Is Mark Walter the last benevolent billionaire?

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Donald Trump’s second term has done a great deal to knock the shine off Americans’ gleaming conception of billionaires.

The ultra-wealthy in the president’s inner orbit are nothing like the titans of industry that have been carved into the bedrock of our own national myth, your paradigm-shifting Rockefellers and library-building Carnegies. Elon Musk couldn’t force the world to like him, even using the sheer brute force of his fortune. Jeff Bezos launched headlong into his divorced era, sending suggestively shaped spacecraft toward the heavens as his shirts’ top buttons descended ever closer to his navel.

Anyone holding on to the hope that billionaires could be explained as a smarter, harder-working and more deserving class of people could only feel baffled or horrified by Trump’s march toward war with Denmark, or even with NATO, seemingly at the behest of a cadre of Silicon Valley ultra-rich with their eyes on Greenland’s mineral wealth. The (Northern) Californian Ideology has created vastly more billionaires than have ever existed before, while also exposing the average ultra-rich person (OK, man) as an unserious, number-torturing flim-flammer.

A (small) glimmer of hope can be seen just a few hours down the Pacific Coast Highway, emitting from the unlikely source of an investment firm CEO. Mark Walter makes an impossible amount of money running the Los Angeles Dodgers. But unlike his fellow billionaires lording over money-printing legacy franchises across the country, he isn’t afraid to spend some of it.

In the last half-decade, the Dodgers have bought their way into perennial World Series contention purely by willing to outspend their competitors every offseason. They locked down Shohei Ohtani, the most exciting baseball player in a century, thanks to a monstrous (and somewhat devious) contract. Warner surrounded him with content All-Stars using the power of his impressive purse.

Former Cubs superstar Kyle Tucker signed a $240 million deal with the two-time defending World Series champions just over a week ago. Major League Baseball’s other owners are reportedly so offended by the idea of paying fair market value for the best players that they’re dead-set on shutting down the league in 2027 unless a salary cap is put in place. This year though? The Dodgers will continue to tear through teams crying poverty on their way to yet another glorious season of high-powered offense and stellar pitching.

Stacking your sports team with megawatt stars to add more hardware to your trophy cabinet is no one’s idea of philanthropy. It only looks generous when compared to teams like the Pittsburgh Pirates and Cincinnati Reds, who are willing to let the generational talents they’ve lucked into flounder until they inevitably leave in search of a bigger paycheck. And watching the Dodgers rough up the scrubs on the White Sox or the itinerant A’s is infinitely more entertaining than the antics at DOGE or a stock buyback. Let’s give Walter credit for that along the way to handing him his next Commissioner’s trophy.

What do you think? Is there any shame in buying a superteam? Are you already working on your pro-labor arguments for when the multi-millionaires are locked out? Sound off in the comments.

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