Dodger fans, let's exhale together:
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh...
Ladies and Gentlemen, McCourt will finally be deported.
Well, in spirit. Many Dodger fans will still point to the fact that he still lays a (albeit limited) claim to his sacred parking lot. To that, the Militant says: a) Don't expect the new owners, who have just signed a $2 billion check, to lower parking rates anytime soon and b) The Dodger Stadium Express is on again this year!
But with a pretty promising Spring Training, a big Golden Anniversary for The Stadium, a Cy Young Winner in the rotation and last year's stats leader who will resume Beast Mode (and was outright robbed of an MVP), it's a pretty dang good time to be a fan of the most valuable sports franchise in the world (Take that Yankees!)!
What's in store for the Dodger season? Win or lose, there's gonna be good vibes. The painful and even brutal past will be behind us. Heck, we may even hit 5 million in attendance (Only kidding, it's only statistically possible to hit some 4.6 million in the hypothetical event that all 81 home games are filled to capacity). Count on an emotional Home Opener (Just some 13 days away...) for myriad reasons, and maybe they'll let Magic throw out the first pitch, heralding the changing of the guard an ushering a new era of Dodgerism.
And to pay tribute to the Dodgers' new owner (okay, prominent co-owner, but which Angeleno sports fan cares about semantics today), The Militant offers this Red Hot Chili Peppers tune from the late '80s:
And to the outgoing Frank McCourt, who will be escorted into his helicopter before Magic's first pitch on Opening Da,y which will leave for LAX, where he will board a one-way flight back to Boston (Hey, A Militant can dream, okay?), he offers this tune:
7 comments:
Don't let the fact that Magic's group grossely overpaid for it lead anyone to believe that it's more valuable than the Yankees
Melanism: In baseball, raw stats trumps mere sentimentality every time.
Some of the first words out of Mr. Johnson's mouth were decidedly unmagical, in which he lauded McCourt for the "excellent foundation" he built with the team. BARF.
It's nice to imagine McCourt deported back to Boston, but he won't be gone long. He still owns the LA Marathon. And hell, if nothing else he's going to come back to town if for no other reason than to cruise around his Dodger Stadium parking lots like a shark in a moat.
Will: Sentiment noted but don't forget that Magic is a shrewd politician as well. In fact if he went up and said, "Yeah, thanks to that good-for-nothing motherfucker Frank Mc Court, we own this now!" that would actually be out of character for him.
For all we know he might be trying to wrest away McCourt's stake eventually, so playing nice is the best way to go about it.
Even if That Rams Guy or Dr. Evil won the bid (ack, barf), they probably wouldn't say anything that different from what Magic said.
Your sentiment is noted as well Militant, but whether Johnson was "playing nice," it would have been a shrewder play for him not to blow smoke out of the gate -- or at least choose words that wouldn't make fans call BS.
Will: The shrewder play would be to take the organization where McCourt couldn't take it: A World Series Championship.
I dunno, MA. The shrewd one here is McCourt for demolishing the team and walking away from the wreckage rewarded both with a fortune and a stake in the property. For the new ownership to turn the Dodgers around and take it into the championship territory that McCourt couldn't find because he was too busy bankrupting it doesn't seem astucious, unless they manage somehow to do it without spending another dime (which after coughing up a $2.15-billion cover charge might just be the case).
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