GLENDALE, Ariz. — I actually have seen this before. I can still do not forget that roughly decade bridging the late Nineties right into a latest 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 after which 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’d discovered where Taylor Swift was staying and opponents felt more like foils — as in the event that they could have just been called the Other Team because someone needed 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 all of it was weighty. So was Recent York. So was being scrutinized by a media contingent that swelled in lockstep with the celebs and the payroll. So was having George Steinbrenner greater than ever foist championship-or-dread extremes on the team.
It’s what I used to be serious about once I traveled across the country for the opening of the primary spring training camp to see the brand new Beatles. It resonated more once I walked into the clubhouse in late morning and after Chris Taylor, the subsequent three lockers so as upon entrance were Mookie Betts, Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto.
It echoed much more when Clayton Kershaw called it “amazing” to observe the billion-dollar-plus offseason investment in Ohtani, Yamamoto and Tyler Glasnow in specific, but not exclusively. Kershaw who has seen plenty of winning and stars in his 16 Dodger seasons even acknowledged the scale of the reporter scrum that closed around him — 60, with greater than two-thirds from Japan — and noted that this can be a full-season reality.
Kershaw is healing from November shoulder surgery and targeting a July or August return and said, “The talent might be the perfect I’ve ever been a component of. I’m hopeful that I generally is a a part of it, too.” That was said by arguably the best pitcher of this generation, sounding like a co-star unexpectedly.
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 best 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 biggest pitching contract ever at $325 million. Kershaw, Walker Buehler and maybe Dustin May might all join the rotation with the season in progress. Players nearly as good or promising as Max Muncy, Will Smith, Teoscar Hernandez, James Outman, Bobby Miller and Evan Phillips are essentially supporting actors on this Hollywood production.
So is Jason Heyward, who grew up winning within the Braves organization with Freeman and was a part of the had-to-win 2016 Cubs that broke a century-plus curse before joining the Dodgers last yr in what was purported to be a step-back season and saw them win 100 and make the playoffs for the eleventh straight yr with a tenth division title in that point.
But they got swept within the Division Series by Arizona, leaving the Dodgers with only one championship — within 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.
“That is exciting. It’s latest. It’s unique,” Heyward said. “From the fan perspective, from a media perspective, it’s plenty of fun, plenty of really cool things to absorb and see for the primary time and plenty of speculation, anticipation. This yr greater than ever. But on the player side, we don’t take a look at it as a burden. On this clubhouse, we take a look at it as a possibility we embrace to return to work day by day and rejoice with the challenges.”
That sounded familiar. Something I once heard in Yankee clubhouses. But when you find yourself as committed as any team in history — as those Yankees were 1 / 4 of a century ago and these Dodgers at the moment are — it is tough to mute the surface noise. More reporters will cover the Dodgers this spring than the AL Central all yr. They may see rather a lot more A-games. Losing streaks will weigh heavier. Wins can be less meaningful. They think they know from the last decade of all-or-nothing. But that is more — as much as any team ever. More burden, stress, pressure. Greater than ever:
Championship or dread.
