CHICAGO — When Rupert Murdoch’s Fox Entertainment Group bought the Los Angeles Dodgers from the O’Malley family back in 1998, I asked Chicago Cubs President Andy MacPhail during spring training whether having Fox as an owner was good for baseball.

MacPhail hesitated before giving an ambiguous response, suggesting the economic trends in baseball probably signaled the end of family ownership in favor of big corporations such as Murdoch’s $11 billion News Corporation, which ran Fox.

“The dollars are getting so high that it’s not inconceivable you’ll have more companies and corporations owning teams,” MacPhail said. “I don’t necessarily think that’s a bad thing. … In my view, the salary structures of clubs are becoming sort of fragmented.

“You’re going to have seven or eight ‘super franchises’ that are really capable of sustaining high payroll numbers and 22 or 23 others that are not going to be blessed with those kinds of revenues.”

MacPhail turned out to be prescient, for better or worse, though the number of “super franchises” in 2025 could be down to three: the Dodgers, New York Mets and New York Yankees.

The World Series champion Dodgers, now owned by Guggenheim Baseball Management, have a 26-man payroll of $288.8 million, according to spotrac.com, and this winter they signed top free agents Blake Snell and Tanner Scott along with Roki Sasaki, the most coveted pitcher out of Japan.

The Cubs reportedly were in on both Sasaki and Scott but in the end couldn’t compete with the monolith from L.A.

“For us to complain about it would be silly,” Cubs general manager Carter Hawkins said the day after the Sasaki signing. “I came from Cleveland, right? So I feel pretty good about our ability to compete within those markets.

“Look, if someone else is going to offer more money, they’re going to offer more money. That’s something we can’t focus on. We’ve got to figure out how we value our players and try to get the best deals possible, and if we don’t get them, we turn to the next-best alternative.”

The next-best alternative to Scott, in the Cubs’ minds, was Houston Astros reliever Ryan Pressly, whom they acquired Tuesday in a deal for 20-year-old pitching prospect Juan Bello and cash.

The Astros sent the Cubs $5.5 million to offset part of Pressly’s $14 million salary. He’s expected to close games for the Cubs, returning to the role he had in Houston before last year’s megadeal for Josh Hader. It’s a decent rebound for Cubs President Jed Hoyer after missing out on Scott, assuming Pressly can do what former Cubs closers Adbert Alzolay and Héctor Neris couldn’t do in 2024 — protect a lead.

While the Cubs’ 26-man payroll rose to $176 million with the Pressly acquisition, according to spotrac, that’s still $112 million under the Dodgers. The Dodgers are one of four teams with a current payroll of $256 million or more, along with the Philadelphia Phillies, Mets and Yankees.

Chairman Tom Ricketts insists the Cubs just try to “break even” every year, which fans have a hard time buying considering all the revenue streams the team has added over the years, from rooftop clubs to a hotel to a TV network to a betting parlor. The Cubs dealt Cody Bellinger to the Yankees last month to save $27.5 million and supposedly use it elsewhere, which Ricketts said was not a “salary dump.”

If he’s being honest, the Cubs still have payroll flexibility to add on and several good players available with spring training less than two weeks away.

Astros third baseman Alex Bregman remained unsigned as of Tuesday evening, but it seems likely the Cubs are content with rookie Matt Shaw at third and are done adding major pieces. With Kyle Tucker on board, they’re favored to win the National League Central, though few give them a chance to hang with a team like the Dodgers come October.

When Hoyer was working under Theo Epstein in Boston, the Yankees were the team that blew everyone away with its seemingly unlimited budget. Now Hoyer has to compete with a new “evil empire” in Los Angeles.

“That felt different,” Hoyer said of the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry. “But it feels like we’ve got two teams in the National League (the Dodgers and Mets) that obviously from a financial standpoint are able to do things other teams can’t do, is I guess the best way to say it. That kind of raises the stakes for everyone to a certain extent.”

Hoyer said focusing on the Dodgers payroll and all the deferred money overlooks their front office’s penchant for finding talent in the draft and international signings, as well as making smart trades. Sasaki wasn’t a huge financial investment for the Dodgers because he was limited to a minor-league contract subject to teams’ signing pools due to a lack of service time in Japan.

But the signing was felt around baseball as teams let out a collective sigh, one year after the Dodgers signed Shohei Ohtani for $700 million.

“Yeah, it’s undeniable that in that situation, the rich get richer,” Hoyer said of Sasaki. “But you miss the (big) picture if you overfocus on the financial part.”

MacPhail, of course, ran the Cubs under a much different ownership and in a vastly different era. Payrolls are much higher now than in 1998, when the Cubs went into spring training with a $48 million payroll, just under Juan Soto’s current average annual salary of $51 million from his 15-year, $765 million deal with the Mets.

The late Tribune Co. executive vice president James Dowdle, who ran the Cubs in the late ’90s, told me that spring that $48 million was “what I consider a significant amount of money to have a competitive ballclub on the field.” The Cubs earned a wild-card spot in ’98, and the owners made a ton off Sammy Sosa’s pursuit of the home-run record.

Tribune Co. was unapologetic about its decision to stay out of the Yankees’ payroll range. Dowdle even said that spring that the Florida Marlins had hurt the game by spending wildly in the winter of 1996-97, winning a World Series and then selling off most of their stars.

“I don’t think Florida did a lot for baseball by going out and buying a pennant,” Dowdle said. “That doesn’t mean you will necessarily get a pennant. They are so many things that have to go your way.”

Ricketts has often repeated that philosophy, saying the Cubs are doing enough to contend and anyone can win in a playoff series.

“The fact is you can’t buy a championship team in baseball,” he told Cubs reporters near the end of the 2022 season. “You have to build it. That’s what we’re doing.”

The building should be done by now, but the road to a World Series has become much narrower. The Dodgers are the polar opposite of those ’97 Marlins, showing no remorse over their ability to outspend everyone. It can be argued they bought a championship in 2024 and are well on their way to buying another.

Times change, but the song remains the same.

The rich get richer, and the Cubs are still the Cubs.

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