CHICAGO — Hating on the Los Angeles Dodgers is easy when you’re programmed to root for the underdog, the American way we know and love.

They spend whatever they want, acquire whoever they need and win all the time. They come to your town to kill your buzz, and play in a place that’s warm, plastic and comfortable, without a pothole in sight. Dodgers fans go to games to see and be seen, as Pete Crow-Armstrong explained to the Los Angeles Times last April when the Chicago Cubs visited Dodger Stadium.

“It’s a see-me city, man,” Crow-Armstrong said. “It’s a Lakers city where people show up to sit courtside and look good. And I view it the same way here.”

And late Saturday night the team from the see-me city grew even more hateable, after the Dodgers acquired Detroit Tigers ace Tarik Skubal for three prospects, making a three-peat a fait accompli. The Cubs wound up trading for Toronto Blue Jays veteran right-hander Kevin Gausman on Sunday night, hoping for the same type of deadline bounce with far less fanfare.

For most baseball fans, the Dodgers are an “American Horror Story,” albeit with owner Mark Walter in the Sarah Paulson role.

Someone has to step up and stop them before they destroy baseball and our sense of fair play.

Asked his frustration level over the Dodgers’ insatiable appetite to obtain every star in baseball, White Sox general manager Chris Getz was obviously reading from a script written by Aaron Sorkin.

“You know, they’ve earned this right to acquire this talent,” Getz said Sunday on a Zoom call with reporters. “They’ve built a really strong farm system. Truthfully, I know the trade’s happened and when you’ve got a Tarik Skubal of that status within the division, you’re curious.

“But I don’t give it a whole lot of time. It’s just ‘OK, Dodgers did this, this team did that, let’s focus on the White Sox.’”

OK, forget about Getz, whose acquisition of starter Luis Castillo from the Seattle Mariners was a risk he could afford to take with a Cinderella team no one outside the South Side really expects to win a World Series. The Cubs reportedly were interested in Skubal, who would have made them a serious threat to win it all.

How did Cubs manager Craig Counsell react to the horrifying news that Skubal was now a Dodger?

“I was half-asleep, then fell asleep five minutes later,” Counsell said.

Fortunately, Counsell was not managing the Cubs at the time.

Either way, his lack of outrage suggests the Cubs never had much interest in paying the prospect price to obtain Skubal, or else he would’ve tossed and turned like most Cubs fans.

“I mean, look, everyone has the ability to make a trade,” Counsell said of the Dodgers. “They did it. Whether it was inevitable or whatever … credit to them for doing it.”

So did the Cubs get very involved?

“That’s a question for Jed,” he said, referring to Hoyer.

Hoyer was not around, so Counsell was asked instead.

“I don’t know,” Counsell said.

The Cubs have had a great season so far despite pitching injuries, but they needed to do something big to out-Skubal the Dodgers in the final hours of the deadline. The 35-year-old Gausman is no Skubal, but he was one of the better options available, making it a nice rebound for Hoyer.

Failing to find any empathy among baseball types, I went to a place where rational thought is always prevalent: social media. On the X app, I found the smoking gun — a video of Dodgers manager Dave Roberts admitting to a devious plot to ruin the game.

“They said the Dodgers are ruining baseball,” Roberts said last October after winning the National League pennant. “Let’s get four more wins and really ruin baseball.”

That was before they beat the Blue Jays in the World Series, before they spent $240 million on Cubs free agent outfielder Kyle Tucker to ensure a lockout in 2027, and before adding Skubal to a rotation that includes Shohei Ohtani, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Tyler Glasnow, Blake Snell, Roki Sasaki, Justin Wrobleski and Emmet Sheehan. The Dodger payroll is up to $430 million, according to Spotrac, with an estimated luxury tax bill of $180 million.

Before the Yankees game Saturday at Wrigley Field, Murphy’s Bleachers posted a message on their signboard reading: “Cubbie Alliance Defeats the Evil Empire.”

But that was the old Evil Empire. The new, lemon-scented Evil Empire is in town on Monday, and as fate would have it, Skubal is scheduled to face the Cubs on Tuesday in the second game of a three-game series.

Tucker’s return Monday will be the warm-up act. The former “King Tuck” figures to get booed, even as Hoyer didn’t really pursue him after the 2025 season, much less give him $60 million a year.

By game time, Cubs fans will know how Hoyer fared at the trade deadline, which ended at 6 p.m. ET Monday. Will it be enough to get past the Skubal-infused Dodgers if they meet in the postseason?

Sounds unlikely, but Hoyer is operating on a different playing field than the Dodgers, as Cubs Chairman Tom Ricketts reminded us last year when pointing to their 25-year, $8.3 billion TV deal.

“Their television revenues will continue to grow into the future while everyone (else’s) are dropping pretty quickly,” Ricketts said. “They’re going to have that advantage moving forward for a long time.”

Apparently the “see-me city” also likes watching the games on TV, or else the Dodgers wouldn’t have gotten the $8.3 billion in the first place to spend freely on superstars and tax bills.

Whatever. No matter what Hoyer does at the deadline, Counsell said they’re “proud of how we go out and compete,” adding that sometimes deadlines come and go with nothing happening and “we got a lot better.” He didn’t elaborate, but I’m guessing he was referring to the Milwaukee Brewers.

The Cubs lost 2-1 Sunday to drop the series to the Yankees, but remained in control in the wild-card race. Many season ticket holders were happy with the weekend after scalping their seats to Yankees fans, who made themselves at home. You have to wonder how many will do likewise with the Dodgers in town, especially with Skubal pitching Tuesday night.

When Ricketts was comparing the Cubs and the Dodgers last year, he admitted he took a more conservative approach to spending.

“I try to look at the budget much more consistently than (saying) ‘Let’s go for it,’” he said.

The Dodgers don’t say ‘Let’s go for it,” so much as they say “Let’s take what’s ours.”

That’s as American as it gets.

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