100 Things Dodgers Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die (31 page)

92. The McCourt Ownership

By 2003, News Corp. had achieved its goals of using the Dodgers as a lynchpin for its burgeoning Fox sports cable network, but the franchise, as business writer James Bates noted in the
Los Angeles Times,
was gushing red ink. “The Dodgers' $54.5-million deficit (in 2001) was baseball's biggest. The team hasn't turned a profit in nearly a decade. Despite higher attendance, a lower payroll, and an improved on-field performance, the Dodgers this year expect to lose $41 million. That's $13 every time a fan walks through a turnstyle.” Though this was all relative for a megacorporation with revenue in the billions, the forecast wasn't any more appealing for Fox than it was for the O'Malley family five years earlier. Dodgers fans, who hadn't seen a playoff appearance since the O'Malley days and knew full well that it wasn't a top priority, had had about all they could stand from News Corp. head Rupert Murdoch's ownership as well.

That year, Boston real estate magnate Frank McCourt reached an agreement to buy the team in October, but the initial excitement over a return to family ownership dissipated even before the papers were signed. General manager Dan Evans had lined up the free agent acquisition of a Hall of Fame candidate in his prime, right fielder Vladimir Guerrero, but baseball commissioner Bud Selig discouraged the signing out of fear that the Dodgers would spend too excessively, and McCourt appeased him. Speculation also abounded that McCourt was only interested in buying the Dodgers as a means to owning the valuable Chavez Ravine territory, which he could then develop and/or flip for profit—that was how he made his money, after all. The terms of McCourt's highly leveraged purchase, which showed that he had borrowed about as much as the purchase price, did little to diminish the speculation.

As it turned out, McCourt and his wife, team president Jamie McCourt, committed to Dodger Stadium, instituting a series of renovations (some good, some less so) that essentially guaranteed baseball would be played there for years and years to come. Further, McCourt repeatedly voiced a commitment to bringing a World Series title back to Los Angeles, asserting that the city deserved no less. He raised the player payroll to unprecedented levels.

But the McCourt era became more tumultuous than the News Corp./Fox age by degrees. First, McCourt cleaned house almost like an obsessive housekeeper. Within McCourt's first month, Evans was told he had to interview for his own job (not surprisingly, he was replaced), setting the tone for widespread turnover within the organization. Employees up and down the ladder were fired, even as the team reached the NL playoffs in McCourt's first year. In 2005, when the Dodgers fell to their worst season in 13 years, McCourt approved second-year GM Paul DePodesta's firing of manager Jim Tracy and then, in the same month, the firing of DePodesta himself. Ned Colletti became the team's third general manager in three years. Grady Little replaced Jim Tracy as manager—and two years later, Little was replaced in clumsy “Did he quit? Was he fired?” fashion by Joe Torre.

McCourt's relationship with the fans became similarly chaotic, because in the name of building up the product and, to his credit, making the Dodgers profitable again, no owner in Dodgers history was ever so aggressive in increasing the cost of attending a Dodgers game, on all fronts: tickets, parking, food, and concessions.

 

 

Boston real estate magnate Frank McCourt and his wife, team president Jamie McCourt (pictured with Tommy Lasorda).

 

And just when it seemed it couldn't get any crazier…

October 2009. The Dodgers are in the playoffs for the second year in a row. And news starts to break that Frank and Jamie McCourt are splitting. What seemed like a distraction soon developed into the most protracted upheaval the franchise had borne in Los Angeles. Instead of settling their future behind the scenes, Frank and Jamie declared war on each other and generated the most expensive divorce in California history, an event that took 2½ years to resolve and that drove the Dodgers into filing for bankruptcy in 2011.

Soon, Frank McCourt and MLB commissioner Bud Selig were in direct conflict, battling over control of the franchise. McCourt became such a threat and nuisance that in order to get McCourt to sell the team, Selig made a deal that would ultimately allow the outgoing owner, less than a year after his pockets were empty, to walk away with more than $1 billion in profit while still retaining a financial interest in the land surrounding Dodger Stadium. Jamie ended up with $130 million in the divorce settlement, an amount that seemed huge at the time but quickly took on the appearance of cab fare compared to what Frank reaped.

For nearly three years, the saga of the McCourt ownership dominated the Dodger newsscape. Though McCourt still lurks in the shadows of the Dodgers' past—and perhaps, depending on the development of the property surrounding Dodger Stadium, the future—it was a startling relief how quickly Dodger fans moved on to their new life without him.

 

 

 

93. Gonzo Guggenheim

In 1999, Replay TV and TiVo introduced the digital video recorder at the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. It was a moment that altered the course of television history—and, in no small fashion, the history of the Dodgers.

The DVR, at a level that put the videocassette recorders of the past 20 years to shame, allowed viewers to skip commercials with ease. Television advertisers no longer could count on captive audiences for their messages. As distribution of the DVR spread, more and more people would record their comedies, dramas, and nonfiction shows for later viewing and race past the product pitches.

The notable exception to this was live programming, such as sports. While there were certainly those who would even DVR their favorite teams, it was significantly more common for viewers to watch games live, the old-fashioned way, taking their snack or bathroom breaks during some commercials as always, but not skipping them wholesale the way they would with a given week's
Lost
or
Modern Family
. Because advertisers were paying a higher premium for live content, the value of sports programming in the marketplace skyrocketed.

Dodger owner Frank McCourt, for all his faults, knew what was coming. His mission, following his split from his wife, Jamie, was to hang onto the Dodgers long enough to negotiate a new deal for the Dodgers' local cable TV rights with Fox or a Fox competitor, a deal for which estimates began at $150 million per year and quickly grew. Much of the legal wrangling in the final year of his ownership of the team revolved not around Jamie, but attempts to lock in those TV dollars. However, MLB commissioner Bud Selig sniffed out McCourt's game and snuffed out his attempts to cut a deal with Fox while the team was in bankruptcy, reasonably concluding that there was no way to ensure McCourt wouldn't pocket the TV loot for his personal use. On November 1, 2011, McCourt finally gave in—agreeing to sell the Dodgers—with the important condition that he would be allowed to select the winning bid from the groups approved by Selig. At the time, it was speculated that the sale price
might
be more than $1 billion.

Sensing there was gold in them thar Chavez Ravine hills, however, bidders of different stripes circled the team, with ownership groups including such familiar names as Steve Garvey, Orel Hershiser, Peter O'Malley, Fred Claire, and Joe Torre. But others with no experience in Dodger blue also dove into the exploratory process.

As the bidders narrowed down, everyone knew the crowning moment was drawing near. Appropriately enough, however, the final moment came as a shock. On March 27, 2012, it was announced that a group fronted by beloved NBA legend Magic Johnson but led by controlling partner Mark Walter had made the buy for
$2.15 billion
, nearly doubling the previous record for a U.S. sports franchise. At first, people didn't really know what to call them, but they came to be known as the Guggenheim Group, after the global financial services firm topped by Walter.

The purchase generated relief among many Dodger fans but also no small amount of skepticism about the sanity of the purchase price and fear that the franchise would quickly slip into another debtor's prison. But the TV money indicated otherwise. Once that new deal was guaranteed, the Dodgers' latest owners had their key revenue stream in place for years and years to come. The entire story was worthy of a television special, one the new Dodger owners no doubt would be happy to DVR.

 

 

Resist the Suite

Let's not lie to each other. The luxury suites at Dodger Stadium…they're luxurious. Not in a five-star-hotel way, but a fair piece ahead of a seat in the stands. Food and drink at your fingertips, climate controlled, TVs a-plenty to keep tabs on other games or provide programming to occupy the less enthusiastic baseball fans in your group, even a couch for you or your kids to sack out on. And the dessert cart that rolls by before the end of the game—that actually might be five-star quality. (There's an éclair for you or your kids to snack out on.)

If you want to hang out with a bunch of friends or colleagues—one and the same if you're lucky enough—a suite at Dodger Stadium is a pretty nifty way to do it. And never let it be said that a baseball game had a greater purpose than providing a great setting to hang out.

But suites and the sport really aren't a good fit for each other. There's barely any way to enjoy both at once. To take advantage of what the suite offers is to stuff the ballgame itself into a hall closet, like the toys you hastily hid away when your mom wanted your room clean. The best vantage point for a game is in a fairly conventional seat on the balcony and requires turning your back on the suite, to the extent that it becomes just a glorified hot dog stand. And to delight in the suite's accoutrements, to wallow in them, necessarily pulls you away from the game. It just doesn't quite work.

You can stuff your face until the cows and pigs and all the other farm animals come home, you can kick back with your best pals, but a luxury suite is not a good place to watch a baseball game. If, by some stroke of upside-down fate, a suite invite happens to be your only ticket to a game, then by all means grab it. If it's 100 degrees out in the bleachers, then don't think twice about cooling off in the suite's sweet shade. Otherwise, get yourself into the regular seats in the stands. It's not about being holier-than-thou. The stands are just better.

94. Boom Goes Boomer

In grainy, staccato footage from the 1970s, one can still picture a yellow-capped meteor, Dave Parker of the Pirates, roaring toward the sturdy but vulnerable form of Dodgers catcher Steve Yeager at home plate.

Yeager had shown signs of hitting promise at the start of the decade, but had settled into a role as a stalwart defensive catcher by the prime of his career, a supporting player to the renowned Garvey-Lopes-Cey-Russell infield and Reggie Smith-Dusty Baker bejeweled outfield. Yeager rarely drew attention for his performance, except on those occasions when people questioned whether his meager offensive contributions were sufficient.

And then, every so often, someone or something would all but put Yeager's life in jeopardy, and the appreciation would register.

The most bizarre incident came in September 1976. During a Monday Night Baseball telecast, waiting in the on-deck circle as Bill Russell fouled off a pitch, Yeager suddenly crumpled to the ground. It wasn't the ball that hit him; it was a shard from Russell's broken bat, piercing an area near his esophagus. News reports placed his life in jeopardy.

Yeager recovered after emergency surgery and was back on the field inside of three weeks, even though the Dodgers had been eliminated from the pennant chase by then. In fact, to allow him to hasten his return, Yeager and trainer Bill Buhler devised a plastic flap that would hang from his catcher's mask, to protect Yeager's throat from a foul tip at what was now his most vulnerable spot. (Buhler later patented the device, which became standard issue for major league catchers.)

Though he was able to put the unique trauma of that incident behind him, Yeager (who decades later would barely escape with his life following a car accident) continued to suffer a series of body blows at home plate, hardly limited to but ably represented by the Parker collision on August 24, 1977. The footage shows the 6', 190-pound Yeager in a crouch—the throw was in plenty of time—bracing for the punishment from the 6'5", 230-pound Pirate All-Star. Upon impact, Yeager seems to explode like a landmine, then raises an arm with ball in hand like Wile E. Coyote after a canyon fall, before collapsing.

“I don't remember holding the ball up. I can remember only spots and stars,” Yeager told Ross Newhan of the
Los Angeles Times
in a barely audible voice while laid out on the trainer's table after the game, surrounded by ice. “That guy...he should be a tight end for the Rams.”

“I've seen a lot of catchers hit hard, hit violently,” Smith added, “but never before have I seen one hit by a runaway truck.”

Though Mike Scioscia inherited the role as premier plate-blocker in the 1980s, there's no denying who set the standard for the Dodgers as the last line of defense.

 

 

The Throw

The ultimate defensive play in Brooklyn Dodgers history—the biggest play in the biggest situation—was probably Sandy Amoros' catch in Game 7 of the 1955 World Series. It was the antidote to Mickey Owen and a litany of Dodgers failings, an indispensable moment preserving the Dodgers' first World Series victory.

The Los Angeles version also takes place in the outfield during a World Series, but the context only detracts from it. It came during a game the Dodgers lost, in a Series they lost. Nevertheless, if you saw it, you could never forget it, and if you didn't see it, you need to know about it.

In the opening game of the '74 World Series, Oakland led the Dodgers, 2–1, in the top of the eighth inning. Bert Campaneris singled, and Billy North sacrificed him to second base. A throwing error by Ron Cey on a Sal Bando grounder allowed Campaneris to score, with Bando going all the way around to third. Reggie Jackson, the next batter, hit a fly ball to center fielder Jimmy Wynn.

Except Wynn didn't catch it. Seemingly out of nowhere, Joe Ferguson, a catcher who sometimes dabbled in right field, rumbled in front of Wynn, intercepted the ball like a defensive back, took one step and fired a laser beam to home plate. A stunned Bando was tagged out at home by catcher Steve Yeager, thrilling the crowd and inspiring the Dodgers to a rousing victory.

Well, maybe not that last part. Some good deeds go unrewarded.