GLENDALE, Ariz. — I have seen this before. I can still remember that roughly decade bridging the late 1990s into a new century when the Yankees became something larger than a baseball team.
A brand. A band — if the band is The Beatles. Never bland.
There was an insatiability to star collection. As if “Oceans 11” annually would morph into “Oceans 12” and 13 and …
The Yankees imported the Roger Clemens of Japan in Hideki Irabu and then the actual Roger Clemens. Chuck Knoblauch, Jason Giambi, Hideki Matsui, Alex Rodriguez, Randy Johnson. A playoff series began with then Tigers manager Jim Leyland referring to the Yankees lineup as Murderers’ Row and Cano. Enough was never enough.
Suddenly, they were traveling with security at a size unheard of previously in baseball and hotels were flanked by fans in rows awaiting their arrival like they had figured out where Taylor Swift was staying and opponents felt more like foils — as if they could have just been called the Other Team because someone had to be on the schedule. Many foes were defeated by the magnitude before the games even began. Often, though, the Yankees got every competitors’ A-game, even in April and May. It was the Second Division’s World Series.
The luminaries and the payroll rose — and so did the expectations and pressure. What exited was a level of joy. A heaviness grew over the team — the burden of justifying it all was weighty. So was New York. So was being scrutinized by a media contingent that swelled in lockstep with the stars and the payroll. So was having George Steinbrenner more than ever foist championship-or-dread extremes on the team.
It is what I was thinking about when I traveled across the country for the opening of the first spring training camp to see the new Beatles. It resonated more when I walked into the clubhouse in late morning and after Chris Taylor, the next three lockers in order upon entrance were Mookie Betts, Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto.
It echoed even more when Clayton Kershaw called it “amazing” to watch the billion-dollar-plus offseason investment in Ohtani, Yamamoto and Tyler Glasnow in specific, but not exclusively. Kershaw who has seen lots of winning and stars in his 16 Dodger seasons even acknowledged the size of the reporter scrum that closed around him — 60, with more than two-thirds from Japan — and noted that this will be a full-season reality.
Kershaw is healing from November shoulder surgery and targeting a July or August return and said, “The talent is probably the best I’ve ever been a part of. I’m hopeful that I can be a part of it, too.” That was said by arguably the greatest pitcher of this generation, sounding like a co-star all of a sudden.
Kershaw, Ohtani, Betts and Freddie Freeman are all MVPs. Kershaw is a three-time Cy Young winner. Yamamoto is a three-time winner of the Sawamura Award — Japan’s equivalent of the Cy. Ohtani is the greatest two-way player ever; a phenom who signed a 10-year, $700 million contract. Yamamoto, just 25, but with zero major league pitches, signed the largest pitching contract ever at $325 million. Kershaw, Walker Buehler and perhaps Dustin May might all join the rotation with the season in progress. Players as good or promising as Max Muncy, Will Smith, Teoscar Hernandez, James Outman, Bobby Miller and Evan Phillips are essentially supporting actors in this Hollywood production.
So is Jason Heyward, who grew up winning in the Braves organization with Freeman and was part of the had-to-win 2016 Cubs that broke a century-plus curse before joining the Dodgers last year in what was supposed to be a step-back season and saw them win 100 and make the playoffs for the 11th straight year with a 10th division title in that time.
But they got swept in the Division Series by Arizona, leaving the Dodgers with just one championship — in the pandemic 2020 season — since 1988. Which led to the billion-plus offseason and wonder about whether there was such a thing as more pressure than high pressure.
“This is exciting. It’s new. It’s unique,” Heyward said. “From the fan perspective, from a media perspective, it’s a lot of fun, a lot of really cool things to take in and see for the first time and a lot of speculation, anticipation. This year more than ever. But on the player side, we don’t look at it as a burden. In this clubhouse, we look at it as an opportunity we embrace to come to work every day and have fun with the challenges.”
That sounded familiar. Something I once heard in Yankee clubhouses. But when you are as committed as any team in history — as those Yankees were a quarter of a century ago and these Dodgers are now — it is hard to mute the outside noise. More reporters will cover the Dodgers this spring than the AL Central all year. They will see a lot more A-games. Losing streaks will weigh heavier. Wins will be less meaningful. They think they know from the last decade of all-or-nothing. But this is more — as much as any team ever. More burden, stress, pressure. More than ever:
Championship or dread.
