The 16-20 Dodgers are in fourth place in the NL West, but that's the least of Frank McCourt's worries. The Dodgers owner is in the midst of a clash with MLB over control of his team; here's the latest:
- A Dodgers attorney argued today that McCourt faces “discriminatory and unfair treatment through a process designed to reach a predetermined outcome,” according to Yahoo’s Tim Brown. Former Padres president Dick Freeman was initially appointed as an assistant for monitor Tom Schieffer, even though Freeman had worked for Jamie McCourt, Frank's ex-wife. Commissioner Bud Selig has since ordered that Freeman be removed from the assignment.
- MLB is preparing for the possibility that McCourt could take the Dodgers into bankruptcy court, according to Bill Shaikin of the LA Times. Bankruptcy could provide McCourt with what he needs to allow him to retain control of the Dodgers for the time being, according to experts who spoke with the Times.
This is getting ridiculous. He WAS the lauging stock of the league. Now he’s just plain pathetic.
He’s baseballs Charlie Sheen.
Does that mean he’s “Wild Thing” Rick Vaughn?
Or Hap Felsch (if you’re into his more historical baseball roles)?
except that Sheen might have talent.
And money.
This is going to get much worse before it gets better.
It might well get worse, at least until McCourt gets it through his thick skull that nobody can run a successful baseball franchise without the backing of the team’s fans.
Man, I wish I could look Frank McCourt in the eyes and tell him I hate him for destroying my childhood team. He claims to care about the LA community but his actions
That is how I feel about the Detroit Lions.
I hope you mean “felt” about the Lions…. they’re rid of Matt Millen, and have improved each year since the year that should not be mentioned….
As a bears fan the lions scare me. The d line of shu and the new guy are going to be scary. They just need a new qb because what’s his face is already done due to injuries.
The Lions ruined my childhood! Pathetic!
This reminds me so much of what the Wilpons did to Liverpool FC.
Say what you will about McCourt-but lay a lot of this mess at the feet of Selig, and I’m talking about before now. McCourt never really had much more than smoke and mirrors money, and owning and funding a baseball team, even being sleazy and all, was going to be a problem for him. Selig and MLB baseball should have known that.
How does the commissioner appoint someone that worked for Jamie McCourt to oversee the team right now? Uh, Mr. Freeman, you want to run the Dodgers? Okay, sure, you’re good. That act alone is (and I actually don’t blame him if he’s furious about that) guaranteed to bring out the worst in Frank McCourt. If he’s going down, he’s going to kick and raise a stink, and make it a cage match.
This thing is going to get real ugly.
He never should have been able to buy the team in the first place. He never did have the money to afford it and then when he finally did get the banks to pay for it he took millions from the team for personal use. The league needs to make sure their owners have the money to sustain a team before letting them buy it.
Paging mark Cuban.
Can any McCourt bashers explain to me how the Dodgers managed to become significantly more successful under his watch than under the previous ownership? Can 4 postseason appearances in 7 years under his watch really be a fluke? I don’t consider myself a fan of his, but I think he HAD to have been doing something right. The numbers speak for themselves…
HE didn’t do anything right, Logan White’s draft picks finally showed up and yielded several key players. Kemp Kershaw Martin Loney and what was a good Broxton. Couple that with a very lucky Ned Colletti, a weak Western Division and there you have it
That might explain 08 and 09, but none of the above were in the majors in 04, and some were barely rookies in 06. Were those years flukes?
The
Dodgers success really had nothing to do with McCourt. Dan Evans,
Logan White and a couple others basically built our farm system from the
bottom up before McCourt had control. So, Kemp, C Bills, Martin, Broxton among others are all
pre-mccourt. I’d give him credit for, in his first offseason, handing
the keys to Depodesta who steered the team on the correct route.
McCourt basically bought the franchise as it was going on an upswing.
The farm was stocked, and eventually, it was gonna pay off
Yeah…what was a good farm system. the McCourts killed the dodgers from the roots. The farm system is dead and its going to be a while before the Dodges blossom again.
what angers me is how much talent was just plain let go for nothing. Hanrahan never got a chance and was treated as organizational depth…he would have been useful given a chance. James McDonald traded for a month of Dotel was ridiculous. Edwin Jackson was so young to be given up on and of course he’s come around. The dodgers could have used him instead of going out and signing retreads like the brett tomko’s of the world as 5’th starters. Yes he would have been up and down but they gave up after a few ugly outings. Sandy Kuofax wouldn’t have stayed a dodger under those circumstances.
Hopefully, when the dusts settles, the dodgers will do things with the long term health of the club in mind (not that the dodgers didnt make mistake pre mccourt, but their hearts were mostly in the right place).
Luis – I’ll forgive you for this one, as you obviously haven’t been following the Dodgers that closely.
I’ve watched every Dodgers game since 2001, so I think I follow them closely enough. My point stands that the Dodgers have been more successful under McCourt than they were under News Corp. If people are going to credit Logan White for the farm system, then it makes more sense to me that Colletti be blamed before McCourt. McCourt showed a willingness to spend big bucks before, Colletti just spent them on the wrong players (Pierre, Schmidt, Andruw Jones come to mind). Add the aforementioned trading of McDonald for a disastrous rental in Dotel, and I think Colletti would deserve to get the boot before McCourt.
My apologies sir.
Agree with you on Colletti, but it wasn’t him that was diverting team funds for his kids, mansions, haircuts, limo drivers, etc. Colletti it can easily be argued has been incompetent, but that isn’t criminal. We’ll save that word for McCourt.
You realize the owner has little to nothing to do with the actual team it’s all about the gms and farm directors drafting and developing players and free agent signings
I agree he did some things correctly, but they won despite McCourt to a great extent. As all the other people explained all the prospects that won for the dodgers were already drafted by previous ownership. He left Logan White and Kim Ng alone. White can draft and Ng can handle an arbitration case. As another states, I also believe he started trading talent to keep payroll down, the Arc De Triumph being the trade that got Casey Blake here. He mortgaged talent just as much as he mortgaged the dodgers’ finances.
as much as i hate the dodgers and as much of a dickweed as mccourt is, i gotta look at the wilpon/mets situation and think mccourt is getting shafted by selig here.
The Wilpons are at least able to pay their players.
McCourt getting shafted? Hardly. He bought an MLB team for “no-money down” (or thereabouts) and over the course of 7 or 8 years, sucked out in the neighborhood of $200-$300 million. Still, if he were to sell the team today at value, he’d come out with money. Meanwhile, he reduced security at Dodger Stadium (all but eliminating uniformed officers) and allowed a gang-mentality to take over the cheaps seats.
And, John, if you talked to McCourt right now, he’d almost certainly tell you that he is most beloved by all Dodger fans. Then he’d tell you to look “over there!” and grab your wallet and run.
I can’t believe how many people actually think this dirtbag is somehow being mistreated.
He’s not getting shafted. The Mets situation really is different than the Dodgers. There is no way a franchise like the Dodger should ever be struggling to make a payroll, especially as low as it is for their market. And Frank claims the only thing keeping him from making that payroll is that baseball won’t approve his deal with Fox to get an advance on a contract three years from now to pay his bills now.
The Dodgers are getting shafted by Frank McCourt.
The Wilpons are next.
When McCourt bought the Dodgers, the team had already been built to win. He inherited all the young players on the team at that time except for one, while the rest of the players were working their way up through the minor league system. Either came to the Dodgers in a trade and Ramirez fell in his lap. Tell me where are all the players the team drafted when McCourt has been in charge of this team and also where are all the foreign player he signed? You guessed it, the Dodgers were dead last in signing of foreign players in all of baseball last year. They have only three position players who have any possibility of making the majors in the next two years and who knows if they will be any good. McCourt has used up all of his money and the Dodgers money, including the next two and a half years of the TV contracts. Remember the Dodgers were always in the top 3 in attendance in baseball. All of baseball want to know where did all the money went. Hopefully within a month, we will all know what has been going on with this problem of him having no money at a time that he should be in good standing.
It’s weird because I kind of agree and kind of disagree with you at the same time.
Despite my shared loathing of mccourt with you, i hadn’t thought to revisit the history of the team through the recent news’ lenses, and having done so I’m sure this guy probably meant well at the start, got greedy, had a bunch of people tell him what he wanted to hear, got a bit of a big head and slowly started to achieve the hubris and greed of a tragic hero which brought down the organization. Like an addict it probably started slowly and got worse and worse until it was unmistakeable to the outside.
I don’t think it was doomed/bad from the start and that he was even a bad guy from the start. I think CA/local stardom changed him and pushed him down the wrong path like a VH1 behind the music episode, except he doesn’t have any inherent talent to remake his fortune by going out on tour ha ha.
McCourt used property with a $30 million lien on it as collateral on a loan from Fox to buy the Dodgers, and then defaulted on the loan. The team should have been taken from him then.
McCourt never had the money to run the team properly in the first place. Selig is correcting his earlier mistake. Go Bud
There is no “i” in “run”. Wait, yes there is when it comes to Fort McCrank!