That last game will be remembered for a long time. Ohtani walked the first batter he faced before striking out the next three. Then he came to the plate and launched a ball more than four hundred feet—the first time in M.L.B. history that one of the game’s pitchers had hit a lead-off home run. And that was just the beginning! Over the course of six innings, Ohtani—in his cool, inimitable fashion, with a motion that combines grace and force—gave up only two hits and struck out ten, including six out of the seven batters he’d faced during one stretch. In between, he hit a second homer, one that left the stadium, clearing the center-field roof. As it hung in the night sky, his teammates in the dugout and in the bullpen, who have had a closeup view for all of Ohtani’s Bunyanesque feats, clutched their heads in disbelief. And then he hit a third! It was the greatest performance by the greatest player in history.
Ohtani’s value to the Los Angeles Dodgers is immeasurable. His contract—seven hundred million dollars for ten years, with team-friendly deferrals—is, considering what he brings to the team both on and off the field, a steal. Still, not every M.L.B. team could, or would, pay anyone so much, let alone surround him with other players on gargantuan contracts.
The Dodgers have a payroll of more than three hundred and fifty million dollars, which is nearly three times the size of the Brewers’. This has caused the usual hand-wringing about competitive imbalance and the inherent plight of small-market teams. It’s easy enough to see the crude outlines of a narrative. In game one of the N.L.C.S., Blake Snell, a former Cy Young winner who’d signed with the Dodgers in the off-season for nearly two hundred million dollars, threw eight shutout innings. Then in Game Two came Yoshinobu Yamamoto (three hundred and twenty-five million for twelve years), who gave up a home run to the first batter before pitching a complete game in which no one else got to second base. Tyler Glasnow, who signed with the club for more than a hundred and thirty million dollars over five years, gave up one run in Game Three. Then came Ohtani. The Dodgers have had fifteen consecutive winning seasons and thirteen consecutive playoff appearances, and have already won two World Series this decade. They need another championship like Taylor Swift needs a Grammy. But they’ve become a symbol of something bigger than a juggernaut. They’re sometimes framed as an existential threat to the other teams.
It’s a strange argument—the Brewers, not the Dodgers, had the best record in baseball during the regular season. The Dodgers, in fact, were mediocre for a long stretch in the middle of the season, and lost all six regular-season games they played against the Brewers this year. If anything, the two franchises seemed to support the notion that payroll is only loosely correlated with success. (And let’s not talk right now about the New York Mets.) What’s more, much of the Dodgers’ talent was undervalued by other teams. Betts was traded to the Dodgers by the Boston Red Sox. Max Muncy, who recently set the record for most post-season homers, was claimed off waivers after being released by the Oakland Athletics. For a while last off-season, Snell’s agent had trouble finding a buyer. Rōki Sasaki, who had been an impressive starting pitcher in Japan, was sought after by practically every M.L.B. team—each of which would have been allowed to pay him more or less the same small amount, owing to M.L.B.’s international-amateur-free-agent rules. But his choice to come to the Dodgers was validated when, after joining the team, he struggled badly with his velocity as a starter. He went to the Dodgers’ complex in Arizona, worked with the team’s performance staff, tweaked his mechanics, and embraced a new role in the bullpen, becoming a fearsome reliever almost overnight. It’s a story about competence and trust as much as luxury taxes and revenue.
That’s what really sets the Dodgers apart: they’re good at being good, not just occasionally great. For the past week, Pat Murphy, the Brewers’ manager, has been going on a media spree, trying to make the case that his team is the greatest underdog the sport has ever seen. He’s called attention to salary disparities. He has joked that the series would only be fair if Dodgers’ players wore their gloves on their opposite hands. Murphy made an argument to a writer for the Athletic that his team had no stars, while the Dodgers were full of celebrities. Then, for evidence, he pointed to Mookie Betts, who, at just that moment, zoomed by in a golf cart driven by a Brewers clubhouse attendant. Betts had a big smile on his face. He was being treated better than Murphy, in Murphy’s own stadium!
Or perhaps there was a simpler explanation. Of course Betts had been offered a ride: his smile is infectious. Who can root against him? Likewise, it was impossible to watch Ohtani on Friday and do anything but appreciate the grace of his movements and the grandeur of his performance. Even a hater has to tip her cap. ♦