Years from now, we'll look back on what happened Friday, when the Los Angeles Dodgers played TARP to the Boston Red Sox, and marvel at the entire spectacle. It is August, the dog days, when the slog of the regular season begins to transition into the excitement of the playoff race. The only transactions of note are supposed to involve players going to and returning from the disabled list.

And here come the Dodgers and the Red Sox, two of baseball's jewel franchises, pulling off one of the biggest and most fascinating trades ever. A year ago, the Dodgers were in bankruptcy. Now, the Red Sox will send Adrian Gonzalez, Carl Crawford, Josh Beckett, Nick Punto and the combined $262.5 million remaining on their contracts to Los Angeles for top pitching prospects Allen Webster and Rubby De La Rosa, marginal hitting prospects Jerry Sands and Ivan DeJesus, and first baseman James Loney.

It will mark the biggest salary dump in the history of professional sports, a quarter-billion-dollar mea culpa from the Red Sox, who spent their way into the quagmire of mediocrity from which they've been unable to extricate themselves this season. And it will cement the Dodgers' rise from the nadir of Frank McCourt's ownership to their place as baseball bailout kings, the franchise that will chase talent no matter the price.

This is a dangerous game both teams are playing, the Red Sox jettisoning a pair of players they gave seven years and nine figures to ostensibly hit the restart button and the Dodgers playing the kid who blows his allowance on candy and wonders later why the dentist has to drill so much.

As fascinating as it's been to watch the Red Sox implode over the last calendar year, from September meltdown to the beer-and-chicken blame game to the ill-fated Bobby Valentine hire to the text message heard 'round New England, their story is the classic fall of the titan, one familiar in the annals of the game. Full of drama though it may be, it doesn't pack the intrigue of watching a new power establish itself with the fury the Dodgers have since the Mark Walter-Magic Johnson-Stan Kasten consortium acquired the franchise for $2 billion in March.

[Related: Nine-player trade is biggest in Dodgers history]

No longer are the Dodgers a baseball team. They are a conglomerate comprised of a multibillion-dollar television contract, an iconic venue in Dodger Stadium, a brand that again means something, marketing and merchandising arms that drive revenue and, sure, a ballclub onto which each of the aforementioned arms gloms. A Mexican-born star from Southern California signed to a relatively reasonable contract compared to his peers – Joey Votto at $250 million and Albert Pujols at $240 million and Prince Fielder at $214 million – and all he costs is a few prospects and taking on some may-or-may-not-work-out contracts? For the Los Angeles Dodgers, team, Adrian Gonzalez is nice. For the Los Angeles Dodgers, empire, Adrian Gonzalez is a coup.

The Dodgers abide by the spend-money-to-make-money philosophy as much as the gluttonous Yankees of George Steinbrenner ever did because not only are they lavishing it on players, they're stockpiling underachievers. So far so good with Hanley Ramirez. Crawford has 4½ years to earn his keep once he returns from Tommy John surgery. Beckett, like Gonzalez claimed off waivers Friday by the Dodgers, is operating with diminished stuff, and the Dodgers can only hope his escape from the toxicity of Boston – plus, sure, jumping from the AL East to NL West – will invigorate his career.

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