In early January, a rumor surfaced that Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation might sell the Dodgers. To anyone capable of counting on their fingers, this hardly came as a surprise. Count five: having purchased the Dodgers in 1998, News Corp’s five-year window to depreciate player contracts had just closed. The five-year rule (brainchild of Bud Selig in his Seattle Pilot-jacking days) allows half of a franchise’s purchase price to be allocated to player contracts and depreciated over that span, creating an artificial loss which reduces the owner’s tax liability. Disney’s move to sell the Angels and the entire sordid succession of Florida Marlins owners (Huizenga to Henry to Loria, oh shit!) are prime examples of the corporate inclination to bail once that window closes. Why should the high-class folks who brought you quality entertainment such as Joe Millionaire and Man vs. Beast be any different?
On Rupert’s watch, the Dodgers went from a solidly profitable marquee franchise to a spectacularly unprofitable cautionary tale. From 1990 to 1997, the Dodgers averaged a gain of $8 million a year in operating income, according to data from Financial World. From 1998 to 2001, they averaged a loss of $20 million a year in operating income, according to Forbes Magazine figures. Those losses were the largest in baseball in each of those seasons. Contributing to them, of course, was a massively inflated payroll which shot from $48.5 million pre-sale in 1997 to $94.2 million in 2000 and has kept pace as the game’s third-highest ever since. Who can’t afford Mike Piazza?
Forget the money. What the Dodgers lost goes beyond dollars. Rupert and his henchmen destroyed a fifty-year trend in organizational continiuty and stability that had held place under the O’Malley family — a stability that survived Walter O’Malley engineering the most controversial upheaval in the history of sports, the Dodgers’ move from Brooklyn. Regardless of which coast they were on, or whether father Walt or son Peter was running the team, the O’Malleys built a franchise that was competitive year in and year out. The Dodgers rebounded after their rare down years without resorting to the histrionics of firing their manager. They had exactly two of those from 1955 to June 1996, from Walter Alston’s first one-year contract to Tommy Lasorda’s heart-attack-induced retirement, and in that same span they won six World Championships and eleven pennants, making fifteen postseason appearances.
From the get-go, the Foxies produced an organizational soap opera worthy of Melrose Place. While the ink was barely dry on their purchase, they traded Mike Piazza rather than meet his $100 million contract demands. A month later, they used Lasorda to engineer a bloody coup which toppled his mild-mannered managerial successor, Bill Russell, and GM Fred Claire. They eventually hired GM Kevin Malone, a loudmouth who described himself as “the new sherrif in town” and proceeded to embarrass the Dodgers with his mouth and his personnel decisions. The Dodgers made Kevin Brown the richest player in the game with a ridiculous 7-year, $105 million contract, squandered millions on busts such as Carlos Perez, Darren Dreifort, Devon White, and Eric Karros, traded Charles Johnson for sore-armed Todd Hundley, and feuded with petulant superstar Gary Sheffield. Malone picked fights with manager Davey Johnson, Padres GM Kevin Towers, and finally, a Padres season-ticket holder before being jettisoned into oblivion. Floundering around .500 and coming nowhere near the postseason, in three years the Dodgers burned through as many managers as they’d had over the previous 45.
They also drove away this fan of over 20 years. From the time I began to understand major-league baseball (c. 1977), the Dodgers had been my team. My family bled Dodger blue; ours was a rooting legacy passed down from my grandfather through my father, and as a youngster I delighted in hearing about Jackie Robinson, Duke Snider, Sandy Koufax and others while watching my own Dodger heroes — Davey Lopes, Ron Cey, Fernando Valenzuela, Pedro Guerrero. As I grew up, they rewarded my loyalty with contenders, championships, and continuity. The Murdoch era did away with all that, and proximity drove me into the arms of the team’s most hated rival, the Yankees.
But even a blind squirrel trips over an acorn now and again. So it was with the Dodgers hiring Jim Tracy as their fourth manager since Lasorda. Passing over name-brand skippers such as Felipe Alou, they chose an unheralded, untested candidate whose persona resembled the man who’d held the job for 22 seasons before Lasorda, Walt Alston. Saddled with expensive mediocrities such as Karros, Mark Grudzielanek, Marquis Grissom, and Tom Goodwin, and with pitching staffs decimated by injuries (Brown, Dreifort, Perez and Ashby were paid $38 million to make 38 starts in 2001), Tracy nevertheless has kept the Dodgers in contention up until the final week in each of his two campaigns. He’s milked productive seasons out of the likes of Grissom and Alex Cora, found significant roles for journeymen Paul Lo Duca, Eric Gagne, and Dave Roberts, and instilled two of the most expensive clubs in baseball history with the plucky spirit of the underdog. Though his teams have come up even shorter than Bill Russell’s, against the backdrop of the Foxies’ ineptitude, Tracy’s Dodgers have won moral victories and the respect of this disenfranchised fan.
Moral victories don’t buy much these days, at least not enough for Rupert Murdoch. Though the team freed up significant payroll this offseason, they shunned big-name free-agents such as Jeff Kent and Cliff Floyd, content to cut losses and send Tracy into battle undermanned yet again. Now they want to get fiscally responsible?
You’d think this fan might rejoice at the rumor that Rupe’s ready to sell. But the news that the Dodgers’ potential knight in shining armor is none other than Dave Checketts is enough to make me recoil to embrace Rupert’s regime. Checketts and I have a history.
In 1979, a woeful professional basketball team moved to my hometown of Salt Lake City. The Utah Jazz, on the lam from New Orleans, gave its fans four seasons of dreadful basketball as an excuse to watch the Dr. J’s, Larry Birds, and Magic Johnsons of the NBA run rampant. But in 1983-84, they began turning things around, both on the court — their first .500 season and first playoff appearance– and in the front office, hiring a 27-year-old local, Checketts, as their Executive Vice President and General Manager. Through excellent scouting and drafting, including two relatively unheralded players in John Stockton and Karl Malone, the team became a perennial contender on Checketts’ watch, though much of the credit is due to Scott Layden. Checketts left the Jazz in 1989 a much stronger franchise than he inherited, a legacy that endures today, The Jazz’s string of postseason appearances has continued uninterrupted via the core of Stockton, Malone, and coach Jerry Sloan. Fifteen years and two thousand miles away from Utah, they’ve given me a team that remains near and dear to my heart.
Checketts made his way to the bright lights and big city. After two years of working for the NBA league office in Manhattan, he became president of the Knicks in 1991 and then of MSG Sports Group (parent company of the Knicks, the Rangers hockey team, the WNBA Liberty, and Madison Square Garden) in 1994. Inheriting two championship-caliber teams, he ran them into the ground, with horrible contracts, inflated payrolls and a distinct lack of imagination. His network maintained a third-rate look, skimpy on graphics, personality, and bulb wattage. He developed a reputation for corporate ruthlessness as well, with such stunts as a bold power move to unseat the previous MSG president, a behind-the back pass at Phil Jackson while Jeff van Gundy was still coach, and a GM fired over dessert. Upon his resignation in May 2001, the Garden lay empty, without either of its expensive, uninspiring teams in the playoffs for the first time in 25 years.
Since leaving MSG, Checketts has tried to purchase the Boston Red Sox and the Orlando Magic, with no success. But now his bid for the Dodgers has gained the backing of two billionaires, George Soros and Eli Broad, and they are reportedly prepared to offer $600-650 million for the Dodgers, their stadium, and Fox Sports Net 2, the Dodgers’ cable home. Murdoch purchased the team and the stadium for $311 million in ’97, plus $14 million in charities to the O’Malley family and another $25 million of assumed debt.
While the bid is reportedly “in the ballpark” of the assets’ value, it’s unclear whether Murdoch is willing to sell the cable network. Only recently has Fox’s regional network strategy begun paying off. But the channel is obviously the apple of Checketts’ eye, and it would be highly surprising to see him pursue the deal without it. He already owns SportsWest Productions, a Utah-based network that carries Mountain West Conference basketball, and his appetite is apparently geared more towards a cable empire than a baseball dynasty.
So you’ll forgive this deposed Dodger fan for hoping the regime which sent him into exile hangs tough until a more suitable suitor comes along. I want my Dodgers back, but I don’t want Dave Checketts anywhere near them. I’ll take my chances with the next S.O.B. who comes along instead.
