Yesterday, I made a crack about taking out a second mortgage on my home in order to spend three beer- soaked hours at the newly built SoFi Stadium, in order to watch a professional played NFL football game.
I made that joke, as I do with many others, way in advance of its publishing on Monday morning.
Unlike other bloggers, I don't do well with the pressure of daily pressure and like to have posts lined up in advance. Meaning, the SoFi wisecracking (where I understand it costs $80 to park your carcass in their massive Inglewood lots) was put to paper, as it were, before the earthshaking news of Shohei Ohtani's bank busting signing with the LA Dodgers.
From my initial reading, it appears Mr. Ohtani will "earn" more than $400,000 a game.
And in his first year as a Do'yer, he will not even be pitching, just serving as a Designated Hitter. Unless the league rewrites the rules, or the game goes into extra innings -- the bane of all Dodger Stadium goers who want to beat the traffic on the 101 South -- he'll probably make 3-4 appearances at the plate on any given night.
Tops.
I would not begrudge Mr. Ohtani one penny of his salary. He is after all a premiere pitcher as well as a premier hitter. He's the modern day Babe Ruth. Put in advertising terms, he's like an art director who can also write. Or a planner who can also strategize.
Ooooo, there's a muscle I haven't exercised in a while.
Suffice it to say, Angelenos are buzzing about the expected resurgence of the home team. Particularly with the imminent departure of Clayton Kershaw who will soon be peddling his talents as an Evangelical Pastor. And appear on local flatscreens while joining his fellow Pray-for-Pay Preacher Joel Osteen on Sunday Nights.
But there's a downside to all this.
And you don't have to be the son of an accountant to see it coming.
In signing the 10 year contract and paying Ohtani more than 8 gazillion dollars, making him 1000 times wealthier than our disgraced, whiny ex-president, the Dodgers will have to recoup that money somewhere.
I know from my experience in the corporate world it won't be coming out of the pockets of Magic Johnson or any of the other obscenely-wealthy owners who light $100 bills to light $1000 bills to light their cigars.
That money will come from you and I. Well, mostly you.
The price of everything will go up. Not by multipliers of 2 or 3. But exponentially, like the currency used in some South American banana republic. The folks at Chavez Ravine might even institute their own denominations:
A Dodger Dog -- 50,000 Ohtanis
Modelo Beer --- 250,000 Ohtanis
Parking (in a mile radius of the stadium) -- 1,000,000 Ohtanis and first right of refusal on your first born
In the long run, the owners/athletes/agents will price their way out of existence. To the point where only Shoehei's family and Elon Musk can afford to go to a baseball game anymore.
They might as well change the name from Dodger Stadium to Davos Stadium.
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