Baseball Toaster was unplugged on February 4, 2009.
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5) discussing politics
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Pretty women out walking with gorillas down my street
From my window I'm staring while my coffee grows cold
Look over there! (Where?)
There's a lady that I used to know
She's married now, or engaged, or something, so I am told
Is she really going out with him?
Is she really gonna take him home tonight?
Is she really going out with him?
'Cause if my eyes don't deceive me,
There's something going wrong around here
- Joe Jackson
Dodger chairman Bob Daly believes that everyone has has unfairly judged prospective owner Frank McCourt, and that McCourt has the Dodgers' "best interests at heart," according to Ross Newhan in the Times.
If that's true, why is McCourt buying the team?
Let's stipulate that the Dodgers' best interests are these:
How does a man purchasing the Dodgers almost entirely with borrowed money help achieve those ends?
Absent McCourt, the Dodgers are on a path, after years of meandering, toward satisfying those interests. Their minor league system is in the best shape it has been in years and still improving. They have cleared payroll and are able to pursue quality ballplayers. They have most of an 85-win team returning in a mostly weakening division. And they play in a lovely ballpark whose only drawbacks are the traffic hampering access to it, ancient bathrooms and expensive food.
If the debt-ridden McCourt succeeds in purchasing the team, the first thing he's going to need is cash. Here are his options to get that cash:
If the last of those is true, then we'd have much less worry about. But if the last of those were true today, I don't know if News Corp. would be so anxious to sell the Dodgers.
Make no mistake - I've somewhat doubted the reports of how much money the Dodgers lose and completely doubted that the right owners can't make a profit from the team. But the key to making money is molding a team and an atmosphere the fans can be enthusiastic about - that makes them as happy to spend money on you as if you were one of their own children at Christmas.
Though it helps, you do not need a $120 million payroll to create that atmosphere. McCourt could come in, set the payroll at $80 million (and Daly made it even clearer that a payroll cut is coming), hire the right people, and deliver a better team than we've seen at Dodger Stadium in years - keeping them at the Stadium all the while.
I want to believe. If the sale goes through, I'll swallow hard and start over and try not to pre-judge.
In the meantime, I look for evidence to indicate that this is a possibility. So far, the very best that I've gotten is Bob Daly saying in the Times that McCourt "is a good guy who will have the club's best interests at heart."
Any objective observer can see that the Dodgers can do better then a Boston real-estate investor who is subletting the team. How is it possible that McCourt is our best man, and not our gorilla?
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