It’s always sad when a great family like the McCourts have to deal with the media vultures picking away at their private lives and sticking their noses in where they shouldn’t.
Now it’s personal.
Major League Baseball announced it’s taking over operations for the Los Angeles Dodgers, and it could signal the end of the civic-minded, value-oriented McCourt ownership duo.
You’re right, that’s probably a bad description.
The bizarre owners of La La land. Al Davis: Don’t really need to add much there, he is stuck in Oakland, so he doesn’t count anymore.
The Jerry Buss situation is strange, too, with his daughter’s marriage (the former cheerleader) to the coach of the team, the awkward family jealousy dynamic, Buss’ DUI with a 23 year old, etc.
Yep, LA.
But at least the Lakers are committed to winning.
The Dodgers are in big-time debt, and it means that commissioner Bud Selig and friends are going to do what they can to get the house in order. While it’s the appropriate move, it could set the Dodgers back a few years.
MLB took over the Montreal Expos back in the early ‘90s, and while the revenue situations aren’t similar, the team was unable to re-sign any of its young stars. Luckily, the Dodgers only have two, at best.
With a middling farm system and an inability to sign free agents, expect the on-field struggles to last a few more years — the off-field problems will go on as well.
It could get pretty dull for the third-biggest market in the country with the Lakers at the end of their run.
I happen to think sports are important; the one-thing folks can set aside their differences and share, Kumbaya and all that.
It’s disturbing that so many incompetents run professional franchises. For those that didn’t luck out or bequeath their wealth and just don’t know what they’re doing, there’s the group of owners who hold their communities hostage until they agree to pay for their new toys.
Then there’s the group of owners who probably don’t have enough money to own and won’t spend anything that risks profit margins. Of course, the NFL lockout is about owner greed, everyone knows that.
Blasphemy alert: Owning a sports franchise shouldn’t be about making money.
Yeah, I get it, Adam Smith and all of that. But why can’t there be more Mark Cubans, guys who see winning on the field of play as winning and who have enough money to sometimes lose a few million? Guys who get the big picture …
Does that make me an infant?
I think it’s perfectly acceptable to whine about the fact that there aren’t more publically owned franchises like the Green Bay Packers. It just sucks, that’s all.
The McCourts’ situation might be the only reason I’d ever sympathize with obnoxious LA fans and their “kiss the ring” nonsense.
Reach the columnist at nick.ruland@asu.edu
