The Fall of the Dodgers…

One of the saddest stories in sports today is the fall of the Los Angeles Dodgers as a franchise.  The Dodgers have long been one of the top organizations in Baseball, just below the New York Yankees, and on par with the St. Louis Cardinals, Philadelphia Phillies, and Boston Red Sox.  Yet this season, the Dodgers have been a running joke, starting from the top of the franchise, the McCourts, whose divorce proceedings have exposed the fact that Frank McCourt is a bankrupt clown and that his best chance of holding onto the Dodgers is suing MLB if they attempt to do the right thing and rip the franchise away from the deadbeat.  An opposing fan has been hospitalized since opening day when he was beaten unconscious by a thug dressed in Dodger gear while his children watched in horror.

You want to find out how bad it’s gotten?  Check out the recent column by Bill Plaschke of the LA Times:  http://www.latimes.com/sports/la-sp-0622-plaschke-20110622,0,1723241.column.  It’s not just bad, it’s 1980’s Fulton-County Stadium attendance bad.  You remember Braves games at Fulton-County Stadium back in the mid-to-late 1980s.  On a regular summer night, my dad and I would sit in the upper deck behind home plate and, for the most part had maybe 400 to 500 people in the upper deck with us for Braves games.  Even with the lower deck, attendance on many nights was about 6000 to 9000 until the Braves got good in 1991.  The Dodger attendance on some games have not been much better.

And the team is struggling very badly too.  Now stuck in 4th place in the National League West, the team appears to have no future and may not meet even payroll this week.  It may have to be seized by MLB.  And instead of trying to negotiate an out clause with Bud Selig and leave Baseball, Frank McCourt is trying to lawyer up and squeeze as much money out of the Dodgers’ franchise for himself as he can.  It seems that he learned some tricks from fellow Los Angeles owner Donald Sterling.

As a Braves’ fan, I should be happy that the one-time Atlanta nemesis is hurting.  But then I remember that then-Los Angeles manager Tommy Lasorda sort of encouraged Braves fans to come out when the Braves were good.  Tommy represented the best of Baseball, and the Dodgers franchise he has always supported deserves ownership that will at least be better than the current owner.  But short of Frank McCourt’s heart growing 3 sizes or him departing the scene in a physical sense, the Dodgers will be held hostage.