They go together in the good ole USA 🇺🇸

Do you think Abner Doubleday ever would have imagined that corporate titans in the biggest cities would be running teams like S&P 500 companies? Compiling teams in different sports where revenues are in the billions annually?

There was a time when professional players worked offseason jobs to have enough money to feed their families. Nowadays there are players making over $1 million a week, $4 million a month, $24 million a year. Not an outlier of one or two players, but they number in the dozens now.

And guess what, this is all within the rules. The Dodgers aren’t ruining baseball. The rules that allow it are at the center of the debate. Los Angeles had more money spent on their starting rotation than the team they just swept in the NLCS, the Milwaukee Brewers, had spent on their entire team payroll.

So when Dodgers’ manager Dave Roberts pokes the bear by screaming into the microphone last night, “Let’s get four more wins and really ruin baseball,” there’s a Brewers team in the other clubhouse that doesn’t find anything funny about that.

It isn’t an even playing field and hasn’t been for decades. Sure, the Tampa Bay Rays made a World Series appearance, and the Kansas City Royals won a World Series in the past 10 years. It can happen that a small market team can win, but come on, Doubleday didn’t create this game to exclude the smaller market teams.

Again, the Dodgers are playing within the rules. So change the rules. Baseball TV ratings are soaring, and Shohei Ohtani just recorded the greatest singular game statistically for WAR in a postseason game. He went 3-for-3 with three tape measure homers, and pitched 6.0 innings of 2-hit shutout baseball with 10 Ks. It literally looked like the varsity team was scrimmaging against the freshman team with no mercy.

When the Washington Nationals won the 2019 World Series, they were actually below the CBT payroll penalty line. The following offseason with Stephen Strasburg’s free agent deal, the Nats had the first $100 million starting rotation in baseball — and yes it seemed excessive and unfair — but within the rules. Baseball only allows for one winner in the end. Plenty of big payroll teams didn’t make the playoffs like the New York Mets. But four of the five highest spending teams made the postseason, and two of the six are still standing as the Toronto Blue Jays are still alive in the ALCS at the moment. They are behind 3-2 in their series. Seattle represents the 16th largest payroll in baseball based on MLB team payrolls on Opening Day. More than half of the Dodgers payroll.

Money is one thing, fairness is another, and greatness is never a guarantee. The Dodgers won the NL West but didn’t get a first round bye and had to play in the Wild Card round. There is no sure thing that they will win the World Series. They will be heavy favorites to win it on the Vegas betting lomes. Money alone didn’t put them in this spot. Winning put them in this spot. You still have to play the games and win them.

You know those profiting off of TV ratings and the hype are loving this. Not only in the USA but also in Japan. There has never been an MLB roster with three Japanese star players on one team, like the Dodgers. Worldwide, this is a great showcase for the game. Ohtani, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, and Roki Sasaki are changing the look of the game. So while Roberts runs his mouth, Ohtani made jaws drop by what he did last night. He is the modern day Babe Ruth to a new generation of baseball.

Ohtani is making the game better. Runaway payrolls to make super teams is a reality. If you don’t like it — change the rules. A new collective bargaining agreement (CBA) is due after next season. By then, the Dodgers might be a 3-peat champion.