The Sports Report: How would you convince Shohei Ohtani to join your team?

Howdy, I’m your host, Houston Mitchell. Let’s get right to the news.

From Bill Shaikin: For all the riches that await Shohei Ohtani this fall, no one knows which uniform he might be wearing next spring. He is poised to land the first half-billion-dollar contract in baseball history and, as the San Diego Padres have shown repeatedly in recent years, teams in the smallest of markets can sign players to the richest of contracts.

In 2017, the last time Ohtani was free to sign with any major league team, he met with seven. Perhaps he will meet with more this time. He will get his money wherever he goes, so teams will not lure him simply by showering him with gobs of cash.

Ohtani has carefully avoided saying what criteria he will use in determining which teams to consider. The Angels never have posted a winning season in his six years in Anaheim, and Ohtani conceded Monday that it “sucks to lose.”

Would there be a team not far from Anaheim that could address that concern?

“He knows the Dodgers win,” Mookie Betts said. “We win a lot.”

Betts was not shy about saying he wanted Ohtani to join his team. He also was adamant that what is best for Ohtani should matter most, Dodgers or not.

“I would love for him to come to the Dodgers,” Betts said. “I would love nothing more for him than to come to the Dodgers.

“But I also want him to make sure he and his family are good, make sure he does what is going to make him happy. He is going to sign for a long time, and for a lot of money. But that is not the only thing that is going to make him happy. I just want him to be happy.”

As teams recruit Ohtani this fall, they could ask their players to pitch in. So, before Monday’s Home Run Derby, we asked Betts and his fellow All-Stars what their 30-second pitch to Ohtani might be.

The talking points ranged from team success to ownership generosity, and from personal safety to a state with no income tax — and, in one case, to French fries. Hey, the Pittsburgh Pirates probably are not going to be the winning bidder for Ohtani, but you never know, so we wanted to ask.

All-Stars, make your best pitch:

AUSTIN RILEY, Atlanta Braves:

We’re going to compete every year. We’re going to have a chance to be in the playoffs every year. I think that’s the reason why you play the game, to win a World Series. We’ve got the young group to do it. We could use him!

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DODGERS

From Jack Harris: When the final out of the 2020 World Series was recorded, Will Smith was on the Dodgers’ bench.

A year and a half into his big league career, it was clear Smith was the team’s catcher of the future. During the pandemic-shortened season, he was perhaps the Dodgers’ most productive bat.

But at just 25 years old, and still relatively new to a position he started playing regularly only in college, Smith wasn’t ready to be the full-time backstop.

He shared catching duties with Austin Barnes, starting 31 of the 60 games behind the plate. He moved into more of a designated hitting role by the end of that postseason, catching only three of the Dodgers’ final eight playoff games.

His impact that October was crucial nonetheless, highlighted by a memorable home run — and instant trivia question answser — off Will Smith, the Atlanta Braves pitcher, that spurred the Dodgers’ comeback from a three-games-to-one deficit in the National League Championship Series.

But once the Fall Classic was complete, Smith started concentrating on the deficiencies in his game, from poorly-rated pitch framing to inconsistent defense to a nascent understanding of how to manage the experienced pitching staff through high-pressure moments.

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ALL-STAR GAME

From Jack Harris: In Major League Baseball’s 93rd All-Star Game on Tuesday, the National League beat the American League 3-2 in front of a sold-out, jam-packed T-Mobile Park.

Colorado Rockies catcher Elias Díaz hit the game-winning home run in the eighth inning. Former Dodgers closer Craig Kimbrel (one year removed from his dismal season in Los Angeles) got the save.

In baseball’s annual midsummer classic, however, it was the friendly antics between teammates, opponents and some of the sport’s biggest superstars that, as usual, left the biggest mark. And in both the stadium, and on Fox’s national television broadcast, Freeman and Betts were in the center of it all.

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NL WEST STANDINGS

Dodgers, 51-38
Arizona, 52-39
San Francisco, 49-41, 2.5 GB
San Diego, 43-47, 8.5 GB
Colorado, 34-57, 18 GB

WILD-CARD STANDINGS

Miami, 53-39
Arizona, 52-39
San Francisco, 49-41
Philadelphia, 48-41, 0.5 GB
Milwaukee, 49-42, 0.5 GB
San Diego, 43-47, 6 GB
Chicago, 42-47, 6.5 GB
New York, 42-48, 7 GB
Pittsburgh, 41-49, 8 GB

AL WEST STANDINGS

Texas, 52-39
Houston, 50-41, 2 GB
Seattle, 45-44, 6 GB
Angels, 45-46, 7 GB
Oakland, 25-67, 27.5 GB

WILD-CARD STANDINGS
top three teams qualify

Baltimore, 54-35
Toronto, 50-41
Houston, 50-41
New York, 49-42, 1 GB
Boston, 48-43, 2 GB
Seattle, 45-44, 4 GB
Angels, 45-46, 5 GB
Minnesota, 45-46, 5 GB

SOCCER

From Kevin Baxter: Sophia Smith has never used a CD player and is a little hazy about whether websites existed before Google. Alyssa Thompson doesn’t understand the music her teammates like. And Naomi Girma remembers feeling sorry for Alex Morgan when she explained she had to use a map — not Mapquest, an actual paper map — to find her way to soccer games as a girl.

“That was such a hard time,” Girma gushes, as if Morgan, the most experienced player on the U.S. women’s World Cup team, rode to games in a covered wagon.

Although the U.S. team, with an average age of 28, will again be among the oldest when the tournament kicks off in New Zealand and Australia on July 20, the roster includes the second-youngest American Women’s World Cup player in history in Thompson, 18, and three others — Smith, Girma and Trinity Rodman — who were also born this century.

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SPORTS ON TV

Local teams on TV today:
All times Pacific

7 p.m., ESPN, Boston at Lakers, Summer League game

7 p.m., CBS Sports Network, Sparks at Las Vegas

7:30 p.m., Apple TV, St. Louis at LAFC

The rest of today’s sports on TV listings can be found here.

THIS DATE IN SPORTS

1901 — Cy Young of the Boston Red Sox wins his 300th game with a 5-3 victory over the Philadelphia A’s.

1930 — Bobby Jones wins the U.S. Open. Jones, who also won the British Open, the American Amateur and the British Amateur, becomes the only golfer to take all four events in the same year.

1954 — The Major League Baseball Players Assn. is founded.

1964 — Mickey Wright wins the U.S. Women’s Open for the fourth time by defeating Ruth Jessen by two strokes in a playoff.

1970 — Jack Nicklaus wins his second British Open, beating Doug Sanders by one stroke in an 18-hole playoff at the Old Course in St Andrews, Scotland. It’s the first playoff at The Open since 1963 and the first at 18 holes.

1975 — Tom Watson wins an 18-hole playoff by one stroke over Jack Newton to win the British Open at Carnoustie Golf Links in Scotland.

1980 — Mary Decker has her fourth record-setting performance of the year, setting an American mark in the 1,500-meter run with a time of 4:01.17 at an international meet at Stuttgart.

1995 — Noureddine Morceli of Algeria shatters his world record for 1,500 meters at the Nikaia Grand Prix in Nice, France, with a time of 3:27.37. It is the second world record for Morceli in 10 days.

1998 — France wins soccer’s World Cup, beating heavily favored Brazil 3-0 in the championship match.

2012 — Every country competing at the London Games includes female athletes for the first time in Olympic history after Saudi Arabia agreed to send two women to compete in judo and track and field.

2014 — Mario Goetze volleys in the winning goal in extra time to give Germany its fourth World Cup title with a 1-0 victory over Argentina. The win is Germany’s first as a united country. West Germany won the World Cup in 1954, 1974 and 1990.

2015 — Novak Djokovic gets the better of Roger Federer at Wimbledon, beating him in four sets to win his third Wimbledon title and ninth Grand Slam championship.

2015 — South Korea’s In Gee Chun birdies four of the last seven holes to rally for a one-stroke victory at the U.S. Women’s Open. The 20-year old Chun shoots a 4-under 66 in the final round and finished at 8 under, becoming the first player to win her U.S. Open debut since Birdie Kim in 2005.

—Compiled by the Associated Press