There is very little debate that the two most storied franchises in the long history of baseball are the Yankees and the Dodgers. On a day when the Yanks are celebrating their home grown shortstop attaining a mark that was previously unattained by the Bambino, the Iron Horse, the Yankee Clipper, the Mick and Yogi, the Dodgers are waiting to see whether a bankruptcy court will allow Frank (the team is my personal ATM) McCourt to decide who gets to loan him the money to pay Manny Ramirez and make payroll or whether Major League Baseball gets to make that determination.
You could make an argument that the Dodgers history is even more important than that of the Yankees. That argument starts with Jackie Robinson. The Dodgers integrated baseball seven years before the Supreme Court made it the law of the land in Brown vs. Board of Education, and one year before President Harry Truman integrated the military. That event did more to start the process of changing the hearts and minds of a racist society than any event prior or subsequent.
And that could very well be more important than Babe Ruth making the game the national pastime and for all intents and purposes inventing the home run. It could be more important than the 2,130 consecutive game streak of Lou Gehrig tragically ended by the disease that now bears his name. It could be more important Joe DiMaggio’s 56 game hitting streak, one of baseball’s unbreakable records. It could be more important the Yanks five consecutive championships from 1949 to 1953 or four consecutive from 1936 to 1939 or four out of five from 1996 to 2000 or Yogi’s ten rings. It could be more important than Roger Maris (the true single season home run king) hitting 61 homers in 1961 and breaking the single season record of the Babe.
The Dodgers leaving New York and moving west, vilified in Brooklyn and Queens, truly made baseball a national sport. Prior to 1958, the most western outpost of Major League Baseball was St. Louis. Los Angeles fell in love with the Dodgers with its bright shiny new stadium accessible from multiple freeways and right near downtown Los Angeles. In fact, Los Angeles was a Dodger town for more years (note the past tense) than New York has been a Yankee town.
New York really only became a Yankee town during the Jeter era in which the Yankee captain has displayed consistent excellence, clutch performance, championship quality baseball and been virtually controversy free.
So what changed to make the Yankees THE franchise in all of sports and the Dodgers a major league embarrassment. Start at the top. Whatever you can say about the Boss and his progeny, they have been and remain passionately committed to putting a championship caliber product out on the field and backing that commitment up with their resources. They care about their product on the field and their brand. You may hate the Steinbrenners, but you sure want them to own the sports team in your city.
In my years of practice as a real estate lawyer, I have met many developers similar to Frank McCourt who equate the cash obtained from borrowing with real profit. There’s always another deal to generate the cash to pay for the last deal. So Frank McCourt bought the Dodgers with a credit card and mortgaged their future to live an opulent life style. The only problem was that with his divorce, the fit hit the shan. His exploiting team assets for personal luxury became a matter of public record. He then had to find (translate as borrow) the funds to pay off his soon to be ex-wife and meet his payroll (which is puny in terms of a major market baseball team).
In the ultimate act of penny pinching, McCourt did not have a head of security at the time one of his opening day fans was beaten close to death. I would imagine that the head of security for the Dodgers is a job that would be held by a retired high level police officer or FBI agent. Again, I would speculate that it is a mid six figure job or the annual interest on one of Frank’s homes. McCourt has become an embarrassment to Major League Baseball and that act was the final straw.
On a day when Derek Jeter went 5 for 5 and reached another milestone in his Hall of Fame career in front of a passionate sold out crowd in Yankee stadium, the Dodgers played to thousands upon thousands of empty seats. Chanting 'McCourt must go,' 75 to 100 Dodgers fans outside of Dodger Stadium, implored others to join a boycott of the team over the ongoing ownership issues. I, for one, have no problem joining them. The only way you could get me to Dodger Stadium now would be if the Yankees came to town and I got another chance to see Derek Jeter in person.
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