Ohtani Announces He's Signing With The Dodgers: 10 Years, $700 Million

10 years. $700 million.

Those are the eye-popping numbers on the unprecedented contract Shohei Ohtani will be signing with the Dodgers. The 2023 unanimous AL MVP made the announcement himself on Saturday afternoon.

The $700,000,000 is obviously the largest player contract in sports history – and will likely hold the top spot for a while. The inner workings of the deal involve deferred payments, so Ohtani's annual salary (reflected in LA's annual payrolls) will be in the $50 million range.

Ohtani, who turns 30 next July, had elbow surgery in mid-September and will not pitch in 2024. Which will hurt his chances to be crowned the unanimous NL MVP next fall.

The 2023 Dodgers became the first team to win 100+ games in four consecutive full seasons (106, 106, 111, 100). And now they've added the most complete player in baseball history.

In other news, the Red Sox made a rare deal of substance with the Yankees, sending Alex Verdugo, who completely wore out his welcome with manager Alex Cora, to the Bronx for a trio of right-handed pitchers (Richard Fitts, Greg Weissert, and Nicholas Judice). Fitts was named the Eastern League Pitcher of the Year for 2023.

The MFY also traded for Juan Soto, who is set to become a free agent after next season. With any luck, this will simply be a one-year rental. But it sucks, no matter how you slice it. Maybe Verdugo can do us a favour and sabotage some shit over there.

Hey, Yoshinobu Yamamoto . . . umm, you wanna come to Boston and finish in last place?

The Yankees Are "Profoundly Saddened" That An Unrepentant War Criminal(A "Lifelong Friend" Who "Will Be Deeply Missed") Died Yesterday At Age 100

Of course they are.

Statement from the New York Yankees: pic.twitter.com/OeIjo9irQ3

— New York Yankees (@Yankees) November 30, 2023

There are many reasons why the Yankees' home field has long been called Stade Fasciste. This is yet another one.

Some reactions:

@kidsmoke21: The Yankees will be honoring Mr. Kissinger with Napalm Night on May 17 vs the White Sox. Bring the whole family!

@LibrarianJoe_: Couldn't Randy Levine just tweet about his war criminal friends on his own page?

@jamisonfoser: This is why people hate you.

@BFSkinnerstan: Too busy mourning war criminals to actually build a functioning roster

@vlodddy: This is why the Yankees are the worst organization in the world

@ThomasTheCorgi: The Yankees were sad at the outcome of the Nuremberg trials too.

@JacsonBevens: do Pol Pot next

@HardFactorNews: Adding Henry Kissinger to Murderers Row sounds appropriate

@aric_isaacs: And to think, you could have said absolutely nothing

@savvy_uwu: What a beautiful day to be a Sox fan

@HumanistReport: eat shit

@CubeIsHorse: Guess I'll mark "Yankees miss a war criminal that they were besties with" off of the bingo card I didn't even know I had.

@OwlWithAGuitar: I already hate the Yankees, so I can't threaten to abandon them over this. What I can do here is share the words of a genuinely great New Yorker.

Nick Turse, The Intercept, November 29, 2023:

Kissinger helped prolong the Vietnam War and expand that conflict into neutral Cambodia; facilitated genocides in Cambodia, East Timor, and Bangladesh; accelerated civil wars in southern Africa; and supported coups and death squads throughout Latin America. He had the blood of at least 3 million people on his hands, according to his biographer Greg Grandin.

There were "few people who have had a hand in as much death and destruction, as much human suffering, in so many places around the world as Henry Kissinger," said veteran war crimes prosecutor Reed Brody.

A 2023 investigation by The Intercept found that Kissinger — perhaps the most powerful national security adviser in American history and the chief architect of U.S. war policy in Southeast Asia from 1969 to 1975 — was responsible for more civilian deaths in Cambodia than was previously known, according to an exclusive archive of U.S. military documents and interviews with Cambodian survivors and American witnesses.

The Intercept disclosed previously unpublished, unreported, and under-appreciated evidence of hundreds of civilian casualties that were kept secret during the war and remained almost entirely unknown to the American people. Kissinger bore significant responsibility for attacks in Cambodia that killed as many as 150,000 civilians — up to six times more noncombatants than the United States has killed in airstrikes since 9/11, according to experts.

Turse is the author of Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam, a profoundly distrubing and essential book of US history that was sparked by Turse's discovery of "a previously unexplored cache of documents in the basement of the National Archives that detailed allegations of atrocities in Vietnam".