Love ’em or hate ’em, you’re going to watch these Dodgers

If you are a Dodgers fan, and this is an exceptionally good day to be a Dodgers fan, what your team has now done with Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto is what every fan wants their team to do to win.

That means anything and everything.

• Dodgers get their ace, agree to $325M deal with Yamamoto (source)

Fans don’t care about the money their team has to spend to give itself its best chance to win. It’s not their money. It was the great Red Smith, one of the best sports columnists who ever lived, who once noted that he’d never seen the owner of a baseball team having to ride a bicycle to work. Fans just know how much they want to win, and how much they care. All they ask is for the people in charge of their team to show they care as much.

• The longest contracts in baseball history

So now the Dodgers, who just had another 100-win season go up in smoke in the playoffs, have just invested more than $1 billion in Ohtani, already the most storied two-way player since Babe Ruth over a century ago, and Yamamoto, a 25-year old whom the Dodgers clearly believe is the most talented pitcher to ever come to this country from Japan.

And this time around, even more than with Ohtani, the Dodgers had to reportedly win a bidding war for Yamamoto that included the Yankees and the Mets and the Phillies and the Red Sox and Giants and Blue Jays. In the process -- and even though the Dodgers might not be done yet -- they have assembled what might be the most glamorous team in baseball history, somehow without making it the most expensive one.

The top of Dave Roberts' batting order is now Mookie Betts, a former MVP, and Freddie Freeman, a former MVP, and Ohtani, a two-time MVP. The top of Roberts’ rotation, without even knowing where Clayton Kershaw, another former MVP, will pitch in 2024, is Yamamoto, the returning Walker Buehler and the newly acquired Tyler Glasnow. This is a star-driven team in Los Angeles -- in Hollywood, really -- where stars sometimes seem to be part of that city’s DNA.

• Shohei gets star treatment at Rams game, looks like a natural QB

It is as if, in the span of a few weeks of free agency, Dodgers owner and chairman Mark Walter and president of his baseball operations, Andrew Friedman, have really been trying to reimagine the old Showtime Lakers, just in baseball.

And by the way, if there is any hand-wringing out there about the way the Dodgers have been throwing money around to acquire these stars? This happens to be great for baseball. Not just Dodgers fans. Baseball. Because wherever you line up on the Dodgers, whether you are set to love the Dodgers or hate them, one thing is not even in dispute: You are going to want to watch them.

I once asked the legendary screenwriter William Goldman who won Oscars for “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” and “All the President’s Men” in addition to writing “The Princess Bride,” why a particular movie had been a hit.

“That’s easy,” Mr. Goldman said. “People wanted to see it.”

Who’s going to want to see the Dodgers next season, on television or at Dodgers Stadium or when they come to your city? That’s easy, too. Everybody’s going to want to see Ohtani keep making home run swings before he’s expected to go back to pitching in 2025 once his right elbow is strong again. And they will be fascinated to see Yamamoto, for now the best pitcher hardly anybody in this country except scouts and baseball executives has ever seen, is worth of all the fuss and all the money.

“We think [Yamamoto] is going to be a really successful pitcher wherever he pitches on the planet,” Yankees general manager Brian Cashman said, after talking about how extensively the Yankees had scouted Yamamoto. In fact, Cashman himself was even in Japan to personally witness Yamamoto pitching a no-hitter.

The Yankees thought they were perfectly positioned to sign Yamamoto, team him with Juan Soto the way the Dodgers have now teamed the pitcher with Ohtani. The Mets, whose owner Steve Cohen is the wealthiest in the sport, reportedly offered Yamamoto the same long-term money that the Dodgers did. In the end, Yamamoto, such a huge star in Japan, elected to try to become a star in Los Angeles, the same way Ohtani had just done in Anaheim.

Does this guarantee the Dodgers their first World Series since 2020 and what would be only their second since 1988? Baseball fans know better than that. Twenty years ago the Yankees swung a President’s Day weekend trade for Alex Rodriguez, at a time when the Yankees had just played six of the last eight World Series, and the idea at the time was that the Yankees would just keep going to the Fall Classic forever. They’ve been to one since then. Big payrolls and big stars don’t always win the day in baseball, and you can go ahead and look that up.

But the Dodgers go for it now with these two free agents, in as big a way as baseball has seen, and really do show they’re willing to do anything and everything to win. It really is all any fan can ever ask. Christmas just came early to Vin Scully Ave. As the great Scully used to say, pull up a chair.