The bad days all run together for Frank McCourt
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When do you think was the last time Frank McCourt had a really good day?
Pretty sure Baseball Reference doesn’t keep a stat for most consecutive crappy days by a major league team owner, but if it did McCourt would be its Cal Ripken Jr.
The list of those lining up against McCourt stretch from here to the Atlantic, which is where it all began for him. McCourt thought he had problems with the locals in Boston, but he was treated like John Adams compared to what’s going on in Los Angeles.
In Boston, that parking lot he leveraged to buy the Dodgers and then lost to Fox is poised for a $3-billion redevelopment. It seems he at least had the right general idea.
In Los Angeles, it’s a bad day followed by a worse one.
He is involved in court action against his ex-wife, his ex-attorneys and the family of Bryan Stow, with Commissioner Bud Selig still to come. He has taken the Dodgers into bankruptcy. He has been investigated by the state attorney general. He is rumored to be investigated by the IRS. Dodger Stadium attendance has become an embarrassment. He is broke and no one will loan him a dime, save for a hedge fund that gets a nifty $5.25 million up front.
Oh yeah, and the team is 48-59 and was trying to sell veterans at the trading deadline for the first time in nearly 20 years.
Most fans, politicians, media, judges, MLB officials, creditors and Chavez Ravine critters are against him.
And now it turns out, so are his fellow owners. Or at least according to the Oakland Athletics’ Lew Wolff, who Sunday became the first owner to publicly ask McCourt to sell the team.
Wolff told The Times’ Bill Shaikin he believed the owners were united behind Selig in baseball’s battle with McCourt.
‘I can’t think of one owner that is not supportive of the actions taken by MLB,’ Wolff said.
Meanwhile, new would-be new owners are waiting at the gates, eager to swoop in once McCourt takes his ultimate fall. At least you have to give McCourt credit for making the Dodgers attractive to potential owners again. Nobody else wanted them when he bought them in 2004.
Even Magic Johnson, who once said he wouldn’t be interested in owning the Dodgers, has come around. He again told Times columnist Bill Plaschke the ‘brand is so strong’ he’d have to consider purchasing the team with ‘some people.’
Johnson wouldn’t say who those people were, but we are willing to bet they’ve had a good day more recently that McCourt.
-- Steve Dilbeck