Money talks; were our guys listening?

DENVER -- It would be lovely to say that Sunday night was only about the reds and grays and blues that flowed across the field as the Boston Red Sox giddily wrapped themselves in a World Series championship.

It would also be wrong.

It was also about the green.

Today’s baseball rulers are not wrapped in the sort of quaint, homemade quilt that many romantic fans wish on their teams.

They are, instead, covered in cold, hard cash.

That, and Domaine St. Michelle champagne, which spurted across the head of baseball’s most generous owner, John Henry, as he stood giggling amid his hugging, soaking champions after their World Series sweep of the Colorado Rockies on Sunday.

“We are very aggressive when it comes to winning, we will do whatever it takes, 12 months a year, 24 hours a day,” he said. “I know we have taken some criticism for it, but. . . . “

He smiled as his wire-rimmed glasses filled with bubbly.

“But look at us now,” he said. “This is worth it. This is so worth it.”

Like it or not, the league’s second-highest payroll of $143.1 million can still buy you love.

After 86 years without a world championship, it bought the Red Sox two titles in four seasons.

After nearly a century of having to answer to the most woeful, frustrated fans in sports, it bought the Red Sox the amazing sight of Sunday night.

On a strange field far from home, thousands of red-clad fans remained in the Coors Field seats for an hour after the game to chant and cheer for their soaked and staggering players.

It sounded like Fenway Park. It felt like the Boston Commons. A Red Sox Nation indeed.

“When we did it four years ago, some people thought we were just stat geeks, a one-year wonder,” said Henry. “This one, I hope, proves we are a force.”

Imagine that, a guy who once referred to the New York Yankees as, “an evil empire” referring to his team with the word, “force.”

Well, imagine this. The Red Sox are the new Yankees. The Red Sox are the new model.

It is certain that Frank McCourt, the Dodgers owner and Boston native who once tried to buy his beloved Red Sox, was watching.

He is undoubtedly fuming that a team from his former town, a team loved by his former neighbors, dominates a sport in which his own team hasn’t won a playoff series in 20 years.

To owners like McCourt and the Angels Arte Moreno, whose teams grow great young talent with scant recent results, the Red Sox had a few words

More than a few words, really.

Mike Lowell, Josh Beckett, Curt Schilling, David Ortiz, Manny Ramirez, J.D. Drew, Jason Varitek, Daisuke Matsuzaka, Hideki Okajima, Mike Timlin, Alex Cora, Coca Crisp, Eric Hinske, Bobby Kielty, Julio Lugo, Eric Gagne and Javier Lopez.

All of them championship Red Sox, none of them born Red Sox.

Seventeen of the 23 players who played for the Red Sox in this series came from somewhere else.

This was a team not grown and nurtured, but bought and bartered.

For every homegrown star like Jacoby Ellsbury, Jonathan Papelbon and Dustin Pedroia, there is an exile like Hanley Ramirez, the great Florida shortstop traded there for Beckett and series MVP Lowell.

The Red Sox treat their young talent as assets to be turned into profits. Sometimes it happens on the field, but often it happens in the agate page.

The Red Sox were able to make that landmark deal with Florida because they were willing to pay Lowell’s hefty salary. They were able to sign Matsuzaka because they were willing to pay $50 million just to talk to him.

They traded prospects for Schilling because they could pay him. They signed nutty Ramirez because they could afford him. They seemingly blew millions on Drew, then watched him hit a grand slam this October that saved them.

The Red Sox may be the only team in baseball that uses new balls for every batting practice. They were certainly the first team in baseball history to supply their players with designer goggles that they all wore during the champagne-spraying clubhouse celebration.

“We will give them whatever they need to have a winning organization,” said Henry. “And we’ll keep doing it.”

Are McCourt and Moreno listening? We’ll soon find out.

Midway through the game, the news floated through the press box that Alex Rodriguez had just become the most important -- and most expensive -- free agent in history.

Immediately after Henry was doused in champagne Sunday night, somebody asked him whether he would pursue Rodriguez, and you know what? He didn’t say no.

“I’m just not ready to talk about that now,” he said.

McCourt and Moreno should be ready to talk about it now. They should call Rodriguez’s agent, Scott Boras, immediately.

They need to prove that all this talk about grooming young players aren’t just code words for keeping the payroll low.

Some think McCourt may immediately show his frustration by chasing expensive free-agent manager Joe Torre next week, even though the Dodgers already have a contracted manager named Grady Little.

Whatever McCourt does, he should learn from his beloved Red Sox and do it with an open wallet and an aggressive attitude.

As Boston showed the world again Sunday, in today’s major-league baseball there is no such thing as a field of dreams. To step inside, you have to buy a ticket.

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Plaschke, go to latimes.com/plaschke.