Madder, como no hace mucho intercambiamos mensajes en el que hablabas que los dueños de los Green Bay Packers eran sus aficionados, pienso que este articulo sobretodo lo que va en rojo te va a gustar... Ojala asi sea y Ojala que en España hubiera un "guardian" como ese del beibol americano para separar a los Cara8 de este Mundo de los Clubs que caen en sus garras. Este McCourt es un Cara8 cualquiera..., me parefe estar leyendo la historia del Atleti bajo la gilMafia en Ingles... claro que McCourt si pago por las acciones de los Dodgers..., es que como Chorizos nadie gana a los nuestros!
The Demise of the Dodgers
Frank McCourt bled the franchise dry before baseball officials
finally stepped in. Buzz Bissinger on why the arrogant owner is even
worse than you think.
There is simply no way to say with any degree of artfulness so I won’t
even try:
Los Angeles Dodgers’ owner Frank McCourt is a vile piece of *** who not
only ruined what was once the classiest franchise in all of sports but
should also face legal consequences if
allegations are true that he did reportedly not pay any taxes on
$105 million he siphoned from the Dodgers’ for his own personal use.
Ruthless. Litigious. Nasty. Dishonest. That’s just a small smattering of
the descriptions that the media have applied to McCourt, prima facie
proof that all professional sports teams, like the Green Bay Packers,
should be community-owned so fans don’t have to witness the destruction
of an institution they love.
Some are saying they are shocked by Wednesday’s news of Major League
Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig appointing a trustee to take over
operations of the Dodgers. Given McCourt’s track record, I have no idea
why. Perhaps the most vigorous defense in his favor comes from Tommy
Lasorda, a profane
clown when he managed the Dodgers and even more of a profane clown
on the talk circuit. Lasorda says McCourt really loves the Dodgers,
which is like saying that Hannibal Lecter really loved his victims
before he ate their livers.
There is precedent for the
commissioner to force an owner out of baseball if he is killing the
franchise. All Dodger Blue does now is bleed the red of humiliation and
shame because of Frank McCourt.
McCourt’s face is a Rorschach of arrogant vanity, the perfectly coiffed
white hair falling just above the ear on the sides and of fashionable
length in the back, the sunglasses concealing the narrow eyes deep in
squirrelly thought on ways to squeeze more money out of the franchise by
raising ticket prices and lowering payroll.
There is speculation that Selig will actually try to force a sale of the
Dodgers under the “best interests of baseball” clause, something he
threatened with the Texas Rangers. The debt on the Dodgers is about $430
million, and the last straw for Selig came when McCourt took out a $30
million personal loan
to make payroll.
Club vice chairman Steve Soboroff described Selig’s actions to reporters
Thursday as “irresponsible,” citing a 20-year television contract with
Fox valued at $3 billion. But the Dodgers have no credibility, and Selig
is not one to make unnecessary waves.
Selig is clearly embarrassed by the allegations that have come out in divorce
proceedings from his estranged wife Jamie McCourt, which revealed
the millions that were reportedly taken from the Dodgers for personal
use. In a court filing in 2009, McCourt said his liquid assets were less
than $1.2 million and that he never used any money from the Dodgers'
franchise for personal expenses. But other court documents indicate
otherwise. Some of those uses are said to have included:
The hiring
of two sons of the McCourts for a total of $600,000, even though it
appears they may have done virtually no work for that money, something
the IRS is reportedly investigating."
$150,000 a year on haircuts.
Seven country clubs.
Two homes in Malibu for $46 million and two in Holmby Hills for $26.5
million.
Most owners are and always will be insecure nerds no matter how many
hundreds of millions they have inherited from their daddies for fun and
games. It goes back to when they were kids, picked for baseball only
because they owned not only all the bats and balls and bases but also a
perfectly manicured stadium with a retractable roof.
At least most baseball owners like baseball, but I don’t think McCourt
ever did. The elegant legacy of the Dodgers, stretching back into the
days of Brooklyn and the leadership of Branch Rickey and then Walter
O’Malley, meant nothing to him. As article after article indicates, his
real interest was to develop
a parking lot the Dodgers owned into a football stadium and other
commercial property.
It is inaccurate to say that the Dodgers have not had success under the
McCourt reign of self-enrichment: The team has made the playoffs four
times. But as ESPN the Magazine pointed out, the credit belongs to
General Manager Ned Colletti, who creatively structured deals to bring
in free agents as McCourt lowered the team payroll from roughly $120
million to $95 million.
If Selig made a bold move in wresting day-to-day control of the Dodgers,
he also made a terrible one in ever allowing McCourt to buy the team in
the first place. But in the endless conflict of interest that is
professional sports, it actually made perfect sense since Rupert Murdoch
and Fox Entertainment, which televises MLB games, was fissuring
millions on the team and wanted out. McCourt’s hatred for baseball was
palpable—in trying to buy the Red Sox at one point he had plans to tear
down Fenway and build a new stadium—but Selig ignored such
sentiment in the best interests of Rupert.
McCourt purchased the team from Fox in 2004 for $431 million in a highly
leveraged transaction. To do it, he reportedly took out more than $400
million in loans. He put up as collateral his only claim to fame as a
real-estate developer in Boston: a
parking lot. But it was a perfectly situated one, since portions of
it needed to be used as a staging area for the “Big Dig” construction
project building a tunnel through Boston. The state initially paid
McCourt $30 million for 12 acres for eight years. He sued anyway,
arguing that he had lost as much as $140 million between lower parking
revenue and the ability to develop the site. In settling the suit,
McCourt got an additional $32.5 million. That comes to $62.5 million,
not bad for a no day’s work. By the time the McCourts bought the
Dodgers, the value of the parking lot had escalated to $125 million, and
that was enough to gain a $200 million loan from Fox.
The Internal Revenue Service is reportedly
looking into charges that McCourt never paid any taxes on the tens of
millions he is said to have siphoned from the Dodgers for personal use.
The IRS is also reportedly investigating the hiring of the two sons, one
getting his MBA at Stanford University at the time and the other
working at Goldman Sachs.
My guess is nothing will come of it. McCourt will do what he was meant
to do in life: Spend millions on legal fees to reduce IRS investigators
into a state of delirium and surrender.
It is a good guess as well that McCourt has already hired an entire law
firm to sue Selig. But baseball can and should steam ahead. There is
precedent for the commissioner to force an owner out of baseball if he
is killing the franchise. All Dodger Blue does now is bleed the red of
humiliation and shame because of Frank McCourt.
Class has become crass. Tradition has been trashed. The time has come to
tell this *** to find himself another parking lot.
Buzz Bissinger, a sports columnist for The Daily Beast, is a Pulitzer
Prize-winning journalist and the author of Friday Night Lights and Three Nights in
August. He is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair.
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Como Atletico, el mundo del futbol es cada dia más insoportable; la gilMAFIA, los Representantes Prestamistas, las Peñas Calleras, la Aficion Pipera, el Duopolio, la Liga Adulterada, la RFEF, la LFP, los Arbitros, la Nauseabunda Prensa Complice y lo que faltaba, Pandemia de Papistas más Papistas que el Papa.
Como persona, la situacion economica y sociopolitica internacional es, si cabe, aún mas nauseabunda que la del Atleti, PERO... El Mundo actual, segun lo conocemos, desaparecerá. El presente nivel de concientización humano, por si mismo, ya no puede resolver las complejidades que ha creado. 21/12/2012 Ya viene llegando...
!SALUDOS ROJiblancos! ¡AUPA ATLETI! ¡FUERA LA gilMAFIA, FUERA YA!
