Byline: KAREN CROUSE
The story's as old as the Hollywood Hills. A fading member of the old guard lavishes cash and courtesies on the latest hot young thing, buying that which he no longer can effortlessly attract.
That could have been some gilded geezer's cologne we smelled Saturday around Dodger Stadium, so pungent was the scent of desperation. There certainly was nothing subtle about the doddering Dodgers' courtship of uber free agent Kevin Brown. That wasn't a romance they finally consummated, it was a conquest.
The Dodgers, on the rebound after a couple of very public rejections, went to absurd lengths to prove they haven't lost their appeal. They showered Brown, the right-handed ace of San Diego's World Series staff, with $105 million, a seventh season and a private plane for a dozen quick hops home to Macon, Ga.
Never mind that with the money they threw at him, Brown could buy his own corporate jet. Forget that he will be 40 years old in the final year of his contract, which is, like, 84 in pitching years.
Brown, 33, was able to demand the sun, the moon, the stars and a no-trade clause for pretty much the same reasons the latest hot young thing can extract diamonds from a sugar daddy. Brown had in the Dodgers a suitor with deep pockets and a deepening feeling of vulnerability.
The once-proud franchise had been spurned twice in the past few months alone, by manager Felipe Alou and left-handed pitcher Randy Johnson. There was no way the Dodgers could afford to strike out swinging at the negotiating table, no matter how much money it took.
Not if they wanted to save face.
Not if they wanted to stave off the annexation of the Southland by the Angels, who signed slugger Mo Vaughn and are pursuing a trade for pitcher Roger Clemens.
Not if Rupert Murdoch, whose Fox Group bought the team earlier this year, had any say in the matter.
In the end, ego drove the Dodgers where they had emphatically refused to tread in the early days of Fox's ownership. Five months after the team dealt catcher Mike Piazza to Florida rather than dignify his $100 million musings, the Dodgers locked Brown up for every penny of Piazza's asking price and more.
Say what you want about Piazza, whose seven-year, $91 million deal with the New York Mets all of a sudden seems pretty puny, but at least he is an everyday player. Brown will grace the mound every fourth or fifth game. All in all, not a bad way to go to earn so much dough.
We'll grant Brown this: He's a proven winner, having advanced to the World Series with his last two teams. That's more than can be said for Piazza, whose next postseason win will be his first. Brown is also a fiery leader in the clubhouse, a role Piazza was loath to assume.
The Dodgers will be a markedly better team with Brown in the short run. The team's staying power, however, will depend on the staying power of Brown's arm and therein lies the rub. General manager Kevin Malone was quick to point out that among pitchers in the '90s, Brown and Atlanta ace Greg Maddux have been the most durable.
His point was that Brown is blessed with a rubber arm. Our worry is that his arm is a ticking time bomb that could explode with his very next 97 mile-per-hour fastball.
The Dodgers are committed to paying Brown twice what National League champion San Diego doled out in players' salaries during its 1998 dream season. Brown collected $4.8 million in his only year with the Padres, who offered him $60 million over six years to stay awhile.
In October that figure would have been in the ballpark. Since then the fences have been stretched by baseball's haves to the point where the have-nots are starting to feel as though they're trapped in one of those fun houses with the distorted mirrors.
It's a little disorienting for everybody concerned to consider that in less time than it takes the average household to pick its Thanksgiving turkey carcass clean, the average yearly salary of the highest-paid player in baseball has jumped from $13 to $15 million. You'd have to go all the way back to Bob Beamon's 1968 Olympic effort to find a single leap that astounding.
Brown is not pro sports' first $100 million man. Five NBA players already have cracked that barrier. Not coincidentally, the NBA is in limbo right now, the players having been locked out by owners adamant about creating some sort of ceiling for the spiraling salaries. In 2002, that could be baseball.
John Moores, the Padres' majority owner, said the Dodgers' offer to Brown ``confirms my worst fears about what would happen if we let Murdoch buy the Dodgers.''
The worst fear of any Dodgers fan is that Brown will turn out to be like another pitcher, Don Gullett, who signed for big bucks as a free agent with the Yankees in 1977 and then hurt his arm and was out of baseball two years later.
Of course there'll always be another arm from whence Brown's came. As long as there's another team willing to pay through the nose for it, baseball's future is in trouble.
