The Los Angeles Dodgers filed for bankruptcy protection this morning. You could kind of see this coming. Steve Soboroff who was Frank McCourts finance guy resigned over the weekend. No way he does that if he thinks McCourt would survive this. I don't pretend to know enough about bankruptcy law to know what all this means or how it will play out. Gotta think this means that the Dodgers are at least 2 steps closer to being sold to another owner. I have to say, as a Giants fan, I have mixed feelings about this. No question the Giants have benefitted from the Dodgers having a terrible owner. The line for potential multibillionaire owners in LA is long. It's really baffling how on earth a guy like McCourt got to be the owner in the first place. Whoever takes over the team, is likely to have boatloads of dough and a willingness, if not eagerness, to turn the Dodgers into the Yankees West or the Baseball Lakers.
At any rate, the Dodgers declaring bankruptcy is a huge, huge baseball story and a huge black eye for the game and for Bud Selig whose watch it occurred under. As always, it will be interesting to see how it plays out.
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bit different than the rangers bankruptcy, as they filed stating that the mlb was being unfair by not allowing the tv deal to go through
ReplyDeletewill now be up to a bankruptcy judge to determine how the dodgers are handled...not the mlb
puts the entire team in limbo
eff them
In fairness, it does seem like Selig is being disingenuous here. He claims he doesn't want the Dodgers to lose value, but the recent sale of the minority stake in the Mets clearly devalued them.
ReplyDeleteStill, the McCourts, both of them, seem like extremely corrupt and....well....just plain bad people who deserve to both be walking the streets when this is all over.
Kinda reminds me of the Bob Dylan song "Like A Rolling Stone" except these people never seem to really get their comeuppance.
Bankruptcy protection is probably a ploy by McCourt to retain control of the Dodgers longer by putting the Dodgers into the courts hands and out of the MLB. Could become a test of the anti-trust laws if the bankruptcy court makes decisions that the MLB are not willing to allow, like OKing the TV deal to go through.
ReplyDeleteThen again, since the MLB does have anti-trust exemption, perhaps the courts/judge will just follow what the MLB recommends to be done.
Yes, it will be interesting.
Yeah, I'm happy and sad, happy the team in in disarray, but sad that the Dodgers will probably draw in a billionaire owner (like Cuban), who could put the Dodgers into a better space. Though the new owner could turn out to the line the Washington Redskins owner (or Orioles owner) and doom the team with his meddling. My hope is that the team craters by the time any new owner is installed.
I think the courts will end up siding with the MLB. The deal was only done to finance the divorce, not to improve the team's fortunes. He will be taking money out of the team to pay off his wife.
Still, Selig should have realized such a possibility early on, McCourt was leveraged to the hilt in order to afford to buy the Dodgers. He apparently earned brownie points by bidding for the Red Sox at some point, or something like that, else I'm not sure why Selig would have approved such a leveraged deal, he had been much more careful about such situations previously with other owners, particularly once they became owners. Even the Giants got squeezed on because of their debt for AT&T.
In any case, the rumors are that the Dodgers old owners are trying to put together an investment team together to repurchase the team back. That has to be the first choice of MLB assuming that is true. That would be better for Giants fans than like what happened with the Angels, who got a billionaire owner who spends his money lavishly on the team.