By Thomas Shess | PillartoPost.org-In 1930, New York Yankees superstar Babe Ruth signed a contract paying him $80,000 a year, $5,000 more than President Herbert Hoover earned running the United States. According to one of baseball's most enduring stories, a reporter questioned whether a ballplayer deserved to make more than the president.
The Babe reportedly replied, "I had a better year than he did."
Nearly a century later, the Los Angeles Dodgers have taken baseball salaries to another planet. Whether they're having a better year than the rest of America is another question entirely.
The Dodgers failed to win their third consecutive World Series in 2026, and judging by the hand-wringing in Southern California sports media, you might think the franchise had been banished to the Pacific Coast League.
Imagine the hardship. Two World Series championships in three seasons. A hundred victories this year. Another National League West title. And somehow, a four-game elimination by the Milwaukee Brewers has become a catastrophe requiring explanations, personnel changes and perhaps a public apology.
Meanwhile, in 29 other major-league cities, baseball continues to confront a question considerably more important than whether the Dodgers can purchase another championship: How much financial advantage can one franchise accumulate before competition becomes something less than sporting?
Consider Shohei Ohtani. No reasonable baseball fan would deny his extraordinary talent. He is among the greatest players ever to wear a major-league uniform. His $700 million contract with the Dodgers is a monument to that talent.
But that monument has a rather peculiar foundation. Of the $700 million owed to Ohtani over his 10-year agreement, $680 million has been deferred. For the first decade, Los Angeles pays him just $2 million annually in salary.
Beginning in 2034, the club will pay him $68 million a year for another decade. That's 97 percent of his contract postponed until after his playing agreement expires.
It is legal.
Major League Baseball's collective bargaining agreement permits it. And therein lies the problem. The Dodgers have discovered that one of the most powerful tools in modern baseball isn't a 100-mile-per-hour fastball. It's an accountant with a clean glasses and a sharp pencil.
To be fair, the Dodgers must account for the present value of deferred salaries under baseball's luxury-tax system, and they must fund those future obligations under league rules.
Ohtani's annual luxury-tax charge is approximately $46 million, hardly pocket change. But the distinction between accounting for money and actually paying it today is precisely where a rich franchise finds its advantage.
Los Angeles has the financial resources to make enormous commitments, structure payments across decades and continue shopping for other expensive players. Most franchises cannot operate with that freedom.
And while the Dodgers deserve credit for identifying an opportunity in the rules, baseball's commissioner deserves scrutiny for allowing a system in which extraordinary financial engineering can become a competitive weapon.
The problem reaches beyond Los Angeles. The New York Mets, Yankees and other wealthy clubs can also assemble payrolls beyond the practical reach of smaller-market competitors.
At the opposite end, owners who spend comparatively little can collect substantial franchise revenues without demonstrating the same willingness to invest in winning. One side buys advantages. The other sometimes declines to compete financially. Neither extreme serves baseball particularly well.
The Dodgers' 2026 payroll illustrates the disparity. Depending on the accounting method, Los Angeles carried more than $400 million in player commitments, while some clubs entered the season with payrolls below $100 million. Nobody should confuse those figures with a level playing field.
Of course, money doesn't guarantee championships. Milwaukee demonstrated that rather emphatically when it swept the Dodgers in the National League Championship Series.
Baseball remains a stubbornly unpredictable game.
A rich club can buy three expensive starting pitchers, but it cannot purchase a timely seventh-inning single. That's part of baseball's enduring charm.
Yet unpredictability in October is no excuse for financial inequality from April through September. Every franchise deserves a realistic opportunity to build a winner, retain its homegrown stars and compete for established talent without confronting an opponent whose financial resources seem almost inexhaustible.
Commissioner Rob Manfred has made the issue central to baseball's labor negotiations. Reports in early November indicated that Major League Baseball was pursuing a salary cap and salary floor for a future labor agreement. Figures under discussion included a cap of approximately $258 million and a floor of $180 million.
The players' association objects, arguing that a salary cap would suppress compensation and restrict the market for talent. Is that a legitimate concern?
Baseball should never repair competitive imbalance by simply transferring more wealth from players to owners. Nor should the sport reward billionaires who refuse to spend enough to field competitive teams. A reasonable solution must address both extremes.
It should require meaningful investment from every franchise while preventing the richest organizations from turning payroll flexibility into an effectively unlimited advantage.
And the next agreement should take a serious look at the extraordinary deferral provisions that made Ohtani's contract possible. There is nothing wrong with a player negotiating a brilliant contract.
There is nothing wrong with a team seeking every legitimate advantage. But there is something fundamentally wrong when baseball's rules permit advantages that much of the league cannot realistically duplicate. This is not an argument against Ohtani. It is not even an argument against the Dodgers, whose management has operated with considerable intelligence.
It is an argument against a system that confuses financial ingenuity with competitive fairness. Baseball survived the Black Sox scandal, the reserve clause, labor stoppages, steroid scandals and a hundred other threats to its credibility. It can survive the Dodgers.
But the sport should not have to depend on occasional postseason upsets to reassure fans that everybody still has a chance. Major League Baseball likes to remind us that hope springs eternal every April. Hope, however, should not require a billionaire owner, a multinational financial empire or an accountant capable of moving $680 million into the next decade.
If baseball wants 30 teams competing for one championship, it should stop allowing 30 different definitions of a level playing field.
