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

by Molly Knight

  And it wasn’t as if having an opinion on Puig was optional. The Luis Gonzalez incident was all the ammunition Puig’s detractors needed to prove he had no respect for the game, which was the sport’s gravest sin. Though baseball doesn’t request that its players bash opponents’ heads in, in many ways the game is more tribal than football, and rookies are expected to genuflect before old-timers to gain admittance to the sport’s inner sanctum. It went back to the fundamental tenet on which the Diamondbacks were built: that the way one played the game was more important than the result. While Gonzalez is not a Hall of Famer, he is the best player in the young franchise’s history. Puig’s perceived disrespect of him infuriated the Arizona fans even more. One NL all-star pitcher summed up how the rest of the league felt about Puig in a text message to a Dodger starter. “I love him. I love watching him play. But I can’t fucking stand him.”

  A debate raged between those who said Puig blew off Gonzalez on purpose because he felt like he was more important than anyone who came before him, and others who argued that the kid had no idea who the Diamondback legend was since he grew up on a communist island with limited access to Internet. Both sides were wrong. While it’s true that Puig didn’t know Gonzalez was Arizona royalty, he knew the guy being introduced to him was wearing a polo shirt with the Diamondbacks logo on it. After being bad-mouthed repeatedly by Arizona players and hit in the face with a fastball by their pitcher in his first week, Puig wanted nothing to do with any of them. In that way, Puig was more old-school than anyone on either team. He didn’t care who you were: if you wore Diamondback red you were his sworn enemy.

  That hatred was mutual. The only thing Yasiel Puig did better than hit baseballs was get under the skin of opponents. The preposterousness of his background made for no better hero. The way he carried himself on the diamond made for no better villain.

  • • •

  Eight men were suspended for their roles in the Dodgers-Diamondbacks brawl at Dodger Stadium, including Gibson, McGwire, and Mattingly. Ian Kennedy got the worst of it with a ten-game ban. Greinke, Puig, and Montero were fined but not held out of play. Skip Schumaker elected to begin serving his two-game suspension during the last night of the series in Arizona, on July 10.

  Because he was suspended, Schumaker wasn’t allowed to be in the Dodgers’ dugout or clubhouse for the game. But since the team was flying home to Los Angeles right after the contest, he had to be at the ballpark so he could board the bus to the airport when the game was over. So, Schumaker decided to watch the game from the stands at Chase Field, moving around to different sections during each half inning so no one in the visiting crowd would recognize him. (“As if someone would recognize him!” Nick Punto joked later.) It seemed like a decent plan at first. He didn’t anticipate the game going fourteen innings.

  At quarter to midnight, with Schumaker sitting by himself on the aisle in the lower bowl trying not to draw attention, A. J. Ellis stood in the on-deck circle next to Hanley Ramirez, bleary-eyed and exhausted and hoping to break the tie. The game had just inched into its sixth hour, and Ellis’s knees ached from squatting down behind home plate for all 211 of the pitches he had caught that night. The Dodgers had been chasing Arizona the entire season, and now they had a chance to cut the D-backs’ division lead to one and a half games. On the mound for the Diamondbacks in the top of the fourteenth was Josh Collmenter, a long reliever and sometime starter who looked as though he could pitch another fourteen innings. Los Angeles had exhausted its bullpen, and only Jansen and League remained. Ellis knew that if his side didn’t score soon, they’d probably be forced to burn the following day’s starting pitcher.

  Between innings, the Dodgers’ catcher had received a scouting report on Collmenter from Mark Ellis. “If the ball’s away, it’s cutting,” Ellis told him. “But if it’s in it’ll stay straight.” A. J. Ellis was swinging a hot bat. In the ninth inning, he had collected the two-out, game-tying base hit. But few in the National League were as hot as Hanley Ramirez. For all the attention Puig got for bringing the Dodgers back, Ramirez was the real catalyst. The slugging shortstop would play in eighty-six games for the Dodgers in 2013. The club went 55-31 in those contests, and 37-39 without him. That he was more valuable than even Puig was due to the fact that shortstop tends to be an anemic position offensively. Ramirez hammered the ball. In the thirty games since he had returned from the disabled list on June 4, he hit .398 with six home runs and a .694 slugging percentage. Those gaudy numbers were no fluke. Ramirez looked like the player he was when he hit .342 and won a batting title at age twenty-five for the Marlins in 2009. Nobody had noticed that Ramirez was quietly the team’s MVP because his return to health happened the day after Puig’s call-up.

  While the Boston trade had grabbed all the headlines in August 2012, the Dodgers’ move to acquire Ramirez a month earlier seemed poised to have an even bigger impact. At twenty-nine years old, Ramirez was the second-best-hitting shortstop in the majors, just a smidge behind the Rockies’ superstar Troy Tulowitzki. After coming to the Marlins in a trade that sent his future teammate Josh Beckett to the Red Sox, Ramirez flourished in Miami, winning the Rookie of the Year award in 2006, and finishing second in MVP balloting in 2009. But injuries and an attitude that could most generously be described as apathetic wrecked his final two seasons with the Marlins, who, in the end, became more than willing to dump him. Ramirez’s time in Florida was both offense-happy and offensive. He hit .342 with twenty-four home runs one year, and stole fifty-one bases twice. He was also benched for loafing after baseballs on defense, got into regular screaming matches with coaches, and came to public fisticuffs with his double-play partner, Dan Uggla. In his last half season with the Marlins, he dogged his way into hitting .246. When he wanted to, Hanley Ramirez could hit a baseball as hard as anyone in the major leagues, except for maybe his former teammate Miguel Cabrera. The ball off his bat screamed like a shotgun blast. But when he was in a mood, the mercurial shortstop had a reputation for phoning it in. Coming into the 2013 season, no one was sure which Ramirez the Dodgers would get.

  His Miami malaise was not without merit. After all, he’d suited up for the Marlins’ controversial owner, Jeffrey Loria, for his entire career. Loria had given McCourt a fight in the worst-owner sweepstakes, persuading Miami taxpayers to buy his team a new stadium by promising to field a competitive team, only to slash payroll by selling off all his good players once he got his ballpark. With two and a half years left on his Marlins contract, Ramirez feared he would be left to rot. Sensing a rare opportunity to land one of the best hitters in the game for fifty cents on the dollar, the Dodgers gave up Nate Eovaldi, a solid but not otherworldly young pitching prospect, to get him. Colletti and Kasten were optimistic that a change of scenery would do wonders for the sulking shortstop.

  Ramirez arrived in Los Angeles acting like a hostage who had been freed. He showed up every day with a grin on his face and often talked about how all he wanted to do was help his team win. He was affectionate with teammates, granted interviews to reporters, and even posted cheesy inspirational quotes under the headline “Attitude is everything!” on his social media accounts. Many wondered if this happy-go-lucky chap was the same guy who almost got decked in his own clubhouse in Miami more than once.

  People had often asked Ramirez about his unusual first name. It was an accident. His mother had wanted to name him Juan Jose, and call him J.J. for short. His father objected. “Too many J’s for him,” said Ramirez. His grandmother had an idea. A voracious reader of Shakespeare, she loved the tale of a man who could never make up his mind about what he wanted to do. She told her son to name the baby Hamlet. So they did. But the clerk who filled out his birth certificate spelled it wrong. From that day forward, he went by Hanley. “I don’t really know why they didn’t change it back,” said Ramirez. “But that’s okay because I love my name. It’s a good name, right?”

  Before he suited up for the Dominican Republic in the World Baseball Classic, Ramirez had neve
r played for anything meaningful before. The closest his Marlins had ever finished to the top of the NL East was six games back. In his final full season in Miami, his club wound up a pathetic thirty games out of first. But the WBC was different. When he buttoned up that red and blue uniform and took the field with his countrymen, he experienced a sense of pride on the diamond that he’d never felt before. Ramirez didn’t know how different it felt to play in games that mattered. The Dominicans dominated the 2013 tournament, sweeping their way to gold, undefeated. Ramirez had a blast, and friends said it changed him profoundly. He remembered that baseball was supposed to be fun.

  Ramirez was the rare athlete who was talented enough to perform in the top 20 percent of hitters in the league while putting in only half the effort. But if he busted his ass, really gave a damn about winning every single at-bat, he could be one of the best in the game. Under the bright blue Los Angeles skies, and with the promise of a fresh start, Ramirez had the best possible opportunity to move forward. But like his intended namesake, the famed fictional prince of Denmark, the choice was his.

  The timing was ideal for Ramirez to snap out of his snit and rediscover his old form. He was entering the penultimate year of his contract, and he knew the Guggenheim group was handing out blank checks to superstars. All he had to do was hit. And even though hitting a baseball is the most difficult thing to do in sports, Ramirez didn’t think it would be a problem. He was so locked in at the plate when he bothered to be, so naturally good at driving baseballs to the wall and over it, that many of his teammates thought he was somewhat of a genius, that annoying kid in school who aced every exam without ever studying. The Internet had created a never-ending trove of material for pitchers and batters to sift through to gain a competitive advantage. Ramirez never read scouting reports. He rarely even bothered to find out the names of the pitchers he would have to face in advance of a series, and didn’t believe in watching any film, either of himself or of his opponent.

  Every at-bat was like a blind date. His hands were so fast and his instinct so sharp it didn’t matter. He had no use for any ammunition other than a bat—all that information, what the pitcher liked to throw against righties like him, how the ball spun out of his hand, what his ERA was—all of that was just noise that could confuse him. While his teammates reviewed charts for hours, Ramirez would spend that time in the training room prepping his body for battle, stretching, getting massaged, and hooked up to suction devices as part of an ancient Chinese medicine treatment known as cupping. His goals for the season were simple: he would show up early, he would hit, he would smile, and then Mark Walter would pay him a lot of money to stay in Dodger blue so he could do it all over again for years to come.

  Unfortunately, his newfound attitude was challenged by bad luck. In the championship game of the WBC, Ramirez dove for a ground ball and jammed his right thumb. At first, the injury wasn’t thought to be serious. But an MRI later revealed a torn ligament that required surgery. Effort had its consequences; Ramirez would be sidelined for two months. Still, when he was able to handle a bat again and take a few rounds of hacks with his teammates, they couldn’t help but be excited by the way he stung the ball. Ramirez would start batting practice by spraying line drive after line drive to right, center, and left field, then encore with a home run exhibition. The Dodgers tumbled into last place without Ramirez. When he came back, the tenor of the season changed.

  • • •

  After Collmenter finished warming up to begin the top of the fourteenth, Ramirez began his slow walk toward the batter’s box. Ellis called after him from the on-deck circle. “Show me why you’re the best hitter I’ve ever played with,” he said. Ramirez said nothing. Ellis didn’t think he had heard him. A month earlier, a heartbroken Ellis had told his wife, Cindy, that because the team was so terrible it would be all right if she wanted to start making vacation plans for October. A lot had happened in the last thirty days, though, to bring the playoffs back into focus. But there was still work to do. Collmenter set his feet on the rubber and pumped a first-pitch cutter toward Ramirez. The ball was up and away, out of the strike zone. It wasn’t a good pitch to hit but that didn’t matter to Ramirez. His eyes widened, and he unleashed his black bat at the baseball. The ball screeched out to right field and cleared the fence on a line drive. Ramirez rounded the bases alone, and pointed to the sky with both hands when he crossed the plate. Then he skipped toward Ellis and slapped him five. As Ellis began to walk toward the batter’s box, Ramirez turned around and said to him, “That’s why.”

  Mark Ellis’s scouting report proved correct. Collmenter’s seventh pitch to A. J. Ellis left his hand looking like it was headed toward the inner half of the plate. It stayed straight. Ellis whacked it for another home run. Of the few thousand fans who remained at Chase Field, the ones in blue began to chant Let’s go Dodgers! Let’s go Dodgers! Jansen closed out the game for the win. Later, after the players showered and dressed, no one said it out loud. They didn’t have to. Though there were seventy-two games left, and the Dodgers’ record was now at just .500, the NL West race was over. Los Angeles was playing like the team everyone thought it would be when the season began. The underdog Diamondbacks didn’t build up a big enough lead while the Dodgers were wrecked by injuries, and they would not be able to hang with them now that their players were emerging from the disabled list. Arizona’s lead was now one and a half, but it felt as if Los Angeles was up by ten. The Dodgers had won fifteen of eighteen, and there was the sense that they’d only get better when Kemp came back.

  But some of his teammates wondered if the club might be better off without him. Though Kemp was happy the team was winning, it was frustrating to watch them succeed without him. While Kemp praised Puig in public, many of this teammates thought he was privately terrified of being replaced. The Dodgers were playing so well that as they headed into the all-star break they were perhaps the only team in baseball not looking forward to it. Fair or not, Kemp irritated some teammates by heading to Cabo San Lucas for the break instead of rehabbing his injury.

  After the break, the Dodgers flew to Washington and activated their center fielder. He said his hamstrings felt good as new, and that his shoulder was continuing to heal. And he did well in his return versus the Nationals on July 21, collecting three hits and a walk in four at-bats with a home run that helped lead the Dodgers to a blowout 9–2 victory. But in the top of the ninth, Kemp was on third with the bases loaded and two out with Carl Crawford at the plate. Crawford tapped a slow roller to first and hustled down the line to beat it out. Because he didn’t think he’d have enough time to get the speedy Crawford, Nationals first baseman Chad Tracy threw the ball home to try to force out Kemp. Not expecting the ball to be anywhere near him, Kemp had been trotting toward the plate. When he realized there would be a play at home, he hurried his pace and awkwardly dove, rolling his left ankle in the process. After being thrown out, he screamed, grabbed his foot, and tucked into a ball in the dirt. Kemp had been an active member of the roster for less than twenty-four hours, and he was about to be lost again.

  If Kemp had been worried about being replaced, this game was the ultimate metaphor. With him back in the fold, the Dodgers enjoyed the luxury of having their four outfielders healthy on the same day for the first time all season. Puig had been given a rare game off. But with Kemp unable to take center in the bottom of the ninth, Puig subbed for him. An MRI later revealed an ankle sprain bad enough to land Kemp back on the disabled list. His failure to hustle in his first game back would cost him the next fifty-two.

  The next day Los Angeles took over first place in the NL West for good.

  • • •

  The resurgent Dodgers went 19-6 in July. This run included five- and six-game winning streaks. They went a month without losing a game on the road. By the time the trading deadline arrived on July 31, they led the Diamondbacks by two and a half games. Colletti had made at least one trade on deadline day every year since he took over as GM before the 2
006 season. Among other players, his July 31 haul over the years included Greg Maddux, Julio Lugo, Scott Proctor, Manny Ramirez, Octavio Dotel, Ted Lilly, Ryan Theriot, and Shane Victorino. Each man was added on the annual trade cutoff day in hopes that he might be the final piece to push the Dodgers to a championship. None ever was. At the 2013 deadline, the Dodgers circled a deal with the Angels for second baseman Howie Kendrick that would have sent pitching prospect Zach Lee, their first-round draft pick in 2010, to Anaheim. The club was also rumored to be sniffing out a Matt Kemp for Cliff Lee trade with the Phillies that would ease the Dodgers’ outfield logjam and basically represent a salary swap of oft-injured players. But the club was playing so well that the front office decided against making any major moves. Colletti was able to keep his streak alive, however, by working out a small deal for Twins catching farm hand Drew Butera, who would provide insurance should Ellis or Tim Federowicz get hurt.

  On July 31, the Yankees came to Dodger Stadium to face Clayton Kershaw. L.A.’s ace pitched eight scoreless innings, despite more than a few obstacles to his regimented pregame routine. Since the Yankees visited Los Angeles only once every three years in interleague play, the Dodgers’ marketing department capitalized on the high-profile series and treated it like a playoff game. Normally, before Kershaw started warming up in the bullpen he would sit in the Dodgers’ dugout alone, staring at the ground or off into space while he gathered his concentration. But the pregame festivities turned the dugout into a mess. Magic Johnson and Mark Walter stood on the top step, while dozens of media members crammed around them. Nicole Scherzinger of the pop girl group the Pussycat Dolls and her handlers weaved their way through the crowd toward home plate so that she might perform the national anthem. Before that could happen, the Dodgers paid tribute to retiring Yankee closer Mariano Rivera, with Walter and Johnson presenting him a giant deep-sea fishing rod after a video tribute blared through the stadium. Just before the Rivera ceremony, the soccer superstar Cristiano Ronaldo had been kicking a ball around on the infield grass with Puig. As Kershaw sat with his eyes fixed on the ground, the ball whizzed by his head, narrowly missing it. After Scherzinger finished singing, the actor Samuel L. Jackson read the starting lineups for the Dodgers and Yankees over the public address system. Then, new sports agent Jay-Z took his seat behind home plate a few rows from Scott Boras, who had just lost the Yankees’ star second baseman Robinson Cano as a client to the rapper-agent months earlier.