

With 52 returning Hall of Famers on hand, Suzuki paid homage to his new baseball home in Cooperstown and his adoring fans by delivering his 18-minute speech in English. His humor, a surprise to many, delighted the crowd.

He threw shade at the Miami Marlins, the last stop of his professional career.

“Honestly, when you guys offered me a contract in 2015, I had never heard of your team,” Suzuki joked.

He kidded that he showed up at spring training every year with his arm “already in shape” just to hear Mariners broadcaster Rick Rizzs scream, “‘Holy smokes! Another laser-beam throw from Ichiro!’”

He even took a moment for some tongue-in-cheek modesty.

“People often measure me by my records. Three thousand hits. Ten Gold Gloves. Ten seasons of 200 hits.

“Not bad, huh?” Suzuki said to more laughs.

He thanked his late agent Tony Anastasio for “getting me to America and for teaching me to love wine.”

But he also took time to get to the root of what made him extraordinary.

“Baseball is much more than just hitting, throwing and running. Baseball taught me to make valued decisions about what is important. It helped shape my view of life and the world. … The older I got, I realized the only way I could get to play the game I loved to the age of 45 at the highest level was to dedicate myself to it completely,” he said. “When fans use their precious time to see you play, you have a responsibility to perform for them whether you are winning by 10 or losing by 10.

“Baseball taught me what it means to be a professional and I believe that is the main reason I am here today. I could not have achieved the numbers without paying attention to the small details every single day consistently for all 19 seasons.”

Now he’s reached the pinnacle, overcoming doubters, one of whom said to him: “‘Don’t embarrass the nation.’” He’s made his homeland proud.

“Going into America’s Baseball Hall of Fame was never my goal. I didn’t even know there was one. I visited Cooperstown for the first time in 2001, but being here today sure feels like a fantastic dream.”

Sabathia thanked “the great players sitting behind me, even Ichiro who stole my Rookie of the Year award (in 2001).” He paid homage to Parker and spoke about Black culture in today’s game.

“It’s an extra honor to be a part of Dave’s Hall of Fame class. He was a father figure for a generation of Black stars. In the ’80s and early ‘90s when I first started watching baseball and Dave Parker was crushing homers, the number of Black players in the major leagues was at its highest, about 18%. Me and my friends played the game because we saw those guys on TV and there was always somebody who looked like me in a baseball uniform.

“Baseball has always been a great game for Black athletes, but baseball culture has not always been great to Black people. I hope we’re starting to turn that around. I don’t want to be the final member of the Black aces, a Black pitcher to win 20 games. And I don’t want to be the final Black pitcher giving a Hall of Fame speech.”

Wagner urged young players to treat obstacles not as “roadblocks, but steppingstones.”

“I wasn’t the biggest player. I wasn’t supposed to be here. There were only seven full-time relievers in the Hall of Fame. Now, there are eight because I refused to give up or give in,” he said.

Suzuki received 393 of 394 votes (99.7%) from the Baseball Writers’ Association of America. Sabathia was picked on 342 ballots (86.8%) and Wagner on 325 (82.5%), which was 29 votes more than the 296 needed for the required 75%.

After arriving in the majors in 2001, Suzuki joined Fred Lynn (1975) as the only players to win Rookie of the Year and MVP in the same season.

Suzuki was a two-time AL batting champion and 10-time All-Star and Gold Glove outfielder, hitting .311 with 117 homers, 780 RBIs and 509 stolen bases with Seattle, the New York Yankees and Miami.

He is perhaps the best contact hitter ever, with 1,278 hits in Nippon Professional Baseball and 3,089 in MLB, including a season-record 262 in 2004. His combined total of 4,367 exceeds Pete Rose’s major league record of 4,256.

Sabathia, second to Suzuki in 2001 AL Rookie of the Year voting, was a six-time All-Star who won the 2007 AL Cy Young Award and a World Series title in 2009. He went 251-161 with a 3.74 ERA and 3,093 strikeouts, third among left-handers behind Randy Johnson and Steve Carlton, during 19 seasons with Cleveland, Milwaukee and the New York Yankees.

A seven-time All-Star, Wagner was 47-40 with a 2.31 ERA and 422 saves for Houston, Philadelphia, the New York Mets, Boston and Atlanta.

Tom Hamilton and Tom Boswell were also honored during Hall of Fame weekend. Hamilton has been the primary radio broadcaster for the Cleveland Guardians franchise for 35 seasons and received the Ford C. Frick Award. Boswell, a retired sports columnist who spent his entire career with The Washington Post, was honored with the BBWAA Career Excellence Award.

Frank writes for the Associated Press.

The California League might be ending its long run in Modesto, but professional baseball appears poised to remain.

The independent Pioneer League is in talks to place a team at John Thurman Field, the current home of the Modesto Nuts.

In a closed session Tuesday, the Modesto City Council discussed the potential terms of a lease under negotiation between the city manager and Pioneer League President Michael Shapiro. The council took no action Tuesday, and neither Shapiro nor a city spokesperson immediately returned messages seeking comment.

Modesto’s California League history dates to 1946 — John Thurman Field opened in 1955 — but the Nuts are down to their final three homestands.

After negotiations for a renovated stadium and a new lease collapsed, the team was sold last December and will move to San Bernardino next season, part of a California League shuffle that includes the Dodgers’ affiliate moving into a new ballpark in Ontario.

A Modesto team would give the league two new teams next year and 14 in all; leagues prefer an even number of teams for scheduling purposes.

The other new team would play in Long Beach, in what would be the city’s first entry in an independent league since 2009.

On Tuesday, the Long Beach City Council unanimously approved pursuing an agreement with an expansion Pioneer League team that would share historic Blair Field with the Long Beach State baseball program.

“A team in Long Beach is a chance to show what makes Long Beach great: our diversity, our passion and our community spirit,” Long Beach Mayor Rex Richardson said in a statement.

Paul Freedman, the co-founder of the Pioneer League’s Oakland Ballers, would be one of the owners of the Long Beach team. In a Times story last year about the Ballers and how they were filling the baseball void created in Oakland by the departure of the Athletics, Freedman already had his eye on Long Beach.

“I think Long Beach should have a Pioneer League team,” Freedman said then. “Long Beach has its own unique identity. If I’m from Long Beach, I don’t want to be told I have to be a Dodger or Angel fan.”

CLEVELAND — President Trump wants Washington’s NFL franchise and Cleveland’s Major League Baseball team to revert to their former names, which where changed in recent years because many considered them racist.

Trump said Sunday on his social media site that “The Washington ‘Whatever’s’ should IMMEDIATELY change their name back to the Washington Redskins Football Team. There is a big clamoring for this. Likewise, the Cleveland Indians, one of the six original baseball teams, with a storied past. Our great Indian people, in massive numbers, want this to happen. Their heritage and prestige is systematically being taken away from them. Times are different now than they were three or four years ago. We are a Country of passion and common sense. OWNERS, GET IT DONE!!!”

Josh Harris, whose group bought the NFL’s Washington Commanders from former owner Dan Snyder in 2023, said this year the name was here to stay. Not long after taking over, Harris quieted speculation about going back to Redskins, saying that would not happen.

Cleveland Guardians president of baseball operations Chris Antonetti indicated before Sunday’s game against the Athletics that there weren’t any plans to revisit the name change.

“We understand there are different perspectives on the decision we made a few years ago, but obviously it’s a decision we made. We’ve got the opportunity to build a brand as the Guardians over the last four years and are excited about the future that’s in front of us,” he said.

Both teams have had their current names since the 2022 seasons. Washington dropped Redskins after the 2019 season and was known as the Washington Football Team for two years before adopting Commanders.

Cleveland announced in December 2020 it would drop Indians. It announced the switch to Guardians in July 2021. In 2018, the team phased out “Chief Wahoo” as its primary logo.

The name changes had their share of supporters and critics as part of national discussions about institutions and teams dropping logos and names considered racist.

The Guardians are the fifth name for Cleveland’s baseball franchise. It joined the American League in 1901 as one of the eight charter franchises, as the Blues. It switched to the Bronchos a year later and used the Naps from 1903 through 1914 before moving to the Indians in 1915.

Washington started in Boston as the Redskins in 1933 before moving to the nation’s capital four years later.

Washington and Cleveland share another thing in common. David Blitzer is a member of Harris’ ownership group with the Commanders and holds a minority stake in the Guardians.

Reedy writes for the Associated Press.

Tommy John surgery was never supposed to go this far.

It was once a cross-your-fingers-and-pray fix for a career-ending injury. Now, MLB teams cycle through as many as 40-plus pitchers a year, knowing that surgery is a phone call away.

Just ask John himself, a left-hander who never threw all that hard, only reaching the mid-80s on his sinking fastball. The soft-throwing lefty was having his best year as a Dodgers starting pitcher in 1974.

He didn’t have the strikeout acumen of teammate Andy Messersmith, or the ace makeup of future Hall of Famer Don Sutton. But what John did have was consistency. John consistently pitched late into games, and sent opposing hitters back to the dugout without reaching first base.

“The game of baseball is 27 outs,” said John, now 82. “It wasn’t about throwing hard. It’s, how do I get you out?”

He was the first to go under the knife. The first to lead pitchers through a dangerous cycle of throwing as hard as possible, knowing the safeguard is surgery.

“I threw one pitch and boom, the ligament exploded,” John said.

John’s arm injury left a sensation akin to what an amputee feels after losing a limb. In 1978, he told Sports Illustrated, “It felt as if I had left my arm someplace else.” He didn’t feel pain. He felt loss. His left arm was his career. It was the direct cause for his toeing the Dodger Stadium mound in the first place. Then, John went on to pitch another 15 years in MLB.

It’s the same loss that Hall of Fame Dodgers left-hander Sandy Koufax felt when he retired at age 30 after numerous arm injuries, which could have likely been fixed if current elbow and shoulder surgeries had existed in 1966.

It’s the same loss that Texas Rangers team physician Keith Meister sees walking daily into his office.

Today, Meister can view MRI scans of elbow tears and can tell pitchers where and how they hold the baseball. The tear patterns are emblematic of the pitches being thrown in the first place. The solution — Tommy John surgery, a once-revolutionary elbow operation — replaces a torn or partially damaged ulnar collateral ligament in the elbow with a tendon from somewhere else in the body. The operation is no quick fix. It requires a 13- to 14-month recovery period, although Meister said some pitchers may require just 12 months — and some up to 18.

Meister, who is currently tallying data and researching the issue, wants to be part of the change. Midway through an October phone interview, he bluntly stopped in his tracks and asked a question.

“What is the average length of a major-league career for a major-league pitcher?” he said.

Meister explained that the average career for an MLB pitcher is just 2.6 years. Along with numerous other interviewees, he compared the epidemic to another sport’s longevity problem: the National Football League running back.

“People say to me, ‘Well, that sounds like a running back in football,’” Meister said. “Think about potentially the money that gets saved with not having to even get to arbitration, as long as organizations feel like they can just recycle and, you know, next man up, right?”

Orthopedic surgeon Keith Meister, in his TMI Sports Medicine & Orthopedic Surgery office in Arlington, Texas, in 2024, has advocated for changes to mitigate pitching injuries.

(Tom Fox / The Dallas Morning News)

Financial ramifications play close to home between pitchers and running backs as well. Lower durability and impact have led to decreasing running-back salaries. If pitchers continue to have shorter careers, as Meister puts it, MLB franchises might be happy to cycle through minimum-salary pitchers instead of shelling out large salaries for players who remain on the injured list rather than in the bullpen.

The Dodgers and the Tampa Bay Rays have shuffled through pitchers at league extremes over the last five years. In the modern era — since 1901 — only the Rays and Dodgers have used more than 38 pitchers in a season three times each. Tampa used 40-plus pitchers each year from 2021 to 2023.

Last year, the Dodgers used 40 pitchers. Only the Miami Marlins tasked more with 45.

The Dodgers have already used 35 pitchers this season, second-most in baseball. The Rays tallied just 30 in 2024 and have dispatched just 23 on the mound so far this season. What gives?

Meister says the Rays may have changed their pitcher philosophy. Early proponents of sweepers and other high-movement pitches, the Rays now rank near the bottom of the league (29th with just 284 thrown) in sweeper usage entering Saturday’s action, according to Baseball Savant. Two years ago, the Rays threw the seventh most.

Tampa is rising to the top of MLB in two-seam fastball usage, Meister said, a pitch he says creates potentially much less stress on the elbow. Their starting pitchers are second in baseball in the number of innings, and they’ve used just six starting pitchers all season.

“It’s equated to endurance for their pitchers, because you know why? They’re healthy, they’re able to pitch, they’re able to post and they’re able to go deeper into games,” Meister said. “Maybe teams will see this and they’ll be like, ‘Wait a minute, look what these guys won with. Look how they won. We don’t need to do all this crap anymore.’”

The Dodgers, on the other hand, rank ninth in sweeper usage (1,280 thrown through Friday) and have used 16 starting pitchers (14 in traditional starting roles). Meanwhile, their starting pitchers have compiled the fewest innings in MLB. Rob Hill, the Dodgers’ director of pitching, began his career at Driveline Baseball. The Dodgers hired him in 2020. Since then, the franchise has churned out top pitching prospect after top pitching prospect, many of whom throw devastating sweepers and change-ups.

As of Saturday, the Dodgers have 10 pitchers on the injured list, six of whom underwent an elbow or shoulder operation — and since 2021, the team leads MLB in injury list stints for pitchers.

“There are only probably two teams in baseball that can just sit there and say, ‘Well, if I get 15 to 20 starts out of my starting pitchers, it doesn’t matter, because I’ll replace them with somebody else I can buy,’” Meister said. “That’s the Yankees and the Dodgers.”

He continued: “Everybody else, they’ve got to figure out, wait a minute, this isn’t working, and we need to preserve our commodity, our pitchers.”

Outside of organizational strategy changes, like the Rays have made, Meister has expressed rule changes to MLB. He’s suggested rethinking how the foul ball works or toying with the pitch clock to give a slightly longer break to pitchers. He said pitchers don’t get a break on the field the same way hitters do in the batter’s box.

“Part of the problem here is that a hitter has an ability to step out of the box and take a timeout,” Meister said. “He has to go cover a foul ball and run over to first base and run back to the mound. He should have an opportunity take a break and take a blow.”

Meister hopes to discuss reintroducing “tack” — a banned sticky substance that helps a pitcher’s grip on the ball — to the rulebook, something that pitchers such as Max Scherzer and Tyler Glasnow have called a factor in injuries. Meister has fellow leading experts on his side too.

“Myself and Dr. [Neal] ElAttrache are very good friends, and we talk at length about this,” said Meister.

Meister explained that the lack of stickiness on the baseball causes pitchers to squeeze the ball as hard as possible. The “death grip on the ball,” Meister said, causes the muscles on the inner side of the elbow to contract in the arm and then extend when the ball is released. The extension of the inner elbow muscles is called an eccentric load, which can create injury patterns.

The harder the grip, the more violent the eccentric load becomes when a sweeper pitch, for example, is thrown, he said.

“Just let guys use a little bit of pine tar on their fingertips,” Meister said, adding that the pitchers already have to adjust to an inconsistent baseball, one that changes from season to season. “Not, put it on the baseball, not glob the baseball with it, but put a little pine tar on their fingertips and give them a little better adherence to the baseball.”

According to the New Yorker, MLB is exploring heavier or larger baseballs to slow pitchers’ arm movements, potentially reducing strain on the UCL during maximum-effort pitches.

Meister, however, said there does not seem to be a sense of urgency to fix the game, with a years-long process to make any fixes.

In short, Meister is ready to try anything.

For a man who has made a career off baseball players nervously sitting in his office waiting room, awaiting news that could alter their careers forever, Meister wants MLB to help him stop players from ever scheduling that first appointment.

“To me, it’s not about the surgery any more as much as it is, what can we do to prevent, and what can we do to alter, the approach that the game now takes?” Meister said.

“It’s very, very dangerous.”

Could the fourth time be the charm for minor league baseball in Long Beach?

On Tuesday, the Long Beach City Council is scheduled to consider whether to order city staff to work toward an agreement with the ownership group for a “new professional baseball team” that would play at Blair Field, the city’s storied ballpark.

The ownership group includes Paul Freedman, one of the co-founders of the Oakland Ballers, a successful independent league team launched last year amid the departure of the Oakland Athletics.

The new team would open play next season and participate as an expansion team in the Pioneer League, the same league in which the Ballers play. The league includes teams in California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Utah and Wyoming.

“I got into this industry because of love for baseball and the community, and love for Oakland,” Freedman said. “I see a tremendous amount of parallels between the city of Oakland and the city of Long Beach, and I think the kind of community-oriented baseball that is working in Oakland can work in Long Beach as well.”

In minor leagues affiliated with major league organizations, those organizations sign and pay players, then assign them to a minor league team. In an independent league, the teams sign and pay players, most of whom hope to play well enough to earn a contract from a major league organization.

Independent leagues also serve as labs for the major leagues: The “swing-off” that decided this week’s All-Star Game has been a rule in the Pioneer League since 2021.

Three independent minor league teams have come and gone in Long Beach over the last 30 years: the Barracuda (renamed the Riptide) in 1995-96, the Breakers (2001-02) and the Armada (2005-09).

Freedman said he believed the struggles reflected instability in the various leagues in which the teams played more than an inability of Long Beach to support a team.

“It’s a city with a huge baseball tradition,” Freedman said. “It’s a diverse city on the rise. It’s hosting the Olympics. I think now it’s time to have a team to represent the town.

“I think baseball has worked in Long Beach, and I think Long Beach is in an even better condition now to embrace a new kind of baseball.”

The Long Beach State baseball team, proudly known as the Dirtbags, attracted more fans last season than any of the other nine Big West Conference teams based in California. The Dirtbags are the primary tenant of Blair Field, and the motion before the city council would require city staff to work with Long Beach State on a “collaborative partnership agreement.”

A city spokesman did not return a call seeking comment.

ATLANTA — Major League Baseball will not cancel its 2028 All-Star Game in order to participate in the Los Angeles Olympics, Commissioner Rob Manfred said Tuesday.

Manfred said representatives of the league and LA28 met Monday, with both sides hoping to work toward an agreement in which major leaguers would play in the Olympics. MLB has declined to stop its season for previous Olympic baseball tournaments, so minor leaguers and college players have participated in those Games.

But Manfred also warned that any agreement likely would apply only to the L.A. Games, where major leaguers could be done in a week. If baseball remains on the Olympic schedule for Brisbane in 2032, MLB would remain reluctant to shut down for the extended period needed to get players to Australia, allow them to prepare and play, and then return to their major league teams.

“I think that the idea of playing in L.A. in ‘28, regardless of the possibility of ongoing Olympic participation in another location, that there is some merit to it,” Manfred said at a meeting of the Baseball Writers Assn. of America.

“I think it is an opportunity to market the game on a really global stage. I think, obviously, because it is in the U.S., the logistics of it are easier.”

On Monday, LA28 announced that baseball would be played July 15-20, 2028, intended as an inducement for MLB to minimize schedule disruption by skipping the All-Star Game for that year and switching to the Olympics in the same week.

Manfred indicated the league’s preference would be to play the All-Star Game in its usual window, then compete in the Olympics and resume the regular season.

“It’s doable,” Manfred said. “They put out a schedule. They tell you it’s not going to move. We’ll see whether there is any movement on that.

“It is possible to play the All-Star Game in its normal spot, have a single break that would be longer, but still play 162 games without bleeding into the middle of November. It would require significant accommodations, but it is possible.”

ATLANTA — We need bat flips.

The home run swing-off to end Tuesday’s All-Star Game was great. Whether you embrace it as a revelation or dismiss it as a gimmick, baseball needs more of that kind of imagination on the national stage. On the morning after the game, it’s what you’re talking about.

But baseball cannot count on a tie score every summer.

The All-Star Game cannot live off old glories. The All-Star Game cannot thrive simply because the NFL turned the Pro Bowl into a flag football game and skills competition while the NBA turned its All-Star Game into a week of parties and 48 minutes of a defense-free scrimmages.

Baseball can say its All-Star Game is the best, but the bar is as low as the final round of a limbo competition. Baseball needs the best players, not the best available players, in the game. And, in an era dominated by social media and short attention spans, baseball needs innovation in the Home Run Derby — not just in an All-Star Game tiebreaker, but in the actual Home Run Derby that is its own Major Television Event on the night before the game.

The first suggestion, from Brent Rooker, the Athletics’ All-Star designated hitter: “I had the idea that we would just stick PCA (the Cubs’ Pete Crow-Armstrong) and (the Athletics’) Denzel Clarke in the outfield during the Home Run Derby and just let them run down balls. That’s a fun idea that popped into our clubhouse a few weeks ago.”

An all-in-one Home Run Derby and skills competition of outfielders contorting their bodies in all directions to make highlight-worthy catches? That’s a cool thought.

Bat flips would be better.

The bat flip, once scorned as an instrument of disrespect, is now celebrated by the league itself. It naturally lends itself to the “Did you see it?” reels young fans share on Instagram and Snapchat.

The first round of Monday’s Home Run Derby was exhausting. It took nearly two hours, and what little flash there was felt forced. Besides, the sluggers you most wanted to see — Shohei Ohtani and Aaron Judge — declined to participate.

“I already did it,” Judge said Tuesday. “I don’t know what else you want from me. I think it’s time for somebody else to step up and do their thing and have fun with it. I love seeing new faces in the game go out and do their thing.”

Said Dodgers pitcher and Hall-of-Famer-in-waiting Clayton Kershaw: “It’s a lot of swings, man. It’s not easy to do. When I used to hit, I was tired after taking six swings. I can’t imagine doing that for three straight hours.

“If Shohei and Aaron Judge and those guys, if they had them all in there, it would be awesome. You can’t expect those guys to do it every single year.”

So keep the eight-man field but split it into two groups: four players in the traditional format, and four players in a one-round competition judged not only by how many home runs you hit but with how much flair you toss your bat after each one.

Dodgers veteran pitcher Clayton Kershaw, tapping gloves with teammate Will Smith after pitching in the second inning during the All-Star Game.

(Daniel Shirey / MLB Photos via Getty Images)

The creative and outrageous dunks in the NBA‘s slam dunk competition go viral. The All-Star bat flips would too.

“With respect to an event like the Home Run Derby, we should continue to innovate,” Commissioner Rob Manfred said. “It’s fundamentally an entertainment product.”

There’s an idea, Rob. Run with it.

“The game piece of it? Fundamentally, I believe in the game,” Manfred said. “I think what we have to do is continue to work with our very best players to make sure that they’re here and showcasing themselves in front of a fan base that is really, really important to us over the long haul.”

Right now, all the very best players are not here. When MLB announced the All-Star rosters, the league selected 65 players. By game time, with all the replacements for players that withdrew, the All-Star count was up to 81.

That meant that, for every four players announced as an All-Star, one chose not to play.

“Usually, when you think All-Star Game, you think probably the best at the time in the game right now are going to be playing,” Phillies All-Star designated hitter Kyle Schwarber said.

Sometimes they are: On Tuesday, Schwarber was the most valuable player, with the winning swings in the swing-off.

Schwarber and Kershaw noted that, for the most part, the position players are here, and the pitchers dominated the list of missing stars. Pitchers throw harder these days. They need time to recover. Tony Clark, the executive director of the players’ union, talked about the need for players to find “opportunities on the calendar to take a breather.”

And, frankly, the All-Star Game does not mean nearly as much to players as it did before interleague play started 28 years ago. Winning one for the National League used to actually mean something.

“The All-Star Game then and the All-Star Game now are two completely different things,” Clark said. “The requirements for players, the travel and logistics for their family and support, the day to day of a 162-game season is more complex and it’s more challenging than it’s ever been.”

Yet in 1980, when the All-Star Game was played at Dodger Stadium, players had one free day before resuming the schedule. Today, players have two days.

And, in 1980, fans got to see the players they wanted to see. Should each team have an All-Star representative? Yes. Should managers feel compelled to use every one of those players? No way.

On Tuesday, the National League used 13 pitchers and the American League 11.

In 1980, each league used five pitchers. Steve Stone and Bob Welch each pitched (gasp) three innings. The top four batters in the American League lineup — Willie Randolph, Fred Lynn, Rod Carew and Reggie Jackson — each batted at least three times.

Today’s pitchers are reluctant to work even one inning in the All-Star Game if they pitched on the final weekend of the first half. So move the All-Star Game back one day to Wednesday, and move the Home Run Derby back one day to Tuesday. No longer would players have to scramble for Sunday night private jets to get to the All-Star Game by Monday morning.

As a bonus, MLB could play the Futures Game on Monday, when no other games are being played, instead of in relative invisibility because the league insists on putting what it says is a showcase event up against a full schedule of regular-season games.

“It would be great,” Clark said, “to just have a conversation around the All-Star Game and talk about the All-Star Game and the great players that we have, doing so in a way that truly highlights the Midsummer Classic and truly puts players in a position where they are sprinting to come to the game.”

And flipping their bats when they get here.

ATLANTA — Major League Baseball will present its annual Home Run Derby on Monday night, and Shohei Ohtani isn’t on the list of scheduled participants.

Aaron Judge isn’t either.

A home run contest without baseball’s two most famous home-run hitters?

What’s the point?

Ohtani pointed to the contest’s physical demands as to why he didn’t compete. Judge said he would only consider participating if the event was staged in New York.

How unfortunate for baseball, which has the perfect stage to showcase its two most popular players but can’t persuade them to perform on it.

Here’s one potential remedy: Let Ohtani and Judge write the rules.

That might not change Judge’s position, but it could change Ohtani’s. Ohtani has certainly pondered modifications that could be made to the Derby to make him more inclined to participate, some of which he shared at All-Star media day.

“That’s not for me to decide,” Ohtani said in Japanese. “However, personally, I think there could be limits on the number of pitches, the number of swings, and a focus on flight distance.”

The commissioner’s office should listen.

As profitable as baseball is, its cultural relevance in this country is diminishing. The most popular athletes in the United States are football and basketball players. Outside of Ohtani, and maybe Judge, no baseball player transcends his sport.

In Ohtani, baseball finally has its long-awaited face of the game, and the sport would be negligent to not maximize his stardom, both domestically and abroad.

Cal Raleigh of the Seattle Mariners might be the major league leader in home runs, but he’s a nobody as far as the general public is concerned. The same is true of everyone else in the eight-player Derby field — Matt Olson of the Atlanta Braves, James Wood of the Washington Nationals, Junior Caminero of the Tampa Bay Rays, Jazz Chisholm Jr. of the New York Yankees, Byron Buxton of the Minnesota Twins, Oneil Cruz of the Pittsburgh Pirates and Brent Rooker of the Wandering Athletics.

Shohei Ohtani runs the bases after hitting his 30th homer of the season against the Chicago White Sox on July 1.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

By participating in the Derby, Ohtani wouldn’t just draw attention to the event. He would also elevate his competitors, giving them chances to introduce themselves to audiences that would otherwise remain ignorant of their existences.

If baseball has to reduce the number of swings taken by Derby participants to gain that kind of exposure for its players, it should reduce the number of swings taken by Derby participants.

For that matter, if Ohtani says he would participate only if he’s allowed to hit soccer balls, let him hit soccer balls.

Why not?

What would be compromised, the integrity of a barely-watchable made-for-television event?

Ohtani’s reticence is based on history. When Ohtani made his only Derby appearance in 2021, the format was similar to what it is now. In the first round, Ohtani had three minutes to hit as many homers as possible, as would be the case today. The Derby has since added a 40-pitch limit.

Ohtani was eliminated by Juan Soto in the opening round, after which he said with a simile, “It was more tiring than the regular season.”

Ohtani went on to win his first most valuable player award that year, but the Derby marked a turning point in his season. In 84 games before the All-Star break, Ohtani batted .279 with 33 homers and 70 runs batted in. In his 71 games after, he hit just .229 with 13 homers and 30 RBIs.

He implied that experience was why he was unlikely to return any time soon.

“With the current rules, it’s pretty difficult,” Ohtani said last month, “so for now, I don’t think there’s much of a chance.”

For baseball, that translates to limited viewership.

Viewership for the Derby was at its highest in the first decade of the 2000s. Of the five most-viewed Derbys, only one was staged in the last 15 years: The 2017 Derby, which Judge won as a rookie. Judge has not competed since.

The Derby doesn’t make the players. The players make the Derby. And if the sport’s only superstar is open to taking part, the league should facilitate it.

In America, the NFL laps every other sport. Around the world, where its product is labeled “American football,” the NFL has largely failed to export its massive domestic popularity.

That hasn’t stopped the NFL from trying. The global market has too much upside. The Rams will play in Australia next year. The San Francisco 49ers staged football clinics in the United Arab Emirates last month.

When the Olympics called, the NFL said yes. In 2028, the L.A. Summer Games will include flag football — and a selection of NFL players. How better to sell your sport internationally than to attach it to the world’s largest sporting event?

Baseball is, uh, still thinking about it.

Two years after we first started talking about whether major leaguers would play in the 2028 Olympics, Major League Baseball still has not said yes, and now the NFL and its publicity-gobbling machine is threatening to steal the spotlight.

If MLB withholds its players, the NFL will steamroll whatever collection of minor leaguers and collegians appear on the Olympic diamond. So will the NBA All-Stars competing for basketball gold.

If MLB agrees to let its players participate — and Shohei Ohtani, Aaron Judge and Bryce Harper have made clear they want to compete — hardly anyone will care about flag football.

“We have the best athletes in every sport,” LA28 chief Casey Wasserman told me.

“Wimbledon will end, they’ll come here. The Tour de France will end, they’ll come here and compete. Obviously, men’s and women’s basketball will have the greatest basketball players in the world. So we think that a sport like baseball ought to have the best players in the world playing.”

Here is a statistic the NFL could never match: Of the rosters announced for Tuesday’s All-Star Game, one in three players was born outside the United States. Those players represent eight different countries.

MLB has leveraged that global marketing opportunity into the World Baseball Classic, which has grown over two decades from a curiosity into a must-see event. The WBC returns next spring.

“I think it’s eventually going to get moved to the middle of the season,” Team USA manager Mark DeRosa told me at Saturday’s Futures Game. “I think it’s going to be a monster event moving forward.”

The only difference between a WBC in the middle of the season and the Olympics in the middle of the season: MLB controls the WBC.

Dodger Stadium will host six games during the 2028 Olympics, but will MLB players be on any of the teams participating?

(Mike DiGiovanna / Associated Press)

That is not a good enough reason for MLB to skip the Olympics. The best interests of baseball cannot always be measured in today’s dollars.

Should major leaguers participate in the Olympics?

“Oh, yeah,” DeRosa said.

“It’s not that simple a question,” said Tony Clark, executive director of the players’ union, onSaturday.

Clark said the union has had “encouraging informal conversations” with LA28 officials. What Clark would like to see from MLB is an actual plan — all the logistics for all the players, as the NBA and NHL provide when their players participate in the Olympics.

MLB has its own logistics issues too. For instance, if MLB skips the 2028 All-Star Game to accommodate the Olympics, how does the league compensate Fox? The league’s media contracts expire after the 2028 season, so the 2029 All-Star Game might not be available to Fox, and MLB would rather not refund the big bucks.

This much is set, according to Wasserman: The Olympic baseball tournament would cover six days at Dodger Stadium, with a six-team field. The United States would automatically qualify as the host country. The 2026 WBC could serve as a qualifying tournament for other countries, although that is more concept than certainty at this point.

What did Wasserman say in his pitch to major league owners?

“What an incredible opportunity to elevate the sport in a city where you have one of the great cathedrals of the sport,” he said. “There is no better chance to tell the global story of baseball than from the Olympics in Los Angeles.

“They understand that. We could have another Dream Team, or two, depending on the countries. That is a vehicle to tell the story of baseball around the world, and that is really powerful.”

To his credit, commissioner Rob Manfred gets that.

“We do see LA28 as a, you know, real opportunity from a marketing perspective,” Manfred told the Associated Press Sports Editors in April.

Logistics aside, Manfred needs to convince the owners — his bosses — that interrupting the regular season is worth it. If the Games were held halfway around the world, shutting down the season for two weeks might be problematic.

But in Los Angeles, for one week? Kill the All-Star Game for a year, and start the regular season three days early, or finish it three days late.

Wasserman said he has had “pretty consistent dialogue” with the league.

“We hope they get to the right answer, which is Major League Baseball players being eligible to play,” Wasserman said.

“We’ll be as patient as we need to be to get to the right answer.”

The wrong answer: The world is watching the Olympics, and MLB is giving us the Colorado Rockies.

ATLANTA — The center fielder for the Dodgers’ Class A Great Lakes affiliate is a former first-round draft pick. The other two outfielders were selected for the Futures Game.

Who’s the best outfielder on the team?

“We’re all good, brother,” said the left fielder, Josue De Paula. “We’ve all got talent. We all excel somewhere.

“Us together? It’s a dream squad. I don’t feel like you see that much talent that often.”

De Paula flashed his considerable talent Saturday, hitting a three-run homer that decided the National League’s 4-2 victory over the American League and earned him the Futures Game most valuable player award.

The only other Dodgers prospect to win that award: infielder Chin-Lung Hu, in 2007.

“This is definitely motivating for me,” De Paula said. “Mentally, it was a big moment, to prove, especially to myself, who I really am.”

De Paula’s home run traveled 416 feet, triggering a round of fireworks in the sky and a lump in De Paula’s throat as he crossed home plate.

“I was overtaken by emotion,” he said, “especially doing it in front of my dad.”

His father lives in New York City. The Midwest League is far away.

Perhaps the major leagues are not so far away. De Paula is 20, but he is in his fourth pro season. The Dodgers signed him out of the Dominican Republic, but he was born in New York City and he is a second cousin of former NBA All-Star Stephon Marbury.

“Baseball called me,” De Paula said. “I fell in love with it at a young age.”

Zyhir Hope, the Great Lakes right fielder, also appeared in the Futures Game. He singled ahead of De Paula and scored on the home run, so he was waiting at home plate to congratulate De Paula.

“We do it often,” De Paula said, smiling.

Hope, also 20, smiled when asked what he liked about De Paula’s game.

“Everything,” he said. “He takes it easily. He’s calm, relaxed and laid back, but he works hard. He’s a great dude.”

Before the season, Baseball Prospectus ranked De Paula and Hope among the top 10 prospects in baseball. Currently, MLB Pipeline ranks both among the top 40.

De Paula offers power, speed, and advanced plate discipline, although scouts wonder whether he can stick in left field or might need to try first base or designated hitter. Hope has advanced from a good-fielding prospect with uncertain hitting skills in the Chicago Cubs’ system — the Dodgers got him in the Michael Busch trade — to a gap hitter with speed.

This is the time of year, of course, where contenders trade prospects to fill major league needs. Andrew Friedman, the Dodgers’ president of baseball operations, rarely trades his top prospects, and De Paula ranks No. 1 in the Dodgers’ farm system. On the other hand, the Dodgers need pitching help.

“I do want to get to L.A. I hope that’s in God’s plans,” De Paula said. “At the end of the day, we never make the decisions. We’ve just got to focus on what we need to do on the field and whatever happens, happens.

“But I really do hope I become a Dodger and I stay there for a very long time.”