The wormy people who own baseball franchises are demanding a historic, outrageous favor. They are asking major-league players and the back-to-back World Series champions to accept a salary cap for salaries. Never mind if the Dodgers have decided to splurge like no other team in sports and will purchase more free agents — Kyle Tucker for $400 million, a closer who doesn’t watch Yoshinobu Yamamoto pitch in the 11th inning of Game 7 — and try to win forevermore.
But the problem with these wormy owners is they can’t look 31.4 miles down Interstate 5. They don’t understand why the Los Angeles Angels, a despicably run organization with no postseason victories since 2009, would need exterior help to stay in business. The sport benefits from fewer than half of 30 teams: the Dodgers, Blue Jays, Yankees, Red Sox, Mets, Phillies, Braves, Cubs, Brewers, Mariners, Astros, Padres and Giants. Rob Manfred could drop the other wannabes into a second tier of relegation and let them play scrub ball.
Why would the Dodgers, run by Mark Walter, want to help the Angels when the former communications director might have killed pitcher Tyler Skaggs with a pill? Why would the White Sox, who drew 1.4 million with ticket giveaways and have no future hope in Chicago, expect help from the Cubs, who drew more than three million and won a playoff series? Why would the Pittsburgh Pirates, who are holding Paul Skenes hostage, beg for help from the Phillies, who drew 3.3 million across the state of Pennsylvania?
Just because the Dodgers and Blue Jays lured 51 million TV viewers for the seventh game — including Canada and Japan — doesn’t mean baseball is safe when the collective bargaining agreement expires in 12 months and three weeks. The media cheerleaders say everything is fine, but if the Brewers and Mariners play in the next Fall Classic, watch the numbers slide into the usual oblivion. This Series was all about Shohei Ohtani, Yamamoto and the quirky struggles of the Dodgers’ offense against Toronto’s glorious run. The games attracted multiple countries and people who once stopped watching baseball. “My phone was blowing up with people who hadn’t watched baseball for a long time,” said Magic Johnson, who won another title as a Dodgers part-owner. “They were watching this series. This was good for baseball around the world.” The surge will not happen again, unless Manfred wants to transform globally and replace the Angels, White Sox and Miami Marlins with the Yomiuri Giants, Hanshin Tigers and Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks.
Baseball can’t afford another colossal mental blunder and let a salary cap turn too many teams into spending sleepers. Let the owners who disregard luxury taxes raise payrolls to the heavens. Let the cheapskates finish in last place and create civic apathy. Does anyone believe White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf, who never has issued more than $75 million on a free agent, would start spending with a cap? Or Bob Nutting, who won’t support Skenes in his early years as one of the great pitchers of all time? Or Bruce Sherman, who has more or less driven baseball out of Miami? Does anyone have faith in John Fisher spending in Las Vegas? Or the new owners of the Tampa Bay Rays?
The only two-team town is New York. Los Angeles and Chicago, like the Bay Area, don’t need second teams. The idea is to sell awful franchises, but Reinsdorf could keep the Sox until the end of the 2034 season — he’ll be pushing age 99 while Justin Ishbia presumably still waits — and have them play under extended leases at sad Rate Field. The owner of the Angels is Arte Moreno, who once tried to buy big players and is stuck with Mike Trout — trade him soon — after watching Ohtani cruise to renown at Dodger Stadium.
No owner looks uglier than Moreno. His team physician, Dr. Craig Milhouse, testified last week that he prescribed 600 opioid pills to Eric Kay in three years and wasn’t sure about potential addictions. Clearly, in a trial where Skaggs’ family wants between $75 million and $118 million in lost wages, Kay was dazed enough from drug abuse that he likely killed Skaggs on a 2019 Texas road trip. Milhouse gave Kay as many as six Vicodin pills a day, prescribing the opiate NORCO for five years.
“I thought they were safer. … I was not aware of how quickly someone could become addicted to them,” Milhouse said. “We knew that there was this potential, we were always told that. But I had no idea just how addictive they were.”
He had no idea? He’s the damned doctor. A former clubhouse attendant, Vince Willet, testified that he watched Kay snort pills in spring training. “He pulled a pill out … kind of had me stand by the door to make sure no one walked by,” Willet said. “He crushed it up on the counter with what looked like a room key or credit card. Then I saw him snort it.”
That happened in 2016 or 2017. So, why wouldn’t Kay be involved with Skaggs? A public-relations man — who sets up interviews and approves press credentials — turned out to be a drug pusher to players. And Moreno and his staff let it carry on for years. Why would the Dodgers, in the glare of Hollywood, want to protect these sleazebags?
Let the Angels die. Let the White Sox die. There is nowhere to move either team. I laugh when Manfred, the commissioner, talks about expansion. Would Nashville win? Would Salt Lake City win? Would Portland win? Would Raleigh, N.C., win? He should help the Bottom 15 teams and abandon addition.
Leave baseball as it is. Let the Dodgers spend. “They said we ruined baseball. Well, I guess we didn’t,” Johnson told the Los Angeles Times. Once, the Celtics, Lakers and Bulls were driving the NBA to new heights. They had dynasties. The Dodgers have one.
“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.”
People followed the Dodgers because they poured revenues into the baseball product. They watched the Blue Jays because they came close to a monumental upset. This is the only pattern that works in 2025, in a sport that has fallen behind football and basketball. They cannot allow every franchise the same salary-cap rules and expect Walter and other owners to stick around. Reinsdorf is sticking around for a cap. His buddy, Bud Selig, says most owners want a cap. The cap will kill baseball after we just saw the game at its best.
Find more multi-billionaires. Dump the misers and losers.
Let us try to enjoy baseball as long as it lasts.
###
Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.