Elton John will take his final bow at Dodger Stadium. So let’s time travel back to his legendary 1975 concert there:
Before the stadium’s $1.5 million grandstands go up, before the stadium’s $100 million renovation, before all the fans buy $50 tickets, before a record-breaking crowd of 75,000 people, before $7 million in merchandise is sold, before $4 million in concessions is sold, before $9 million in food and drink is sold, and before the new concessions building is completed, before he will be inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame as the first inductee of the class of 2019, his induction will set his Dodgers payroll at about $30 million for the first full year of his 10-year, $300 million contract with the team.
The last-minute $30-million deal for a guy who has averaged about 10 hits per season over the past 11 years with a.290 average and is a.294 career hitter against the New York Yankees.
A contract that nets him $50 million over the next nine years.
Because of the deal, the Dodgers have their first $150 million payroll in franchise history. They also have their first $150 million payroll for any major league team.
The last $150 million payroll for any team was by the Yankees for the 1990 season, when they had a payroll of $156 million and lost 89 games the following year in which they did not make the playoffs.
But this can be the one club that never won a World Series that actually had a bad season.
The Dodgers were a model of consistency for most of the team’s history until the last five seasons, when they won only one of their last 10 series of the regular season, which included a tiebreaker against the Giants in 2016, and a tiebreaker against the Mets in 2017.
But, by any measure, winning 60 games just once in a season is a remarkable achievement. It certainly is the kind of achievement that has never been repeated by any other
