Mikolas, incidentally, will make $16 million this year on a team that will rank in the top 10 in payroll, so the Dodgers aren't the only bunch with a checkbook.

In all, as Roberts said, it was, "a great day to watch a ballgame," and truly splendid from the start.

Perfectly befitting this movie star team, the pregame ceremony was straight out of Hollywood.

There was a throaty video trailer that made it sound as if the Dodgers were going to be the greatest story ever told. The players were then introduced while walking a blue carpet stretching from center field toward the infield, which led to some complaining about the long walk, but c'mon, guys.

Those introductions were dramatically announced by actor and Dodger fan Bryan Cranston. The national anthem was turned into an emotional ballad by Josh Groban.

Then, with fans chanting "Let's Go Dodgers" for the first of a zillion times this year, the team capped the festivities with the perfect plot twist.

For the honor of throwing out the first pitch, they chose to celebrate one of the biggest mistakes in franchise history.

Taking the mound was Adrián Beltré, the recently elected Hall of Famer who was cast aside by the Dodgers after a mammoth 2004 season in which he had 48 homers and 121 RBIs. He was just 25 at the time. He had just purchased a house in Arcadia. He didn't want to leave.

But the Frank McCourt-owned team let him walk as a free agent, and he played 14 more seasons in Seattle, Boston and Texas, eventually retiring with 477 home runs and 1,707 RBIs.

"The bottom line is, the Dodgers didn't want to sign me," Beltré told me at the time. "If they had only talked to me and told me their plan, I would have signed for less money to stay there. I needed to hear it from them. We could have worked it out. But they never even talked to me."

So on Thursday he donned a Dodgers uniform for the first time since then, and the optics were cool, and the cheering was nice, and it was refreshingly unexpected.

Next year, Mike Piazza?

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