Brandon Gomes pushed again on the notion his Dodgers are baseball’s new “Evil Empire,” however somebody within the advertising division possibly didn’t get that memo.
As a part of the crew’s promo calendar for the 2025 season is Star Wars Evening on Might 14, and the giveaway is a bobblehead-sized Loss of life Star hovering over Dodger Stadium.
The Dodgers adopted a World Collection title with a second straight offseason spending spree that included signing the likes of Blake Snell (5 years, $182 million), Japanese phenom Roki Sasaki (minor league cope with a $6.5 million bonus), Tanner Scott (4 years, $72 million) and reliever Kirby Yates on a one-year, $13 million deal.
That got here a yr after the crew paid over a billion {dollars} in contracts for the likes of two-way star Shohei Ohtani, Japanese hurler Yoshinobu Yamamoto, amongst others.
It’s spurred comparisons to the freewheeling spending of the early Nineteen Nineties Yankees, who threw big-money contracts at big-name free brokers, spurring late Purple Sox government Larry Lucchino labeling the rival franchise the “Evil Empire” in 2002.
Now, nevertheless, the Dodgers have inherited the “Star Wars”-themed branding — good for a promo night time on the calendar.
Except you’re, say, the crew’s normal supervisor, like Gomes, who doesn’t actually embrace the thought.
“We’re targeted on and tasked with ensuring our crew is nearly as good as doable,” Gomes stated on “The Present,” with Joel Sherman and Jon Heyman in January. “If that’s creating ire elsewhere, that’s advantageous, as a result of I feel which means our followers are very completely happy, which is what the objective is. I feel the character of our sport, the character of the playoff format, you may be technically the most effective crew and it doesn’t assure you something.
“All we’re doing is ensuring that now we have as gifted a crew as doable.”