A nine-player deal, the Dodgers taking on hundreds of millions in salary commitments, including those of Adrian Gonzalez, Carl Crawford and Josh Beckett.

And the takeaway?

Los Angeles has just rediscovered it is a major sports market.

Let’s cast our minds back just a few years. The Angels are a scrappy little team who always keep their eye on the bottom line. The Kings and Ducks? Same thing.

The once-powerful Dodgers … were no longer quite so powerful. Asked to name the last Dodgers team which fans could really expect to win something, or 90 games … Dodgers fans might struggle for an answer. “When Jeff Kent was still decent?” Something like that.

It was gradual, but it was real: Los Angeles began acting like Milwaukee or Cleveland. Especially in baseball.

Big free agents were for other teams. The Yankees signed Mark Teixeira and C.C. Sabathia. The Dodgers signed Juan Pierre and Randy Wolf.

The Red Sox signed, well, Adrian Gonzalez and Carl Crawford. The Angels signed Torii Hunter and Kelvim Escobar.

Both the Dodgers and Angels began to act small.

I can’t account fully for the Angels, and what they did, other than a sort of institutional caution perhaps born of the reckless signings from the late 1970s. (Remember Joe Rudi? Gene Autry certainly seemed to.)

But the Dodgers? It was like they just didn’t have the money. And under the McCourt regime, perhaps they didn’t. Frank and the ex-wife were off buying homes with money they took out of the club.

But Frank and Jamie are gone now, and the Magic Johnson group, which overspent (by about $1 billion) to buy the team (for $2.15 billion), seems determined to demonstrate they can and will pay for expensive players who might be able to help them.

As well they should.

Not only do the Dodgers sell 3 million tickets a year simply by opening the doors, in Chavez Ravine, they have a huge TV contract coming up after the 2013 season. Worth perhaps as much as $4 billion.

Thus the Dodgers have begun acting like the Yankees or Red Sox. The approach being, “find the best players, lock them up with long-term deals.” And if it doesn’t quite work out, sell them for 25 cents on the dollar (A.J. Burnett, Carl Crawford) and move on to the next great hope.

It may not be a great business model. Small-market teams have won more than a few championships, maybe more than their share of championships. (We could make a case that the 2002 Angels who won the World Series were essentially a small-market team in payroll and spirit.)

I trace some of this self-abnegation back to the loss of the Rams and Raiders after the 1994 NFL season. A sort of malaise settled over Los Angeles sports — aside from the Lakers.

Fiscal responsibility was the watchword. Look, L.A. had lost the Rams and Raiders because it wouldn’t build a big stadium; expectations need to be tamped down, expenses corralled.

And I give the Lakers — and Jerry Buss — credit for blowing up that system.

Look what has happened in the past year.

–The Angels signed Albert Pujols for 10 years and $254 million.

–The Angels signed C.J. Wilson for five years and $75 million.

–The Dodgers were purchased for a record $2.15 billion.

–The Lakers said “screw the salary cap” and signed both Steve Nash and Dwight Howard. You know, like a big-city team would.

–When the Dodgers unexpectedly started out well with a collection of stiffs and castoffs, the club got bold, trading for Hanley Ramirez and Joe Blanton, and now for the two 2011 free-agent prizes, Gonzalez and Crawford, as well as a once-great pitcher, Beckett.

We can debate the merits of the latter trade. Gonzalez’s homers are down; a sign of things to come? Crawford was awful last season, has been out nearly all of 2012 and is 31. Can he be what he once was? Beckett was practically the poster child for the loathsome 2012 Red Sox, has faded badly, and maybe he doesn’t have much of anything left.

But the point of this isn’t really how those guys will perform. The point is that Los Angeles, as a sports market, is beginning to act its age — and it is an all-grown-up place, with stars and superstars.

This bodes well for Greater L.A. fans of all the big-time sports. And it could even come with this silver lining to the golden cloud:

The NFL may notice that L.A. can generate some money, and perhaps the nation’s most popular sport will return. And sooner than we think.