TORONTO — Beneath his feet, confetti decorated the turf. Behind him, the video boards congratulated his team on its latest championship.
The Dodgers owner who lives and breathes championships smiled broadly. Magic Johnson always does, of course. This time, he had an impish twinkle in his eye.
“They said we ruined baseball,” Johnson said. “Well, I guess we didn’t.”
If you are not in Los Angeles, you might be screaming in frustration. The team with all the gold makes the rules, and the new rule is that the Dodgers win every year, and now their most famous owner is mocking you?
He is not.
He is, however, issuing a subtle warning to all of baseball’s owners: Don’t let your desperation for a salary cap destroy a sport on the rise — in no small part thanks to the Dodgers.
The NBA was not much more than a minor league 45 years ago. This is crazy to imagine now, but the NBA Finals aired on tape delay, on late-night television, most often at 11:30 p.m. The NBA audience was so small that advertisers would not pay prime-time rates for those commercials, so the games were not broadcast in prime time.
Johnson helped change that. The rivalry between his Lakers and Larry Bird’s Celtics revived the NBA, and then Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls became global sporting icons.
From 1980-88, either the Lakers or the Celtics won the NBA title in every year but one. From 1991-98, the Bulls won six titles.
The Celtics and Lakers and Bulls did not ruin the NBA.
“What the Celtics and Lakers were able to do, and Michael Jordan’s Bulls, was to bring in new fans — fans that were, ‘Oh, I don’t know about the NBA,’” Johnson said, “but the play was so good, and the Celtics and Lakers and Bulls were so dominant, people said, ‘Oh man, I want to watch them.’
“It’s the same thing happening here.”
The NBA leadership could not believe its good fortune. Baseball’s leadership appears intent on lighting its good fortune on fire.
“My phone was blowing up with people who hadn’t watched baseball for a long time,” Johnson said. “They were watching this series.
“This was good for baseball around the world.”
The World Baseball Classic is four months away. The World Series most valuable player, the Dodgers’ Yoshinobu Yamamoto, is from Japan.
So is the Dodgers’ Shohei Ohtani, the closest baseball has ever had to its own Jordan. The Dodgers rescued him from purgatory in Anaheim and surrounded him with a star-studded roster, and now he makes more money from pitching products than pitching baseballs. To the Dodgers, he doubles as an All-Star and cash machine.
The league — and all the owners complaining about the Dodgers and their spending — happily profited from this traveling road show. The Dodgers get the same share of international merchandise and broadcast revenue every other team does.
The Dodgers led the major leagues in road attendance, again. The league sent the Dodgers to Seoul last spring and Tokyo this spring, meaning that, for two years running, they were one of the first two teams to report to spring training and one of the last two playing at season’s end. The league’s television partners rushed to book the Dodgers, even for games at times inconvenient to the team.
“MLB put us in every hard situation you can think about,” infielder Miguel Rojas said. “We never complained. We were trying to come through for the fans, for baseball, and everybody should be recognizing what we are doing.”
With the Blue Jays in the World Series, Canadian ratings for the World Series increased tenfold. The Dodgers did not destroy the Jays. They survived them, and barely at that.
The Dodgers have not ruined competition, despite the spotlight.
“They have a great team,” Toronto infielder Ernie Clement said. “There’s no denying it. They’re one of the best teams probably ever put together, and we’ve taken ‘em to seven games, so that’s got to say something about us.”
Toronto manager John Schneider said his team, which won more games than the Dodgers this season, had chances to sweep the World Series.
“People were calling it David versus Goliath,” Schneider said, shaking his head from side to side. “It’s not even… close.”
The Dodgers make a lot of money, pour the money back into the team, and win. They give the people what they want.
“People want the best,” co-owner Todd Boehly said.
Granted, not every team can spend like the Dodgers. Most cannot, and baseball should be able to find ways to share the wealth without risking its tenuous but growing popularity by locking out players in pursuit of a salary cap.
After all, isn’t a compelling product with stars from home and abroad good for baseball?
“You bet,” controlling owner Mark Walter said. “I think they think so, too.”
It was time to go. The parade was 36 hours away, and Johnson had to rest his throat.
“I’m hoarse,” he said. “I’ve never been hoarse.”
So we’ll leave you with one bit of sports trivia, in response to the mistaken notion that a salary cap assures competitive balance: In the Magic, Bird and Jordan years, the ones that lifted the NBA into popular culture, did the NBA have a salary cap?
It did then. It does now. Onto the quest for a three-peat.
Highlights from the Dodgers’ 5-4 win in 11 innings over the Blue Jays in Game 7 of the World Series.
