The Dodgers and Money

[DOUGHBOYS]

The Los Angeles Dodgers now have the largest payroll in baseball.
Over 225 million dollars.
They have eight contracts that run at least four years.
Each of those contracts is worth at least 36 million dollars.
And here's the kicker...
Only two of those players have played even a full year with the Dodgers. Matt Kemp and Andre Ethier.
Three of those players have never played for the Dodgers. The recently signed pitchers, Greinke and Ryu, and last year's injured Carl Crawford.

Is it all a good thing?
It is for players salaries and their union. There's a new spending kid in town. A 'go to' team for Scott Boras and the like.
Like the Yankees of previous years, there future chases for gold will be decided on who they are spending their riches on and how they can maintain a winning team despite many ego's.

There was a time when somebody making a lot of money was a pain in the ass to the Dodgers.
One of the best years in Dodger history was 1955. This was the height of baseball in New York. The Yankees had Mantle. The Giants had Mays. The Dodgers had Snider.
And the Yankees had World Series.
They especially beat these Dodgers like a drum. But not in 1955.

In 1955, the Brooklyn Dodgers clinched the National League pennant faster than any team before them had ever done in the National League.
And then would roll on to beat the Yankees in the World Series. The only time that this team, the team with Robinson, Hodges, Snider, Reese, Campanella, Newcombe, Furillo, and Podres, would beat the Yankees in a World Series.
These were the 'Boys of Summer'.

And they accomplished all this, while being penalized for what the Los Angeles Dodgers are doing now.
Doling out big bucks.
They won that pennant and World Series with a handicap.
You see, this was the time before free agents. When owners controlled baseball.
And owners sometimes put rules into effect to save them from their worst financial enemy....Themselves.

In 1955, owners did not like other owners shelling out big bonuses to players.
First, it made them look bad to their home base, in questioning why they weren't the one's to sign the kid.
Second, these bonuses could/would only be made by the 'big' clubs. Even then, smaller markets had a tough time!
So, to make these bonusus hurt, it was required that any team doling out at least a $4,000 bonus would have to keep that kid on the Major League Roster for two years.

It was a horrible rule. Some kids who deserved the bonus were not offered it because of the rule.
The kids that did receive a bonus, for the most part, spent their first two years of baseball collecting splinters on the bench.
The Dodgers spent a bonus on a player before 1955. It was bad timing for Walter Alston, the Manager.
He was under a lot of pressure to win NOW with this group of players before they got too old.
He had nine pitchers on his roster, but only used eight.
Alston finally gave the kid a chance at starting a game in June. The kid got nervous or was just plain bad and walked eight batters.
Alston figured he needed more time off. He sat the bench for 50 more days.In his next start, he threw a two-hitter and struck out 14 batters at age 19.
Alston was not impressed.
He did not participate in the World Series.

That pitcher, the penalty that the Dodgers carried all year.
The 19 year old who only took up Walter Alston's roster space would be instrumental in Alston going to four World Series and winning two of them during the next 11 years.
His name was Sandy Koufax.