So Who Hasn’t Expressed Ownership Interest Yet?
November 2, 2011 at 7:04 pm | Posted in ownership | 39 Comments
It’s been barely 24 hours since news broke that Frank McCourt would be willing to sell the Dodgers (hours in which we’ve tripled the previous one-day traffic record here, thanks largely to links at Grantland and the New York Times, and a reminder that if the McCourt disaster was good for one thing, it was blogging) and the silly season has already gotten started as far as potential owners.
Maybe Peter O’Malley will come back. Former Dodgers Steve Garvey & Orel Hershiser are reportedly preparing a bid, which must mean that a competing bid from Chad Fonville & Wilton Guerrero is just around the corner. Former owners and players not enough? How about former GM Fred Claire, who says he’s putting together a group with former A’s exec Andy Dolich. We could hold out hope that Mark Attanasio wants to ditch Milwaukee to come back to Los Angeles. Or perhaps Dennis Gilbert, long thought to be a top suitor. Maybe Fox or Time Warner want to buy in order to get the television rights. We could see Mark Cuban try again for MLB approval. Or if not him, perhaps other billionaires like Alec Gores, Eli Broad, Ron Burkle, or Larry Ellison. Or maybe that Chinese money will find its way back around.
And that’s just in one day. The point is, over the coming weeks and months, you’re going to be hearing the names of every egomaniacal Angelino with a heartbeat and either a fat bank account or friends who do floated in rumors about possibly acquiring the team. It’s going to be fun, and more than a little bit crazy.
Let’s just remember what we want from an owner. Jon Weisman has a solid list at Dodger Thoughts today, and if I can add one or two items that may be a bit unpopular with some fans, it’d be this: I don’t really care if the new owner is a “true Dodger”, and I don’t care if they’re even from Los Angeles. For my money, nothing matters more to me than having an owner that is well-funded, wants to win, and treats the franchise and fans with respect, not as their own personal plaything. That’s a big black mark for me against a Garvey group, because he’s had more than his share of scandals, and simply having played for the team decades ago doesn’t add anything for me. This is the same argument I’ve had with people about hiring Dodger managers, too, and it’s the same argument I’ll keep having as I can already see people getting behind the Garvey idea.
As for the issue of an owner being from Los Angeles, I certainly understand the emotion behind that. The McCourts blew into town and ruined an institution. Absolutely. I just think that’s more because they’re truly awful people than because of where they’re from; this could have just as easily happened if they were from Brentwood rather than Brookline. Look around the bigs, anyway – I doubt you’ll see too many Brewer fans upset because Attanasio isn’t from Wisconsin, or Red Sox fans unhappy with the John Henry era, even though he grew up a Cardinals fan in Illinois and had ownership pieces in two other MLB clubs before Boston. I get that everyone wants a Mike Ilitch, a hometown boy made good who grew up to rescue his childhood team, and if that happens here then fantastic, but it just doesn’t always work that way. (Yes, I’m biased for obvious reasons. Sue me.)
I don’t really have a preference yet on the list of names above (other than not wanting a corporation like Time Warner). O’Malley is intriguing, I suppose, and Cuban & Attanasio are probably wonderful pipe dreams. It’s really too soon to have an informed opinion, especially with interest levels varying and financial backing uncertain. Let’s just hope this is done the right way, that MLB doesn’t repeat the initial mistake that got us here in the first place, and that we can finally start acting like we’re merely baseball fans again sometime soon.
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i would like to buy the dodgers
Comment by dingers— November 2, 2011 #
I would also like this.
Comment by Mike— November 2, 2011 #
Gentlemen! Time we start pooling our resources. Ive got $5. What you got?
Comment by Eephus Blue— November 2, 2011 #
I have about $12 left on a $20 In-N-Out gift card my mom gave me.
Comment by Willers— November 2, 2011 #
I have two 50 cent pieces that the local Rubio’s won’t accept when I buy a burrito for lunch. And a few stamps.
Comment by Jeff M.— November 2, 2011 #
May I please buy the Dodgers, unca Bud? I promise I won’t break ‘em.
Comment by scareduck— November 2, 2011 #
Seth and Rob.. i cannot allow you to buy the Dodgers… Mike you can’t be GM.. my Dodger blog content would suffer.. sorry… you have more important responsibilities
Comment by dpwtv— November 2, 2011 #
I believe that this blog gets so popular from the ownership controversy and future sale that the new owner will have no choice but to name Mike GM for the 2012 season. Sorry Ned.
Comment by Bob— November 2, 2011 #
No matter who comes in as owner, the silver lining is that Ned colletti will finally be on his way out.
Comment by Greg— November 2, 2011 #
Personally I say be careful what you wish for with mark cuban. He spent relatively lavishly in Dallas but in a sport with a spending cap. Sure, it’s a soft cap and he went over it but LA should be spending Yankees or Red Sod type money based on its market size and there’s just no indication that cuban will be one who wins at all costs.
Comment by Greg— November 2, 2011 #
I think that’s exactly who Cuban is. He cares so much that he sometimes says dumb things. But he wants to win so badly that it makes him crazy.
Comment by Bip— November 2, 2011 #
Which is exactly why i don’t want him. Do you think that he would have hesitated to trade Kershaw away in an attempt to win a few years ago? Yuo can’t trust desperate owners/GMs with a farm system
Comment by Taylor Maricle— November 3, 2011 #
Just because he’s desperate doesn’t mean he’s stupid. I don’t think his mentality is “now or never.”
Comment by Bip— November 3, 2011 #
With this logic he would have traded Dirk when the Mavericks kept struggling to win and before Dirk developed that ridiculous stroke of his.
A more apt question would be: “Would he trade Eithier (a non-franchise type player)?” The answer would be a resounding yes, as would most of us if we could get talent in return. As Bip indicated, Cuban is desperate to win but he has never shown himself make willy-nilly (yes I’m bringing that back) decisions just to do it (ala me whenever i start a new franchise in MLB the Show)
Comment by SV Narine— November 3, 2011 #
What he has really shown in his NBA track record is he likes new toys. He would be like an 80′s Stienbrenner, he would always be in the bidding for the top free agent, making moves at the trade deadline, etc. The only thing that would suffer would be the draft picks surrendered. After the last seven years that would be like paradise.
The one thing I hope does change with a new owner is more money spend on international player scouting, signing, and development. McCourt cut that to the bone and the farm needs to be stocked by more than just the draft.
Comment by west coast ram— November 3, 2011 #
Actually, Cuban has not shown himself to be like a Steinbrenner, a “win at all costs” type of owner. Cuban has clearly telegraphed his intentions both with the Cubs and the Dodgers that he views this (as well as the Mavericks) as a _business_, first and foremost. Is he passionate about the team that he owns? Sure, but I bet you it’s the same level of passion he has for all his other ventures/toys and at the end of the day, it all comes back to business for him.
Cuban owns a team in a sport with a salary cap, no such thing exists in the MLB.
Comment by Greg— November 3, 2011 #
Mike do you have your ownership team together yet? I was wonderin how to buy in…
Comment by Jon#7#22— November 2, 2011 #
Oh and love the random Chad Fonville comment hilarious!
Comment by Jon#7#22— November 2, 2011 #
The best choice to run the Dodgers would be Peter O’malley. We need someone who has longstanding ties to the organization, and will continue to retain Dodger tradition at all costs. O’malley would be wonderful.
Comment by format— November 2, 2011 #
Do you think Cuban would be slick enough to be the money behind O’malley it would make it hard for Bud to say no
Comment by jeff— November 2, 2011 #
Love the Idea, but would Cuban’s ego allow him to share the spotlight? I dont see him as the type to stand silently in the background while O’Malley soaks up most of the spotlight…
Comment by CarolinaBlues— November 3, 2011 #
Our new GM should be these manatees.
http://media.mtvnservices.com/mgid:cms:item:southparkstudios.com:103666Cartoon Wars Part IIGet More: SOUTHPARKmore…
Comment by Paul— November 2, 2011 #
I don’t think the preference that a new owner be someone from LA is just an emotional issue. A lot of it has to do with wishing for someone who is familiar with and genuinely knows the team. We’ve had quite a few imports in the last couple decades, from owners to general managers to field managers, and part of their failure was that they didn’t know as much about the team as many fans who had spent years watching them. And in the end anyway, isn’t the major issue making the fans happy? Part of what would make many fans happy is that management is- in one sense or another- one of them. I’m not saying it should be a requirement, but that it’s a legitimate factor.
Comment by Ray— November 2, 2011 #
“And in the end anyway, isn’t the major issue making the fans happy?”
You know what would make me really happy? Winning! I don’t care if the manager is Sideshow Bob and the owner is Krusty the Clown. If the Dodgers go the World Series, all is forgiven.
Comment by Jeff M.— November 2, 2011 #
World Championships under the O’Malleys–6
World Championships under everyone else–0
Comment by SamAdams— November 3, 2011 #
“A lot of it has to do with wishing for someone who is familiar with and genuinely knows the team…. part of their failure was that they didn’t know as much about the team as many fans who had spent years watching them.”
I don’t get what this means. We need someone from Los Angeles so that he’ll be familier with Kemp from Oklahoma and Kershaw from Texas and Ethier from Arizona? Fans know more about the team than people in baseball who probably have studied all of those players in order to improve their own teams?
Comment by Bip— November 2, 2011 #
Don’t forget the average fan doesn’t even know much at all, they think Ethier is a Gold Glover and Loney is an All-Star who should move to 3B and pitch every 5th day.
Comment by DodgersKings323— November 4, 2011 #
Personally, I think the ultimate pipedream of all pipedreams is that Magic Johnson puts a group together and buys the Dodgers. That would be kind of freakin’ amazing.
And as always Mike, excellent work!
Comment by Matthew Faris— November 3, 2011 #
Number one priority for me is someone who respects the tradition. It’s gonna leave a real bad taste in my mouth if this time next year the new owner announces he’s gonna demolish Chavez Revine, put up luxury condos and build a “modern” cookie cutter stadium next to the Staples Center (Remember there was at least one bidder in the mix last time who planned to do exactly that) My second priority is a tie between deep pockets and desire to win, after coming off an owner with neither of these traits, an owner with just one of them would be nice, but I really think both are equally important. so based on that here’s my short list of owners I’d prefer.
1 O’Malley (provided his investors together are in the Eli Broad range of multi billion net worth, if they are only Cuban/Attanasio level rich he may drop to second on my list behind Broad)
2 Broad – the man is just obscenely rich, to put it in context, he could buy Mark Cuban, twice. And STILL have enough left over to buy the dodgers, even at Frankrupt’s ridiculous asking price. What would Broad do with his two Mark Cuban’s after he bought them? That’s really up to him… have them make a late night visit to ump’s houses after they blow a call in a game. sure? Have then go out and argue bad calls instead of Mattingly so they can get ejected instead of him? Great, the only problem is Mattingly would still probably have to argue for himself from the third inning on because the Cuban’s will probably break Bobby Cox’s career ejections mark by roughly the all star break… Or maybe we could put them in the two seats right behind home plate like the umpire guys and just have them go off on everything not wearing Dodger Blue at the top of their lungs for the whole game… or my personal favorite have the Cuban’s buy Comedy central, rename it Colbert Central and run nothing but 24 hours of Steven Colbert and the Two Cubans hating on anything and everything that is anti-Dodger.
back on topic 3 – Cuban. If I cant get my evil Cuban twins to run amuck against all of our enemies, I will settle for one rabid Cuban running amuck of MLB, but the major drawback that I see to Cuban (and its not the same thing everyone else dislikes about him) I actually love his attitude, he reminds me of another Owner who’s organization I hate but who I have to begrudgingly have a lot of respect for, George Steinbrenner. (Albeit with much shallower pockets and much rougher edges) There’s a quote of Steinbrenners that I love. “Winning is the most important thing in life, breathing is pretty good too. Breathing first, Winning Second.” I’m quoting from memory so I’m pretty sure that’s not word for word, but its close enough. guys like Steinbrenner and Cuban get a lot of flak, but I have a ton of respect for them because they run their teams the exact same way I would if I ever got the chance to own a major league team. Winning is the most important thing, everything else comes second (except breathing…) so on to what I don’t like about Cuban. I don’t like that his time and resources will be split between two professional franchises, and I know that their seasons run roughly opposite of each other, I just worry about him trying to spend the money to keep the Mav’s winning championships AND spending the money to get the Dodgers to the championship caliber team they ought to be at the same time. I like Cuban and I’d hate to see him get in a McCourt esque mess by stretching himself too thin. If he intends to sell the Mav’s if he gets the Dodgers or he brings another Billion or so from other investors into the picture while still having the controlling share of ownership, he’s definitely move up the list. The Heart and Desire is there, I just don’t know about the Wallet…
4 – Attanasio, move him up to second or possibly first if he can get some more money on board, I really like that he is a local guy, and a baseball guy, and the fact that he is already in the MLB inner circle means a transition could be really fast and new ownership could be in place a lot faster than expected (that is of course if MLB is ok with the Brewers possibly being ownerless for a while) the major downside here is he is definitely the smallest kid in the sandbox when it comes to his bankroll, he’s worth almost half a billion less than Cuban, and his current net worth of 700 B is even less than the most conservative sale estimates we’ve heard, 800 B, and if figures do get up into the 1-1.2 B range He’ll likely have to come in with a significant amount of debt… but if he can get a group together and get about another 1B of money to back him up, I’m all for it, move ‘em to the top of the list.
My most important requisite is keeping Dodger Stadium and keeping the tradition (Is it a pipe dream to want Vero Beach back?) Three of these guys seem pretty safe in this front, Cuban being the wild card because you just never know what the hell he’s gonna do, but as I’m thinking more and more about it, I really do think I want a group, with someone that cares about the history of the tam and winning at the front, and lots of extremely loaded people backing him up…
Comment by CarolinaBlues— November 3, 2011 #
As Mike said, I don’t care who or what owns this team as long as they have deep pockets. With such emphasis on the past, a new owner will respect “tradition”. Hell, McCourt did during his tenure. They aren’t gonna roll Tommy Lasorda out into the stadium parking lot and rape him with marinara sauce (at least I hope not). I know we all have bad tastes in our mouth from Fox basically screwing over many past Dodgers. McCourt for all his crappiness tried to bring back the tradition, bringing back many Dodgers of yore and really healing some old wounds there. He deserves credit for that. When we talk about “tradition” what we really mean is winning and spending money on big free agents. I am cool with that too. But it doesn’t have to be an Angelino, or a former Dodger to get us there. The most important thing is that the new owner have deep enough pockets and a smart baseball acumen (this will in turn mean that he respects the “tradition” that everyone keeps patting their boners over). If the new owner’s first move isn’t firing Colletti then we may be in trouble. Perhaps we can trade him to the Oriels for Adam Jones.
Comment by SV Narine— November 3, 2011 #
“When we talk about “tradition” what we really mean is winning and spending money on big free agents. ”
Actually, when you reference the Dodgers, “tradition” means something more specific than that: It means winning with players whom your organization developed. Branch Rickey laid the groundwork for that, and it’s a reputation that the Dodgers preserved just about all the way through the O’Malley family’s ownership I’m sure a lot of folks are a little too young to remember this, but the “Dodgers way” used to be scouting and developing young talent better than just about anyone else.
So expensive free agents are not really part of Dodgers tradition. In fact. when free agency first emerged, the Dodgers (Al Campanis was GM then, IIRC) pointedly refused to bid on marquee free agents, preferring to rely on players raised within the organization. When they finally broke down, it did not work out well (i.e., Don Stanhouse) at first.
Thanks to Logan White, we’ve seen something of the old Dodgers way return. And acquiring Ethier in exchange for Milton Bradley was a shrewd move worthy of old Trader Al himself. But now, what the organization really needs is responsible, reliable ownership that will invest in finding and developing more Kershaws and Kemps, and that can be counted on to keep them once they become eligible for free agency.
Comment by Douglas Sun— November 3, 2011 #
Exactly! The Dodgers used to be the leaders in new ways to find and develop players – the most obvious example is breaking the color barrier, but also Branch Rickey invented the farm system and the Dodgers were the first to invest heavily in scouting Latin America and Asia. All of that has subsided since O’Malley sold the team.
Comment by Dave Pomerantz— November 3, 2011 #
I’m not necessarily advocating a corporate owner but just to play devil’s advocate Time Warner owned the Braves from ’96 to ’07. That worked out pretty well. If you scale the payroll to the market/revenue I think Dodger fans would take that.
Comment by Warren— November 3, 2011 #
If one accepts the funamental truth that Selig wanted McCourt out due to his financial mismanagement and image issues due to the divorce, then it would not be a stretch to believe that Selig has the best interests of the NEW Dodgers in mind. However, if one digs deeper and understands the ultimate goal of MLB is to stabilize the debt service crisis, then the new owner would have just as little autonomy as McCourt did especially as regards the media rights, which seem fundamentally at the core of these proceedings. Yet, there is another proposition altogether, one that is far more ominous, and that is Bud Selig’s essential animus to the Los Angeles Dodgers themselves. Whether urban myth or not, there are many stories regarding O’Malley and Selig’s epic battles regarding large and small market philosophies. Are we seeing a form of collective punishment being issued from Selig, a mano a mano shackle placed around the head of the second largest Baseball market in the world due to one man’s insult. While the concept boggles the mind, the autonomy of the Dodgers will always be in question as long as Bud Selig has executive fiat.
Comment by Anthony Forkush— November 3, 2011 #
Mr. Forkush, I’ve seen your nonsensical ramblings here and on dodgerdivorce.com, and they’ve intrigued me. I’ve gone back and looked at a bunch of them, and your Facebook page, and you have continually predicted the opposite of what actually happened at every twist and turn the saga has taken. It’s actually quite impressive – even a broken clock is right twice a day, and you’ve avoided that. Less than a week ago, you predicted McCourt would get his Fox contract approved and keep the team. Nice work, buddy!
You’ve also said things like “I want to thank every single one of you who have stooped to personal attacks on me as a person, whom you have never met, literally know nothing about who I am or what I do, and have developed a prejudice about that is literally terrifying. The fact that I have shown total restraint, have never responded in kind, is one of the proudest things I have ever done,” while claiming Selig is suffering from dementia and ripping Bill Shaiken for every FACT he reported, almost all of which came out to be true. We DO know a little about what you do: You post nonsensical conspiracy theories on the internet, probably mostly to get a rise out of people. I believe it’s called “trolling” and you’re either the best troller I’ve ever seen, or the single dumbest human being capable of using the internet.
Comment by Dave Pomerantz— November 3, 2011 #
I don’t have a preference or pretend to know who would be better than others, but Dennis Gilbert intrigues me. Supposedly a huge Dodgers fan, he attends most games. Plus, being an ex agent makes me think he would be smart enough to not screw the team he owns. Any who it will be fun when we see potential owners emerge.
Comment by Gillbert— November 3, 2011 #
+1 don’t care, just be respectable and build us up the old school way, we should be duking it out with the Cardinals for the class of the NL.
Comment by DodgersKings323— November 4, 2011 #
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