On their way into the clubhouse Thursday, Dodgers players were greeted by the World Series championship trophies they won in 2024 and 2025. In center field, Dodgers fans were greeted by oversize replicas of those trophies, the better for taking a selfie.
On social media, the Dodgers unveiled their Opening Day hype video. These were the first words: “What’s wrong with being the bad guy?” At Dodger Stadium, the threepeat hype video was a movie trailer with this tag line: “Great sequels build legendary trilogies.”
To the rest of that country, all that winning and all that spending makes the Dodgers the bad guys. For more than a year, the owners of other major league teams have telegraphed their desire to restrain all that spending, preferably through a salary cap.
How does the owner of the Dodgers feel?
Does baseball truly have a problem?
Sit down, Dodgers fans. You might expect the owner of the Colorado Rockies to say that revenue disparity among teams is so great that competitive balance has been destroyed, and he did.
You might not expect Dodgers owner Mark Walter to say this:
”Here’s what the problem is: Money helps us win. We can’t win all the time. We’ve got to have some parity,” Walter told me.
“So we’ve got to come up with something that will give us some parity.”
Don’t take this the wrong way: Walter will always want to win. But the owners, Walter included, are increasingly united in the belief that revenue disparity is the primary explanation why a small-market team has not won the World Series in 11 years.
The Dodgers are making more money from Uniqlo in naming rights this season than some teams are making from local television rights and the Dodgers also are making 10 times as much on their SportsNet LA deal.
The Dodgers generated an estimated $850 million in revenue last season, according to Forbes. Their opening day opponent, the Arizona Diamondbacks, generated an estimated $324 million.
If Walter were to support the pursuit of a salary cap, the owners could be unanimously in favor. For now, negotiations with the players’ union have not started, and owners have not considered the language of whatever bargaining proposal they might make, so there is nothing for Walter to approve or reject.
“We’ll have to see what it is,” Walter said.
The players’ union does not dispute the revenue disparity. The union believes the owners should solve that issue among themselves, by sharing more revenue and adding incentives for lower-revenue teams that win. The union also believes “competitive balance” is a fig leaf for “cost control that increases owner profits.”
In the NFL, which has a salary cap, either the Kansas City Chiefs or the New England Patriots has played in the AFC championship in each of the last 15 years.
And, even if the Dodgers are the bad guys, they are not bad for business. The Dodgers hold five of the top 12 spots on baseball’s list of best-selling jerseys: Shohei Ohtani at No. 1, Yoshinobu Yamamoto at No. 2, Mookie Betts at No. 5, Freddie Freeman at No. 7 and Kiké Hernandez at No. 12.
The last two World Series, in which the Dodgers beat the New York Yankees and Toronto Blue Jays, juiced television ratings across the country and around the world. The World Baseball Classic dominated headlines and social media content at what is usually a sleepy time for baseball.
All of that momentum would be at risk if owners shut down the sport in “salary cap or bust” collective bargaining, crossing their fingers that players would surrender as soon as they started missing paychecks next spring.
It is against that backdrop that Dodgers manager Dave Roberts encouraged fans to appreciate this season opener. With potential armageddon looming in negotiations for a new collective bargaining agreement, who knows when the next season might actually open?
“I understand that,” Roberts said Thursday, “in the sense of, this is where the CBA is at, as far as the expiration. And I do agree: Enjoy it, because nothing is guaranteed. It’s going to be a great year and I hope everyone pours their spirits and their joy into this season, because it’s going to be a great one. We’ll just figure out where it goes after that.”
And, if it goes haywire after that, the Dodgers inevitably will be blamed.
“That,” Roberts said with a laugh, “seems like it’s always been the case recently.”
What would Walter tell Dodgers fans concerned that what might be in the best interest of baseball might not be in the best interest of the Dodgers?
“I don’t want to hurt us,” Walter said. “We’ll be fine.”
With whatever happens?
“Yeah,” he said. “We’ll be good.”
More to Read
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: latimes.com
