The Best Team Money Can Buy: The Los Angeles Dodgers' Wild Struggle to Build a Baseball Powerhouse (38 page)

It didn’t matter how many personal awards would fit into that glass case in his office back in Dallas. If he did not add a World Series ring to his list of accomplishments as a big leaguer, he would consider his career a disappointment. If the Dodgers made the playoffs again in 2015, as expected, he would get another shot at conquering those demons. But that wouldn’t happen for six long months. First he had to face the Padres.

The last time Matt Kemp stepped into the batter’s box at Dodger Stadium, he hit a home run to seal the Dodgers’ only playoff victory in 2014. Now he was playing for the other side. Kemp had walked into the visiting locker room before the game with a Padres hoodie pulled tight over his head and a full beard on his chin. As he sat in the first-base dugout to talk to media before the game, he smiled and shook his head. “Man, it’s weird being a visitor here,” he said. “I thought I would be a Dodger forever.” But if Kemp was battling mixed emotions, he hid it well. The outfielder seemed happier and more relaxed than he had
been in years, and at peace with his time in blue. “I played my heart and soul out for the Dodgers,” he said. “At least, I think I did.”

In San Diego, Kemp got a chance to be the leader of an exciting team that the club’s new general manager, A. J. Preller, was putting together. He also got to start over without any of the tension that had tainted his final years in Los Angeles. Kemp walked up to the plate to face Kershaw in the first inning, for the first time in his career. While they might not have realized it, the two men had much in common. Both had grown up as lonely only children raised by single mothers in bordering states in cowboy country. In all the years they were teammates, they had formed no real relationship. But that didn’t stop Kershaw from stepping off the mound to give the crowd a chance to acknowledge Kemp. Dodger fans responded with a standing ovation.

Kershaw had hit the Padres’ leadoff batter, Wil Myers, with an 0-2 pitch, and Myers had stolen second. During spring training, the new front office told Mattingly and his coaching staff that it wanted the Dodgers’ defense to employ shifts more often, according to where each batter hit the ball. Since the data showed that Kemp was an extreme ground-ball pull hitter, Kendrick positioned himself behind second base when the new Padre came up to bat. Kemp responded by hitting the ball right to where a second baseman normally stands, and drove in the game’s first run. While the new brainpower in the Dodgers front office gave the club a boost, it was not possible to outsmart the game in every at-bat. Friedman and Zaidi looked brilliant seven innings later, however. With the game tied 3–3 in the eighth, Rollins clubbed a three-run home run to give the Dodgers the lead for good.

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But April didn’t matter; October was all that did. The Dodgers had shattered their own record by taking the field on opening day with a payroll of $270 million. Though they had never made the playoffs three years in a row in franchise history, a third straight NL West title would not be enough to make them baseball’s new superpower. The
Dodgers would have to capture their first World Series title since 1988 even to start that conversation.

No matter how much money they spent or how good they looked to stat heads or how well they got along in the clubhouse, winning a championship would not be easy.

It never was.

Frank and Jamie McCourt at the press conference introducing them as the new Dodgers’ owners in 2004. Five years later, the two began bitter divorce proceedings that drove the franchise into bankruptcy.
(AP Photo/Reed Saxon)

From left to right: Peter Guber, Stan Kasten, Guggenheim Partners’ CEO Mark Walter, and Magic Johnson walk up to the press conference introducing them as the new Dodgers’ owners on May 3, 2012.
(AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

Mark Walter talks with Don Mattingly during batting practice at Dodger Stadium before a game versus the Giants on October 2, 2012. Even when Mattingly was rumored to be on the hot seat, he enjoyed Walter’s support.
(Larry Goren/Four Seam Images via AP Images)

The Dodgers’ starting lineup remove their caps for the national anthem on opening day, April 1, 2013.
(Louis Lopez/Cal Sport Media via AP Images)

Zack Greinke pitches to a batter at Miller Park in Milwaukee on May 21, 2013. As the first big free-agent signing of the Guggenheim regime, Greinke became the Dodgers’ second ace, behind Clayton Kershaw, and a key to their championship hopes.
(AP Photo/Morry Gash)

Carlos Quentin (center) tackles Zack Greinke after being hit by a pitch, as A. J. Ellis (number 17) tries to stop him. Greinke would miss four weeks with a broken collarbone.
(AP Photo/Lenny Ignelzi)

Yasiel Puig flips his bat into the air to celebrate a hit. Puig’s bat flips would soon cause a lot of resentment among Dodgers’ opponents.
(Dominic DiSaia)

Clayton Kershaw stares off into space while preparing for Game 4 of the 2013 NLDS versus the Braves.
(Dominic DiSaia)

Juan Uribe celebrates after hitting an eighth-inning two-run home run in Game 4 of the 2013 NLDS to help the Dodgers advance to the National League Championship Series.
(AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)