Thumbnails | Next player Nasty Stuff: Kevin Brown signs the richest contract in baseball history -- seven years, $105 million -- and graces the cover of SI's baseball preview issue. Brown has won 20 games only once -- for the Rangers in 1992, the season after he began seeing a sports psychologist (with whom he still talks today) -- and has never won the Cy Young Award. He is pitching for his fifth team in six years. He has fewer World Series wins than Jay Powell, having failed to win any of his four starts. His career record (139-99, for a .584 winning percentage) approximates that of the Chicago Cubs' unspectacular Kevin Tapani (120-87, .580). So why did the Dodgers give Brown the first nine-figure contract in baseball? That's easy: Brown is one of the rare players who, by himself, can make the difference in getting a team to the World Series. And at 34, an age at which Hall of Famer Don Drysdale, another Dodgers righthander with a mean streak, was retired, Brown confoundingly is in his prime. -- Tom Verducci Issue date: March 29, 1999 (Baseball Preview) Photograph by Walter Iooss. Jr. Sports Illustrated on Baseball | Team-by-Team Reports Rookie of the Year Watch | SI's Inside Baseball Archive

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