Category: Sports News

A rare, one-of-one trading card of Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Shohei Ohtani is set to hit the market beginning Thursday, July 23.

Topps, a popular collectible trading card company, plans to unveil Ohtani's back-to-back Gold Logoman dual autograph card.

The exclusive Ohtani trading card will feature two Gold Logoman patches and two on-card autographs, made available in a pack of 2026 Topps Chrome Baseball cards.

Ohtani games celebrated by Topps

Details of the specialized trading card include game-worn patches that are dated to some of Ohtani's best MLB performances. The first patch is from a September 7, 2025 game against the Baltimore Orioles where Los Angeles won 5-2 behind a perfect batting performance from Ohtani.

He batted 1.000 that day as a designated hitter, going 2-for-2, accounting for two runs and two RBIs after crushing two home runs.

The second patch comes from an earlier game during the 2026 season on April 12. The Dodgers took an L to the Texas Rangers, 5-2, but Ohtani reached base three times that game and homered once. He batted 1-for-3 that day, accounting for a hit, a run, and an RBI.

In addition to game-worn patches from big-time performances, the card also features Ohtani's signature twice. Ohtani signed the card once in English and another time again using his rare Kanji signature.

Ohtani, 32, is a sensational Japanese professional baseball player for the Dodgers, whose is two-way ability as a designated hitter and pitcher has drawn countless fans.

Before joining the Dodgers in 2023, Ohtani previously played for the Los Angeles Angels. He made his MLB debut with the Angels in 2018. Before the MLB, Ohtani starred in Nippon Professional Baseball, a professional baseball league and the highest level of baseball in Japan, for the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters.

In the 2026 season, Ohtani has put up 102 hits, 22 homers, 60 RBIs and has registered 66 runs on a .287 batting average. As a pitcher, he's posted a 8-2 record with a 1.79 ERA in 14 games started and played. He's pitched a total of 85.2 innings so far where he's tallied 95 strikeouts and a 0.95 WHIP.

Weekday matinees are dumb. I get that it was partially a necessity today because of the rainout yesterday and it’s always used for a getaway game, but it was also pre-scheduled and it never looks right at Yankee Stadium. That’s not an excuse for what happened today, or why the Yankees always seem to be worse in these situations, but it went the way it did.

Mitch Keller flummoxed an offense that’s still struggling with runners in scoring position for five innings, slightly outdueling a visually dominant Gerrit Cole, who gave up a pair of homers despite 11 strikeouts in 7 innings. A massive three-run homer in the seventh by Ben Rice should’ve been enough to rally the troops, but the offense was dormant after that as Fernando Cruz had a rough 10th inning in a 5-3 loss to open the day.

Cole got things started for the Yanks with a clean, 1-2-3 first inning, while Keller responded with one of his own. The pair matched each other in the second, as well, with the only baserunner for either team being a one-out single by Jasson Domínguez. It was definitely Cole, however, who stood out through three, striking out six of the first nine he faced.

The Yankees tried to get something going off Keller in the third. Austin Wells got beaned with one out, Trent Grisham jumped ahead 3-0 before hitting a lineout a few pitches later, and Rice seemed to have blooped a two-out single before a tremendous diving catch by Bryan Reynolds robbed him.

Cole sat down the Buccos in order in the fourth without the need for a web gem. Spencer Jones and Cody Bellinger led off the bottom half with walks against a suddenly erratic Keller, but the next three hitters—Domínguez, Jazz Chishom Jr., and José Caballero—put together some rough at-bats to strand them. Their misdeeds were quickly punished.

The Pirates had absolutely nothing through 14 batters, with eight of them going down on strikes. After a controversial call saved Cole’s perfect game against Ryan O’Hearn, it was immediately ended by a Nick Gonzales single. But before we could say “aw shucks,” the former Cy Young Award winner grooved a 1-1 changeup to Jacob Gonzalez into the Short Porch to make it 2-0 Pirates in the fifth.

Wells reached for the second time with a one-out single in the bottom half to flip the lineup, and Grisham ripped a single up the middle to quickly put the pressure back on Keller, but despite his longstanding struggles against lefties this season, the former All-Star grit his teeth to win a six-pitch battle with Rice and retire Jones to escape unscathed again.

Cole went back to work in the sixth and gave up a one-out single to Jake Mangum before a bizarre balk occurred due to a pitch clock malfunction that the 35-year-old didn’t react to positively. He rebounded to get the next two out. Carmen Mlodzinski relieved Keller after a residential five-and-dive and worked around a four-pitch walk to Domínguez, but not without more theatrics.

Caballero’s pitch clock antics again came up with two out when he was hit with a pitch clock violation for not engaging on time, but he pretty clearly did. You worry sometimes that Caballero’s annoying schtick with this would eventually cause umpires to misapply the rules out of frustration, and that happened there. Somehow, the only one who was sent to the showers was hitting coach James Rowson.

Cole finished his outing after seven innings, coughing up an opposite-field homer to Gonzales to make it 3-0 during it, but despite being in line for the loss when he departed, he looked pretty damn close to vintage Gerrit Cole with 11 strikeouts and no walks. In a day like this, with a diminished Max Fried going tonight, the Yankees needed length, and they got it; the home runs just bit him badly.

Mlodzinski tried to get through the seventh as well, but Pirates manager Don Kelly’s decision to stick with him went badly. Ryan McMahon blooped a ground-rule double to left, Wells walked with help from Pittsburgh’s ABS hesitancy, and the stage was set with one out for Rice, who walloped a 3-1 cutter down the pipe for his 30th home run to tie it. As mentioned on the broadcast, he’s just the fifth Yankees’ draft pick to hit 30 bombs in a season.

With new life, the Yankees went to Brent Headrick for the eighth, and he looked as nasty as ever with a trio of strikeouts. There’s a Matt Blake revelation every year, and he certainly is one with an ERA of 1.40 in 51.1 innings. Mlodzinski got the first two out in the bottom of the eighth before Mason Montgomery retired McMahon to send it to the ninth.

Brandon Lowe led off the ninth with a rocket single off David Bednar that went under the glove of McMahon at third, but he made up for it with a catch against the tarp a few pitches later. Things got sticky with two on, two out, and 3-2 on Gonzales, but Rice made an outstanding diving stop on a tremendous piece of hitting by Gonzales to save a run and get it to the bottom of the ninth.

Montgomery stayed on to face 9-1-2 in the ninth, getting a groundout out of the pinch-hitting Paul Goldschmidt before walking Grisham. His triple-digit velocity overwhelmed Rice and the pinch-hitting Amed Rosario to send it to extras, where Fernando Cruz emerged to begin Manfred ball.

It didn’t go well for him. A flyout got the go-ahead run to third before he walked a pinch-hitting Marcell Ozuna. At this point, he just lost control. After spamming splitters to Ozuna, he tried mixing some other pitches to get the next few hitters but had no idea where they were going. Two great pieces of hitting on pitches that wandered up by Jared Triolo and Mangum drove in two runs. A five-pitch walk to Lowe chased Cruz after his worst outing in a good bit.

Kervin Castro made his second appearance as a Yankee and nicely weaseled his way out of Cruz’s jam with two strikeouts, but the damage was done. Gregory Soto locked down the ninth with a 1-2-3 inning to secure the win for Pittsburgh.

The Yankees will look for the series victory with returning ace Max Fried on a pitch limit. The lefty will square off against fireballer Bubba Chandler at 7:05pm tonight on YES.

Box Score

Would he get his own song?

Lars Nootbaar grew up in Southern California, playing for USC and attending games at Dodger Stadium. His mother is from Japan, so he played with Shohei Ohtani on Team Japan in the 2023 World Baseball Classic.

In Japan, fans come up with a song for each player and sing it happily and relentlessly. Nootbaar played in the major leagues, not in the Japanese league, so he was not sure he would get a song until he came up to bat.

“I don’t know how everybody in the stadium knew how to do it,” the St. Louis Cardinals outfielder said Wednesday at Angel Stadium. “Everybody was chanting it. It was pretty awesome.”

In Japan, baseball games are nine innings of songs and chants, drums and noise sticks. No excessively caffeinated in-game hosts. No scolding video commands to make some noise. The joyful sounds are organic, and they come from the fans.

Nootbaar attended Yoshinobu Yamamoto’s last game in Japan and absolutely raved about the energy in the stadium. Does he believe that kind of fan experience would translate to an American ballpark?

“I don’t see why not,” Nootbaar said. “It would probably have to start small, but it would be cool to integrate that.”

We’re starting small, and soon. A minor league team plans to launch in Irvine next year, and the entrepreneur behind it is pitching it as a way to provide fans with a taste of Asian baseball.

“We’re going to really lean into some of the innovation in fan experience that you’ve seen in Korea and Japan,” said Paul Freedman, co-founder of Innovation Baseball Partners.

“We’ll be the first, to our knowledge, to bring that as the fan experience of an American baseball team.”

The team would play in the Pioneer League, the independent league in which Freedman and his partners previously launched teams in Oakland and Long Beach. In Oakland, the ballpark is a pop-up. In Long Beach, the team plays at 70-year-old Blair Field.

Irvine hits the sweet spot: a glistening new community ballpark in as targeted a demographic as an Asian-themed team could want. In Irvine, which has about 320,000 residents, 44% of the population is Asian.

The defending champions of Korea’s league last year held spring training in Irvine. More Koreans live there than in any city in the United States besides New York or Los Angeles.

Read more:Shaikin: For Korea's baseball champions, it's time for spring training. In Irvine

Asian food will be available at the games, as will hot dogs.

On Tuesday, the Irvine City Council is scheduled to consider a five-year contract with Innovation Baseball Partners, under which the team could sell naming rights to the Great Park stadium and would split the revenue with the city 50-50. The agreement also provides a framework for potential expansion of the stadium from 1,300 to 3,000 seats.

Don Wakamatsu, who runs baseball operations for Freedman’s teams, was the first Asian-American manager in major league history and managed Hall of Famer Ichiro Suzuki with the Seattle Mariners.

Ichiro won’t be playing in Irvine — the Pioneer League limits players to no more than two years of professional experience — but Wakamatsu plans to tap into his network to ensure the team has an Asian manager or coach and a nucleus of Asian players.

Wakamatsu described Freedman’s model of minor league teams as “somewhere between conventional baseball and the Savannah Bananas” and believes the Asian style could take hold in Irvine.

“If we can truly capture some of that excitement and fan interaction,” Wakamatsu said, “I think we’ll get a deeper connection with the players.”

To help launch the Irvine team, Freedman tapped two Korean-Americans: Martin Kim, a onetime interpreter to former Dodgers pitcher Hyun-jin Ryu and international business development executive with the Dodgers and Major League Baseball; and Yugina Yun, an Orange County-raised sports executive that said she “begged” to join the team as its operations director.

“The element that we’d really like to bring forth is the idea that fans in the stands can impact a team,” Yun said. “We want them to feel like they’re a part of the culture from the ground up.

Read more:Shaikin: Why USC baseball plays its home games in Orange County this season

“We’re not manufacturing the experience. They are.”

If you watched the World Baseball Classic, or for that matter the World Cup, you don’t have to be sold on this. On the night before the World Cup final, Argentinian fans took over Times Square, singing and chanting and waving banners.

A sign outside this year’s WBC finals in Miami listed 16 “permissible instruments” (bongos, cowbells and tambourines welcome) and eight “prohibited instruments” (no airhorns, please). In Tijuana, where Dodgers icon Justin Turner is playing this season, airhorns buzz constantly, and games feature skits between innings.

“I think there is a lot of attention to how different cultures have taken America’s pastime and created experiences around it that are different than we have here,” Freedman said. “We’re excited to bring some of that back home.”

Get the best, most interesting and strangest stories of the day from the L.A. sports scene and beyond from our newsletter The Sports Report.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

Welcome to SB Nation Reacts, a survey of fans across the MLB. Throughout the year we ask questions of the most plugged-in Pirates fans and fans across the country. Sign up here to participate in the weekly emailed surveys.

We’re trying something a little different with the Reacts posts in an effort to get as much interaction as possible, so we’re posting the question in The Feed and in a story, but the idea is still the same!

We covered the rumors on Oneil Cruz earlier, with the Pirates reportedly taking offers on the talented outfielder who is currently on the injured list. Supposedly, the Bucs are listening. We’ll see if anything comes of it, but as usual, we want to know your thoughts. Should the Pirates trade Oneil Cruz?

When we ran a similar poll at the beginning of the season, a majority of voters said yes. It’ll be interesting to see if anything has changed.

Thanks for voting. We’ll be back soon with the results.

Not like the Braves could really do worse against Michael King…

It’s been a bit of a whirlwind for Austin Riley — he was hitting sixth or seventh for a long while, but then moved up to cleanup against a southpaw on Monday, and stayed there against Walker Buehler on Tuesday. With a right-hander on the mound in Michael King, he’s dropping to fifth. Mike Yastrzemski starts again at DH, as the Braves implicitly vote that a righty-hitting Brewer Hicklen is currently more palatable than a lefty-swinging Dominic Smith, even against a righty. One funny part of all this is that Mauricio Dubon drops to seventh for the first time in nearly two months of play. So, this will be the 82nd different lineup the Braves will have used in 101 games.

As for the Padres, it’s a familiar cast of characters for Martin Perez to tackle. Jase Bowen hasn’t played much at all (50 PAs so far) and gives them another righty bat, albeit one that hasn’t hit in those 50 PAs.

Everyone in this Braves lineup other than Jim Jarvis and Brewer Hicklen have faced Michael King, which makes sense given that he dominated the Braves a few starts ago. Still, no one has double-digit PAs against him other than Yastrzemski. The combined line is a .280 wOBA and .328 xwOBA in 59 PAs; if the Braves can manage something akin to that xwOBA, it may not be enough to win, but it’d probably at least feel decent.

Because Martin Perez has been around forever, a lot of Padres have a decent tally of PAs against him. Manny Machado has crushed him in 20 PAs, while both Ty France and Xander Bogaerts have been various flavors of decent in around 20 PAs each. In aggregate, we’re talking 92 PAs of .334 wOBA / .344 xwOBA with every batter in the lineup having faced him at least twice. I’m not sure that’s really predictive of an issue given that Perez is Perez, though.

Texas Rangers lineup for July 22, 2026 against the Chicago White Sox: starting pitchers are Tyler Alexander for the Rangers and Anthony Kay for the White Sox.

Texas looks to win this series against Chicago this evening. Cal Quantrill is expected to come in behind Tyler Alexander, who is the opener. Josh Jung, who left yesterday’s game due to a calf issue, says he’s fine and available, but he’s getting the day off. Wyatt Langford is at DH again.

The lineup:

Langford — DH

Foscue — 2B

Burger — 1B

Nimmo — RF

Duran — 3B

Cauley — CF

Diaz — C

Osuna — LF

Lopez — SS

7:05 p.m. Central start time. Rangers are +104 underdogs.

A very explosive seventh inning accounted for all but two of the runs today including a 2-run homer from Salvador Perez to tie George Brett’s franchise record. Kansas City scored five in that inning to complete the sweep 5-4 this afternoon.

Both the Royals and the Giants were unable to do almost anything offensively for the first two thirds of this one. In fact, through the first 5 innings Seth Lugo had faced the minimum thanks to a double play and Landen Roupp had faced one over the minimum for a total number of 31 plate appearances. Then the first run was scored without a hit in the 6th inning. Lugo walked Willy Adames to open the inning and then hit Drew Gilbert in the thigh when he squared to bunt. Not the best way to start out an inning. The nine hitter, Drew Cavanaugh, sac bunted to move those two free base runners into scoring position. Back to the top of the lineup and Luis Arraez who hit a flyout deep enough into center to score a run and move Gilbert to third. That one run was all they would get in the 6th.

Lugo gave up two more in the 7th when the offensive torpor lifted for both teams. It again started with a walk, this time to Rafael Devers. He was still at first base with two outs when Jung Hoo Lee drilled a ball into the right field corner for an RBI triple. It was followed by another hard hit ball from Willy Adames that bounced over the left field wall for a ground rule double and another score. Seth finished the day with 7IP, 3H, 2BB, 5K, 3ER. It was not a bad day though it did look like he was set up to take the loss.

Down 3-0, the Royals had Vinnie Pasquantino leading off in the 7th, which turned into the first real drama of the day. Vinnie hit a ball down the first base line into the corner for a double, but his slide into second was a bit awkward and Adames thought he had tagged him out. I don’t think he tagged him while he was off base but that did not matter since the umpire ruled he was pushed off and therefore safe. This led to some arguing from Tony Vitello who was ejected when he could not challenge the call. Next up was Salvador Perez who decided to make a little history happen. Salvy up with Pasquantino on second, he launches home run number 317 just to the right of center and tied George Brett for the most in Royals history!! It also cut the lead down, now 3-2, and there were still no outs and Landen Roupp was removed to bring in Sam Hentges.

Michael Massey was up next in the 7th and bunted, which Hentges fielded and threw wide of first allowing Massey to end up at second. After Isaac Collins grounded out, he moved to third on a Starling Marte groundball through the right side that Lee got to quickly to stop Massey from scoring. The Giants decided to bring in Keaton Winn and the Royals decided to pinch hit with Nick Loftin rather than having Josh Rojas face him. It was a good decision has Loftin singled to center and tied the game 3-3. The inning was still rolling, now first and second with one down. After another out, Starling Marte stole third which did not matter since Carter Jensen walked the bases loaded. And then to round out the inning, Lane Thomas hit a ball between second and first to score two more and give the Royals their first lead of the day. The team batted around and got five in the 7th, time for the bullpen to see if they could secure the win.

Daniel Lynch came in and threw a clean 8th to get three outs closer to victory and bring up Salvy to lead off the bottom half of the inning with a chance to break the record. He did not and instead struck out on three pitches. The Royals also came up empty in the inning, and the Royals went to the field three outs away from victory and a sweep.

Steven Cruz came on for the ninth looking for his first career save. He has been great recently giving up just one run in his last 12 outings. Cruz took care of Heliot Ramos and Devers quickly to get one out away from ending it. Then came mighty Casey, Casey Schmitt that is, to the bat. Schmitt took a 99 MPH fastball into the visitor’s bullpen to make it 5-4, but Lee popped out and that was that. The Royals got the win and the sweep, Steven Cruz has one career save, and Salvador Perez is tied with George Brett. It was a nice way to end the home stand.

Next up for the boys in blue is a road trip to Detroit, Minnesota, and Colorado. They won’t be back in Kauffman until August 4th, so Salvy is likely going to break the record on the road.