“Hard work beats talent when talent fails to work hard” -Kevin Durant, Thunderstruck
Last year, the New York Mets signed a $765 million contract with Juan Soto. The year before, the Los Angeles Dodgers signed Shohei Ohtani for $700 million. When this news broke out, baseball fans from around the country, including myself, were stunned. Yet, despite the fact that these teams have payrolls in the hundreds of millions—$339,315,015 and $341,251,346, respectively—neither of these teams, record-wise, can compare with the Milwaukee Brewers, who have a record of 84-52 (as of August 29th, 2025) and have a payroll of just $112,937,031. This begs the question: how can it be that a team triumphs over another with less than a third of the payroll?
The success of the Milwaukee Brewers mainly comes down to one thing: hard work. They are second in the league at stealing bases, use sheer grit to make outstanding plays, and even when they are winning, they dont let off the gas. These factors have led to the Brewers taking the top spot in the NL Central despite the Chicago Cubs having their best season since 2018.
I am a die-hard Cubs fan and always have been, but I find it super refreshing to see an underdog team take the top spot in the MLB after a Dodgers-Yankees World Series last year, and I’m not the only one. Junior Isa Thomson stated, “I find [the Brewers] respectable. I think it is a good thing that money isn’t the only factor going into team performance, because a lot of the world is paying to get your way.” Most sports fans agree with Thomson, and many add on believing that buying a championship ring—let alone a whole dynasty’s worth—is unsportsmanlike.
It’s a common trend that people enjoy seeing different teams hoist their league’s championship trophy, but why? Wouldn’t it be more enjoyable to see a dynasty team make history, or to see the best-of-the-best win a ring they deserve? Well, maybe not. Junior Brendan Mallers commented, “Often I’ll find myself rooting for the underdog, but more because I’m rooting against the dynasty.” Seeing a team win over and over again, especially one that you have no connection to, can feel annoying and, frankly, frustrating. Not only that, but a lot of magic can stem from a Cinderella story, such as the 1980 United States Olympic Hockey Team, which stunned the world after winning gold in the 1980 Winter Olympics.
One common way many leagues prevent dynasties from occurring is a salary cap, or a limit to what a team can pay a player. That way, it’s not just the rich teams getting all of the good players. However, the MLB is known for lacking a salary cap and instead implementing a “Luxury Tax,” which taxes Baseball Teams whose payrolls exceed a certain threshold. This allows the richest teams like the Dodgers, Mets, and Yankees to buy all the players they want. Shouldn’t the MLB implement a salary cap and be more like the NFL or the NBA? Mallers noted, “I don’t think there’s anything like [a dynasty] in baseball. Baseball doesn’t have a salary cap, but there hasn’t been a dynasty since the Yankees in the ‘90s.” Just a few years back, we had a championship between two of the most overlooked teams in baseball: the Arizona Diamondbacks and the Texas Rangers, with Arizona having a shockingly low payroll of just $119,257,651 for that year. This was, safe to say, shocking for all baseball fans. Mallers added, “The NFL has a salary cap limit, and they’ve had more dynasties than [the MLB]. Same with the NBA.” After he said this, I only felt more confused. Does a salary cap hurt a sport? Does it make it more likely? Well, that’s when Mallers said this: “[For] football, if you have a great coach and a great quarterback, you’re going to be successful, whereas baseball, you can’t just have a good manager and one good pitcher or one good hitter, like we’ve seen with the Yankees—they have Aaron Judge and they haven’t won anything.” I thought about the Brewers, and then it hit me: teamwork. Underdogs are fueled by teamwork—each player, each coach, and even each fan works their hardest every single day for their team, and that’s what helps them be successful and why we root for them too: when us fans help a team win, we win too, and that’s why underdogs are so beloved, so supported, and so vital for sports.
