I recently mused about the significance of a big contract for an athlete who had spent years as a marginal player. Being part of a cash-soaked sport but not really being part of it for a decade-plus.

First, Rich Hill, Dodgers pitcher.

Now, Justin Turner, Dodgers infielder.

The former is getting $48 million over three seasons.

The latter is getting $64 million over four seasons, we learned today, when he was the focus of a press conference at Dodger Stadium.

The Dodgers hope for 150 innings, maybe, from Rich Hill, who is 36 and had not done much until 2016. But you expect to pay a premium for (what you think is) quality pitching.

However, the club hopes Turner, 32, will play nearly every day at third base and be the player he was the past couple of seasons, when he hit 43 home runs.

As opposed to the marginal second baseman Turner was through his 20s, when he hit 15 big-league home runs in more than 1,200 at-bats.

Which is why he could be found on the waiver wire by the New York Mets, in 2010, and signed to a one-year deal by the Dodgers for $1 million ahead of the 2014 season.

He got $2.5 million in 2015, then $5.1 million in 2016, and he must have thought then he had tapped the mother lode …

Until this four-year deal.

And it has to change your life, doesn’t it? Especially when you made peanuts (by baseball standards) for most of a decade.

A year ago, Turner must have been thinking: “The four-bedroom in the suburbs is pretty nice. … The SUV hardly looks three years old. … I better be careful with that $5.2; may never see anything like that again.”

Now? All that changes, if he wants.

If he doesn’t play another game — assuming he doesn’t, like, go to jail — he will get a $4 million bonus on December 31 (happy new year, indeed), $12 million during the 2017 season, $11 million in 2018, $18 million in 2019 and $19 million in 2020. He also gets $1 million every time he is traded during the life of his contract.

He will be nearly 36 when the 2020 season ends, and everybody is on the back side of their career at 36 (aside, maybe, from Big Papi) … and Turner’s career through his age 31 season constituted about three competent seasons.

So the chance of him regressing to gap-hitting journeyman who barely moves the needle in the Wins Above Replacement stat … well, it could happen and no one would be shocked.

(He had done so little, through the decade of his 20s, that when he was given a bobblehead night ahead of the 2015 season, I did a blog item entitled: The Unknown Bobblehead. I wondered how a guy with 109 games of Dodgers history got his own doll. And then he found his home-run stroke.)

Thing about Turner is that people like him. He seems to work at it, which many athletes can’t be bothered with. He is the kind of guy who talks to reporters every day, who shows up for charity events, who signs autographs and reaches out to fans and grew up in greater Los Angeles. A guy who is not in the habit of ending up on police blotters or getting suspended.

He’s got the big red beard, which makes things easier for bobblehead designers, and last year he hit 27 home runs, which makes him even more popular with fans and club executives.

The Dodgers clearly wanted to have him around, and they paid $64 million for the pleasure.

And it has to be life-changing.

If Turner doesn’t somehow screw this up with a stupid investment or a dodgy agent, he will never have to worry about money again. He could light his cigars with Benjamins every day for the rest of his life and hardly notice any of them were missing.

But it would be more fun, for Turner and the Dodgers, if he could hit 27 homers with 90 RBI again next year … and the three years after that. Make himself a bobblehead regular.