This is not a sad day for baseball. This is a great day for baseball.
Roki Sasaki, arguably the best young pitcher in the world, is a Dodger. Sasaki announced his decision in an Instagram post Friday.
Fifteen years ago, LeBron James announced his big decision on live television, with these memorable words: “I’m going to take my talents to South Beach.”
This would be the ruin of the NBA, or so the critics whined.
James and Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade? A super team? How would the rest of the league survive, let alone prosper?
Just fine, thank you.
Read more: Dodgers sign Japanese star Roki Sasaki in yet another free-agency victory for L.A.
Baseball will do just fine too, even with the Dodgers boasting Sasaki and Shohei Ohtani and Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman and Teoscar Hernández and Blake Snell and Tyler Glasnow and Yoshinobu Yamamoto.
James did indeed anchor a super team in Miami. In his four years with the Heat, the team made the NBA Finals every year and won two NBA championships.
That’s the goal, but that’s not our point here. Professional teams are in the entertainment business. Success in the entertainment business is simple: Give the people what they want.
In James’ four seasons in Miami, the Heat led the NBA in road attendance every season. When the biggest stars came to town, people wanted to see them.
This season, the Heat rank 20th in road attendance.
The Dodgers are popular every year, but their road attendance last year speaks to the power of Ohtani. In the five non-pandemic seasons preceding last year, the difference in average road attendance between the top-ranked and second-ranked MLB team was no more than 3%.
In 2024, the Dodgers’ average road attendance was 36,253 — 11% more than the runner-up New York Yankees, and all the more impressive since the Dodgers are the only team that does not play road games in Dodger Stadium — the league’s largest stadium.
Read more: Yankee fans who interfered with Mookie Betts banned from Game 5 of World Series
The last team to draw so well on the road: the 2008 Boston Red Sox — in a year MLB sold 78.6 million tickets, as opposed to 71.3 million last year.
In their first year without Ohtani, the Angels dropped from fifth to dead last in MLB in road attendance.
The Dodgers could rest on their championship laurels (and Ohtani!), but Snell and Sasaki are new attractions. Disneyland regularly entices repeat business with new attractions. That’s entertainment.
Baseball plays every day, and so no other North American sport generates as much money from ticket sales.
Rival owners might mutter that they cannot compete with the Dodgers, but they are delighted when the Dodgers bring their band of traveling All-Stars to town. They are just as delighted when they get their share of the Dodgers’ ticket revenue, and the Dodgers just might sell 4 million tickets for the first time this season.
In 2003, the Onion poked fun at the Yankees with this headline: “Yankees Ensure 2003 Pennant By Signing Every Player in Baseball.”
Read more: Dodgers trade Gavin Lux to Cincinnati Reds in wake of Hyeseong Kim signing
The 2003 Yankees won the American League pennant. They lost the World Series to the Florida Marlins, one year after losing in the division series to the Angels. They have not won the World Series in 16 years.
“To the rich go the spoils,” the Yankees’ Mark Teixeira said on that championship night in 2009. The Yankees are still rich, at least. Today, the Dodgers are the team you love, or the team you love to hate.
The Dodgers may give the impression they have signed every player in baseball, or at least every star, but the playoff field has expanded from eight teams in 2003 to 12 today. No owner needs to compete with the Dodgers to get into the postseason.
That just takes 80-something victories, and any owner suggesting it is inordinately challenging to compete for a playoff spot should sell before he embarrasses himself any further.
Unfortunately but understandably, beaten-down fans of consistently uncompetitive teams will suggest the antidote to the Dodgers assembling a super team would be for MLB to adopt a salary cap. That would have stopped LeBron and — oh, wait, the NBA had a salary cap then. It still does. Give the people what they want, or just turn your ballpark over to the Savannah Bananas.
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
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