Just when we thought baseball had been fully relegated to the metaphorical basement of the sports world, it rose once more from the dead like some vengeful Dead Ball-era ghost.
Barely a week before pitchers and catchers report to spring training, the Boston Red Sox traded outfielder Mookie Betts, the consensus second-best player in baseball, to the Los Angeles Dodgers. Starting pitcher David Price will also be shipped to California, while the Dodgers parted with a top-five prospect in Alex Verdugo and gained former Minnesota Twins prospect Brusdar Graterol in return. Baseball’s nexus now lies squarely on either end of the I-5 with Betts in Chavez Ravine and Mike Trout in Anaheim, but the reverberations affect every championship contender.