LOS ANGELES — Start with the premise that a team spending roughly $300 million on baseball players ought to finish in first place. That figure, unequaled in baseball history, is so striking that it underscores everything about the Los Angeles Dodgers. Yet to focus too much on it is to miss the beauty of the pursuit. Nothing is preordained.
“It never means you’re going to win,” Jimmy Rollins, the veteran shortstop, said. “That’s false wisdom — or just dumb thinking. Money doesn’t guarantee you anything but money, that’s it.”
Almost all of the Dodgers, including some no longer here, are very wealthy.