Can’t buy my fandom … or can you?
The Dodgers are ruining the offseason for baseball fans. But are they ruining it for their own fans too?
The Los Angeles Dodgers committed another $325 million to a free agent, star Japanese pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto, bringing their offseason total to over $1 billion in guaranteed money for just two players.
Fans of the other 29 teams in baseball are annoyed, despondent, and once again ready to declare that baseball is unfair and morally bankrupt. Dodgers fans are, I guess, super excited? Yes, I’m sure they’re excited. They’ve added the best player on the planet, and the best available pitcher in the world. How can they not be super excited?
This did get me thinking. As a fan, when is your favorite team winning a championship most satisfying?
Does it mean more when the majority of the team was drafted and developed? Does it lessen your enjoyment if your team just bought all the best available players? Do you need years of suffering to cherish a title more? Do the main players need to be on the team for a number of years, so you can grow more attached to them, ride the ups and downs together, the pain of missed chances in the postseason, before you can fully treasure a championship? Or, as Al Davis famously put it, “Just win, Baby?”
I sent a text to two friends who are lifelong Dodgers fans to gauge their emotions. The question I posed: if the Dodgers win the World Series in 2024, will it be just as pleasurable … or will it feel hollow because you bought it with your billions?
Their responses:
Kinda depends on how the new acquisitions adhere to the team/culture. I much prefer the guys to be home grown and the team you’ve cheered on for years. That said, a baseball season is long enough to develop fandom for new faces.
Pure pleasure. We did not go after free agents for two years, saving for Show Time. If we didn’t land these guys, the last two years were in vain.
I suspect most Dodgers fans fall into these two categories, with the overwhelming majority falling on the “pure pleasure” side.
Just last year, the San Diego Padres tried to “buy” a World Series title and their payroll skyrocketed to third-highest in the sport, behind just the two New York teams and above the Dodgers. While the Padres failed to even reach the playoffs, they set a franchise attendance record. Clearly, the fans didn’t care how their players were acquired. They wanted to watch elite players and their team win.
[For those new to this Substack, who don’t know me, here’s a quick primer on my perspective: I grew up in the Bay Area, chanted “Beat LA” as a kid, the most disappointing moment in my sports life was the 1988 World Series when the Dodgers upset my beloved Oakland A’s, I later moved to Los Angeles as an adult, worked on the Dodgers pre/postgame show for four years, wrote a book about the ’88 Dodgers team that broke my heart, and spent two years as the play-by-play announcer for the Dodgers Triple-A affiliate.]
My employer, the Albuquerque Isotopes, are now affiliated with the Colorado Rockies. I’m fairly neutral about the Dodgers. I don’t love them or hate them. It’s impressive to watch their regular season consistency and amusing to watch their postseason meltdowns. The randomness of October illustrates the charm of baseball.
This offseason, however, sure makes it easier to loathe the Dodgers, so I’m going through this thought exercise from the lens of what I felt when my favorite teams won championships.
2015-22 Golden State Warriors
I’ve thoroughly enjoyed all four of the Golden State Warriors recent NBA titles. The middle two titles came after signing Kevin Durant and that didn’t bother me the slightest. I relished adding a future Hall of Famer to a reigning championship team and how selfless all the stars were to form a cohesive unit.
Now, that said, if I were to rank which of the Warriors four NBA titles I enjoyed the most, the list goes like this:
The first one in 2015. It was their first title in 40 years and mostly came out of nowhere. The whole season felt like a dream and the “strength in numbers” ethos was the ultimate in teamwork.
The most recent one in 2022. After four years of injuries and setbacks, feeling like the dynasty was over, this cemented Steph Curry’s legacy.
The first one with Durant in 2017. Avenging the loss to the Cavs from the year before was sweet. So what if Durant was needed to get back on top?
The second one with Durant in 2018. We were so spoiled by this point, anything other than a sweep in each series felt like a disappointment.
Initially, I was uneasy about adding Chris Paul to this year’s roster. But he’s grown on me. If the Dubs win their fifth title and they needed the help of one of their biggest rivals, it’s fine with me.
1981-94 San Francisco 49ers
My reflections on the San Francisco 49ers dynasty are similar. I enjoyed all five of their Super Bowl titles.
It didn’t matter which trades they made, what free agents they signed, or how they manipulated the salary cap. It was part of the aura that all the best players wanted to join the 49ers, and the front office was that much smarter than other teams. (To be fair, the first four titles were overwhelmingly build through the draft.)
It's harder to rank the five because the top three are so close. But here are my rankings:
The middle one in 1988. They were in a four-year drought, kept losing in the playoffs, and Joe Montana kept getting injured in those losses. This sparked the second wave of the dynasty and the “John Candy” final drive to beat the Bengals in the Super Bowl was pure exhilaration.
The second one in 1984. This team went 18-1 and is somehow underrated. This was the best team of the five. It’s really close to being my favorite.
The first one in 1981. I suspect most 49ers fans would rank this first, but I was only 8 years old that year and didn’t yet grasp what it meant.
The fourth in 1989. This team was so dominant, it felt like a foregone conclusion from day one. All the playoff wins were blowouts.
The final one in 1994. This was the mercenary team. It seemed like the 49ers signed every Pro Bowler from the previous decade, including a bunch who were a major reason why the 49ers lost playoff games: Jim Burt, Richard Dent, Rickey Jackson, Charles Mann, Gary Plummer and Ken Norton, Jr. [Still, don’t get me wrong, it was extremely enjoyable, especially to get the monkey off Steve Young’s back.]
1988-90 Oakland A’s
The A’s reached three straight World Series with extremely similar rosters, but the legacy of this mini-dynasty is that the only championship came after a devastating earthquake and the “Bash Brothers” were on steroids.
It’s hard to fathom now, but the A’s payroll was actually among the highest in baseball in those days. Still, the money was much different back then and it never felt like the A’s were “buying” a title.
The nucleus of the roster was homegrown talent (three straight Rookies of the Year in Jose Canseco, Mark McGwire and Walt Weiss) and Bay Area natives (Dave Stewart and Dennis Eckersley) whose stalled careers were resurrected back home. The biggest acquisition was trading for Rickey Henderson and even that didn’t feel like “buying” a title because Henderson was having a subpar year at the time, he was from Oakland, and was originally drafted by the A’s.
The 1991-93 A’s had a lot more mercenaries and didn’t quite feel the same. But I’m sure my memory is also clouded because only one of those teams made the playoffs and I was away in college.
2022-23 SDSU Aztecs
I’d be remiss without including last year’s San Diego State men’s basketball team, because even if they didn’t win national championship, the buzzer beater by Lamont Butler in the Final Four to reach the title game was my all-time favorite sports fandom moment.
What made it so special was experiencing that jubilation, inside the building, with so many of my closest college friends. That team also provided some redemption because the 2020 team – which was 30-2, ranked sixth in the nation, and likely a No.2 seed – was denied the opportunity for a championship run when the NCAA Tournament was canceled due to Covid.
The 2023 team had a few players remaining from 2020. The Aztecs roster was filled with junior and seniors, including fifth-year seniors and even a sixth-year senior. Fans had multiple years to bond with names like Mensah, Arop, Butler, Keshad and Seiko.
The Aztecs won the Mountain West regular season title and MWC Tournament, but their deep NCAA run was not expected. They were a 5 seed. They beat 12th seeded Charleston, 13th seeded Furman, top-seed Alabama and 6th seed Creighton to reach the Final Four, then stunned ninth-seed Florida Atlantic at the buzzer, before losing to Connecticut in the finals.
I’m confident that my enjoyment of any trip to the national championship game would be euphoric no matter what, but all these factors contributed to the magic.
This wasn’t a bunch of 1-and-done guys headed to the NBA who we never got to know. We knew these players. Many players were transfers, but they didn’t come to San Diego on huge NIL deals. They felt “homegrown” because how long they were on campus and we lived through agonizing defeats in previous years.
LA is the home of stars
Los Angeles is a city that’s built on the biggest stars coming to the city, whether it’s Berry Gordy moving Motown from Detroit to LA, the Kings trading for Wayne Gretzky, the Lakers signing Shaquille O’Neal, the Raiders luring Bo Jackson to play two sports, or the Dodgers trading for Manny Ramirez.
Look, this is what the Dodgers do. They draft and develop all stars (Walker Buehler, Will Smith) and Hall of Famers (Clayton Kershaw). They trade for superstars and sign them long term (Mookie Betts) or just let them depart (Max Scherzer, Trea Turner). They take discards and turn them into stars (Chris Taylor, Max Muncy).
Until recently, they’ve avoided the biggest free agents (Garrit Cole) or let their own depart (Corey Seager). Then they signed an elite superstar two years ago (Freddie Freeman) and now they’re spending like a drunken sailor on a weekend bender back in port who just got access to his trust fund (Shohei Ohtani, Yoshinobu Yamamoto).
Their fans expect the biggest stars. They’ll have spring training and six months to bond over all the new dudes.
Fans of the other 29 teams are understandably annoyed. But if their team did the same, they’ve absolutely love every second of it.
If they win three in five years I'll be annoyed.
My Yankees and the pathetic Mets have poured money into their teams for years with nothing to show for it. My favorite Yankees teams were the early Jeter years when we wont the first Series. Roster was full of young stars (Jeter, Mariano, Bernie) and old castaways (Boggs, Fielder, Gooden, Strawberry). Once they started paying for players like Arod and Stanton the team was much harder to root for.