Shohei Ohtani left one heckler speechless during Sunday’s game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego Padres. Ohtani’s hitless performance during the first two games in the weekend series gave Padres fans much to talk about.

During the ninth inning of the Dodgers’ 8-2 victory, Ohtani hit his 45th home run of the season, straight through center field. The visitor dugout at Petco Park exploded with anticipation to celebrate Ohtani’s return. Teoscar Hernandez stood ready with sunflower seeds in hand for the traditional Dodgers’ home run celebration.

Except Ohtani quickly veered left, offering a high-five to the Padres Fan who was heckling him the entire game. The fan looked shocked by the gesture and sank back into his seat as sunflower seeds rained down on Ohtani in the dugout.

Manager Dave Roberts seemed to enjoy the display of retaliation. The head-on interaction was uncharacteristic of the usually peaceful Ohtani. Roberts told MLB the fan had been heckling the team the entire afternoon, specifically commenting on Ohtani’s performance in the weekend series.

“He was wearing him out the whole game. So it was good to see Shohei initiate a high-five from him.” Roberts said. “That was great. That was fun. It was good for Shohei to show his personality.”

Although Ohtani did not speak to reporters afterwards, the 409-foot home run and heckler interaction alone delivered his message clearly.

Ohtani was not the only Dodgers hitter to win big on Sunday. In back-to-back innings, Freddie Freeman hit two home runs. Rookie Dalton Rushing‘s go-ahead three-run blast secured a game tie in the sixth inning.

The Southern California rivals are tied at 74-57 for the NL West Lead with only 31 games to go. Although the teams will not play against each other again in the regular season, they will surely be watching each other’s moves closely.

Recently acquired star outfielder Mookie Betts inked a 12-year $365 million extension with the LA Dodgers on Wednesday. Betts having been traded to the Dodgers by the Boston Red Sox in February for what felt like pennies on the dollar had a highly publicized contract dispute with Boston before they eventually moved on from him. Many people saw this as a baffling move with Betts having won the AL MVP for the 2018 season and suspected that Boston only moved him in order to cut corners on their player salary bill despite not being afraid of a big salary bill in the past.

Betts joins other players such as Bryce Harper, Mike Trout and Manny Machado in getting above the $300 million range with deals that last over a decade. In a conference call from Dodgers Stadium, Betts said, “I just love being here. I love everything about here. I’m here to win some rings and bring championships back to L.A. That’s all I’m focused on.”

Fellow $300 million club-member Mike Trout commented on Betts’ extension. “I’m excited for him,” said Trout. “We kind of went through the same situation. I was laughing because of the physical he probably had to take — because mine lasted about 10 hours. Being so close to him now, it’s pretty cool to have him out here. Southern California is great.”

This seems to come at an ideal time for the Dodgers. With fan attendance likely going to be nil in the next year, the idea of paying a star over $30 million a season may be a more painful trigger to pull in the future and getting a top-tier, young talent like Betts inked up for the near and far future never is a bad idea. It will be interesting to see how these contracts age even though we won’t get the answer to that until many years down the line. The Phillies had a lackluster year with Harper on the books last year, and the Angels failed to make the playoffs last year again despite Trout being widely considered the best player in baseball.  The Dodgers may view this as the move that will catapult them from losing in the World Series two of the last three years to finally claiming that elusive championship but only time will tell if this contract, and others like it, look like a good call in six years or a total albatross.

With the MLB and NBA seasons preparing to restart in the next few weeks with no fans in attendance, many team owners have started to speak out about the financial impacts having no ticket sales will have on the leagues. But few have considered how the lack of fans will impact the businesses surrounding these stadiums that rely on the influx of fans and potential customers during these sports seasons.

Manager of a local restaurant on Vin Sculley Avenue in L.A.. told CBS Los Angeles, “The revenue we’ve lost is incredible,” he said. “Opening day in the past we had a line around the block.” He also added that he guesses the revenue loss is as much as 70%.

With no assurances that fans will return any time soon, things are looking pretty bleak for local businesses. There is nothing to be done for those that rely on basketball business since that whole setup has been moved to Orlando.

While many people have questioned why these leagues rushed back so quickly, local businesses have a lot more riding on getting things back to normal than just being able to watch favorite players pitch or dunk a basketball.

The Los Angeles Dodgers are one of the most storied franchises in baseball, not to mention one of the most successful in recent years. The team has gone to the World Series two years in a row now, falling first to the Houston Astros in 2017 and then to the Boston Red Sox last year. They’ve also won the NL West division every year since 2013.

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The Dodgers’ first home was in Brooklyn. They’re most famous for signing Jackie Robinson and breaking the color barrier in the MLB. On top of that, before the start of the 1958 season, they headed out West to Los Angeles and brought baseball to the Pacific time zone. Before Walter O’Malley made the move, the Kansas City Athletics, now in Oakland, were the furthest team from the East Coast.

The Dodgers currently play at Dodger Stadium, located at 1000 Elysian Park Avenue, Los Angeles. The stadium features a clean design and a scenic backdrop featuring hills and palm trees. The stadium was also one of the first to feature cantilever seats, ensuring that there isn’t a bad viewing point with any ticket. The spacious dimensions of the parks have led to some of the best pitching careers in baseball history.

Currently, three-time Cy Young Award winner Clayton Kershaw has passed the torch to Walker Buehler. If the Dodgers want to satisfy the 56,000 fans that pack into their stadium each game, these two will have to anchor the rotation. After heading to back-to-back World Series, the Dodgers find themselves in one of the best spots a team can be in despite not having won a championship since 1988.

The Dodgers take on their California rivals, the San Francisco Giants, on April 2 and 3. Tickets for those pair of games start at $7. With Madison Bumgarner taking the mound in the first game, an interesting pitching duel should ensue.

30 SPORTS FIGURES WHO DIED IN 2018 – TRIBUTE SLIDESHOW

Then, the team heads out West to Coors Field in Denver to take on the Colorado Rockies. It’ll be a three-game series occurring on April 5, 6, and 7. Tickets for the first game of the series go for $109. However, they drop down to just $11 by Saturday.

Here’s the Dodgers’ full schedule for the month of April:

4/2 – VS San Francisco Giants

4/3 – VS San Francisco Giants

4/5 – @ Colorado Rockies

4/6 – @ Colorado Rockies

4/7 – @ Colorado Rockies

4/8 – @ St. Louis Cardinals

4/9 – @ St. Louis Cardinals

4/10 – @ St. Louis Cardinals

4/11 – @ St. Louis Cardinals

4/12 – VS Milwaukee Brewers

4/13 – VS Milwaukee Brewers

4/14 – VS Milwaukee Brewers

4/15 – VS Cincinnati Reds

4/16 – VS Cincinnati Reds

4/17 – VS Cincinnati Reds

4/18 – @ Milwaukee Brewers

4/19 – @ Milwaukee Brewers

4/20 – @ Milwaukee Brewers

4/21 – @ Milwaukee Brewers

4/23 – @ Chicago Cubs

4/24 – @ Chicago Cubs

4/25 – @ Chicago Cubs

4/26 – VS Pittsburgh Pirates

4/27 – VS Pittsburgh Pirates

4/28 – VS Pittsburgh Pirates

4/29 – @ San Francisco Giants

4/30 – @ San Francisco Giants

The Boston Red Sox celebrated their fourth World Series title since 2004 with a 5-1 victory over the Dodgers in Los Angeles on Sunday night.

Red Sox Dominate Dodgers in Game 5, Win World Series

A series that was undeniably loaded with big names and stock with talent, however, failed to deliver a potent viewing experience, and instead raised more questions regarding the cohesiveness of these playoffs and the sport altogether.

It was evident that the Boston Red Sox of 2018 were special from the jump. Winning a cool 119 games and the biggest four games of the season in October, there will be no questions going forward about their legacy, especially considering their opponents leading up to the win. But that’s where the questions about the sport begin.

With a plethora of stars on display, (although several of them underperformed severely) and games that were destined for classic postseason games, baseball fans were instead treated to a laborious, taxing postseason and an even more mundane World Series.

If a five-game series win wasn’t telling enough, the Dodgers’ underperformed their run differential by a majors-leading ten games, meaning the talent simply laid an egg (again) in the World Series. To make matters worse, the games of the series were dreadfully long and devoid of many thrills during the long innings, a trend that preceded this series during the regular season.

30 SPORTS FIGURES WHO DIED IN 2018 – TRIBUTE SLIDESHOW

Three hours and four minutes is more than a third of the typical 9-5 shift, and its also the average length of a baseball game this season, ten minutes longer than it was at the beginning of the Wild Card era. The Sox and Dodgers managed to top that rather decidedly, with their games lasting an average of three hours and thirteen minutes. With a seven-hour, 20-minute Game three, the teams dismounted with an emphatic statement on the state of the MLB.

The numbers following Game one weren’t exactly advanced analytics, but they indicated a deficiency in the market of baseball; the opener of the Boston-Los Angeles series should have boasted explosive numbers, but instead ended up with the fourth-fewest viewers for any World Series opener on record. Regular-season fan attendance was no better: it plummeted to a 14-year low, ten million less than 2007, when attendance saw its peak.

Major League Baseball’s state of uncertainty in 2018 will continue past this season if improvements aren’t made to supplement a hemorrhaging sport ingrained in America’s quilt of culture. Baseball can’t save itself, but it has to try harder.

The Boston Red Sox are World Series champions, anyhow.

Dodgers right fielder Yasiel Puig has been notified that if he wears his customized Vin Scully cleats again he will be fined $5,000. Puig first wore the Scully cleats last week against the Arizona Diamondbacks. The Cleats say “Win for Vin” with Vin Scully‘s face on the outer left of the shoe.

A tweet below as per Dodgers beat writer Bill Plunkett states the fine.

The legendary LA Dodgers baseball announcer will be retiring at the end of the 2016 baseball season. Scully has been with the team for 67 years, since 1950, and it is the longest any sports broadcaster has been with one professional sports team.

According to Plunkett MLB vice president of standards and on-field operations, Joe Garagiola Jr., told Puig the cleats don’t conform to MLB uniform rules.

Puig has worn other custom designed cleats for U.S. Independence Day and for boxing legend Muhammad Ali, but apparently Scully cleats are a no-go.

According to CBS Sports Puig has some Statue of Liberty cleats in the works he would like to wear when the Dodgers play the Yankees in September. Puig will need to get approval from the league first if he wants to wear them.

For a man who has spent his entire MLB career with the Dodgers it would be surprising to see them get rid of him so quickly. Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Clayton Kershaw was on the 15-day disabled list on June 30th for a herniated disk and he might be one of the unlucky individuals that has to have surgery to correct the problem.

The Dodgers are sitting at second in the National League West standings at 53 – 43, four losses behind the San Francisco Giants. 11 of those wins belong to Kershaw and he’s only recorded two losses this season, and the Dodgers are 14 – 2 with Kershaw starts and are 39 – 41 when he doesn’t start.

Kershaw leads the league in ERA with 1.79 and 145 strikeouts in 121 innings. Now that he may be out for the remainder of the year the Dodgers will have to reevaluate their trade plans. If the Dodgers want to keep hope alive for playoffs they may need to trade him.

Business is business no matter what he has done for the club.

According to ESPN the Dodgers should finalize a July trade and cut ties with Kershaw.

Without Kershaw the Dodgers have been rotating through Brandon McCarthy, Kenta Maeda, Scott Kazmir, Julio Urias from the Dodger’s Oklahoma City farm team and Bud Norris who the Dodgers acquired from the Atlanta Braves.

McCarthy has an ERA of 1.69 but has only played three games this season. The next closest to Kershaw is Maeda with an ERA of 3.25 and he is 8  – 7.

Possible considerations for Kershaw are Oakland A’s pitcher Sonny Gray or Tampa Bay Rays pitcher Chris Archer. Gray is 4 – 8 with an ERA of 5.12 and Archer is 5 – 13 with an ERA of 4.60. The trade would be a step up for either pitcher as both of their respective teams are at the bottom of their divisions. As good as it would be for them it wouldn’t be the same as the Dodgers having Kershaw.

The Dodgers have excellent farm teams, and having already pulled up Urias they could still get Grant Holmes, pitcher from Rancho Cucamonga A-Advance team. There are a couple other good prospect from the Oklahoma City AAA team in pitchers Jose De Leon, and Frankie Montas but they have been struggling to stay healthy, not what the Dodgers need right now.

Many options available and still ten days to figure out how to replace their best pitcher.