The Los Angeles Dodgers filed for bankruptcy yesterday.
Yes, that would be the exact same Los Angeles Dodgers who have set the all-time record for paid attendance by any team in any sport in history. Over 175 million people have paid to see a Dodgers game.
Clearly, there has been some fraud and incompetence involved.
Major League Baseball is somewhat to blame for allowing McCourt to take over the Dodgers the way he did with shady deals and financial fraud. The way he bought the team with other peoples money was a recipe for looting. And that is exactly what he did.
The whole situation just makes me sick.
What Frank McCourt has done to the team is unconscionable. One of the all-time great franchises. Playing baseball for over 100 years. A team that appeared in the World Series 18 times. They are now about to go on the ash heap of history thanks to an incredibly selfish, vain and egotistical maniac named Frank McCourt.
I'm not even the biggest baseball fan...I'm a football guy. But I like the Dodgers and their history.
Did you know they were called the Brooklyn Trolley Dodgers because pedestrians in the early 1900s often had to leap out of the way of speeding trolleys barreling down the streets of Brooklyn? I love the nickname.
Even the uniforms are classics. All-American in style.
I bought several Dodgers jerseys this week, and I'll be wearing them all summer to show my support for the team. However, I am not optimistic about the financial reality of the situation.
How, exactly, can you get to a point where the most popular sports franchise of all time doesn't even own their stadium or the parking lots around it?
That is a recipe for the team being bought and moved away by new owners.
This whole thing reminds me of the Enron scandal. In a business venture this big, somebody should have been looking at the numbers and given some warnings that the management of the team was becoming unsound.
