It finally happened. The Dodgers declared bankruptcy Monday morning.
It just seems amazing that the first Major League Baseball franchise on the West Coast – one that would sneeze and 3 million fans would show up – has been mismanaged so badly during the past 10 years that it had to file for Chapter 11 protection.
But what’s more amazing is the man who is running the team isn’t taking the blame for driving it into the ground on and off the field.
Frank McCourt bought the Dodgers with his wife, Jamie McCourt, in 2002. We didn’t know it until their divorce proceedings started two years ago that they purchased the club on credit. Who needs a down payment? They gave themselves, their friends and their families phoney titles and huge salaries, bleeding the team of any profits.
The divorce filings have shown their disregard for running the team with fiscal responsibility. It’s no wonder that baseball Commissioner Bud Selig vetoed his club’s $3 billion television deal with Fox Sports because almost half that money was not earmarked to run the Dodgers; it was to pay off the the McCourt’s debts and divorce proceedings. In other words, the McCourts, who have barely made payroll the past two months, still weren’t going to put the majority of that money into the team, which is the intention of a team’s TV deal.
So when Frank McCourt filed for bankruptcy Monday, he blamed it on the Selig for not approving the Fox TV deal.
Say what? Come again? He doesn’t have enough money to run the team, the deal to save the team is mainly to save him in court and he’s saying it’s the fault of someone else? That’s like blaming the newspaper if there are negative news stories in today’s editions; it’s not the paper’s fault that there was a bombing in Iraq or train crash in Nevada.
Unfortunately for Dodgers fans, McCourt is not going away any time soon. The league will soon seize control of the team very soon and he will file lawsuit after lawsuit to try to keep it.
All the while, he will be upset that the team and the Dodger Stadium have eroded. But that won’t be McCourt’s fault for underfunding his general manager, chipping away at the minor-league system and cutting back on stadium services.
Nope. He will probably blame the 29 other teams and the fans. After all, the other baseball are taking advantage of the Dodgers and the fans don’t appreciate what he has given them.
At least that would fall in line with McCourt’s twisted logic.
Dodgers file for bankruptcy, say MLB at fault
