As mentioned far and wide, earlier this week Dodgers owner Frank McCourt suffered the indignity of MLB attempting to wrest control of the franchise away from his financially-challenged paws, a move McCourt compared unfavorably to Bud Selig’s gracious assistance towards the New York Mets. The LA Times’ Steve Dilbeck observed McCourt’s media blitz, and likens it to “the teenager who’s come up with some wild excuse for a boneheaded move, repeating it until he actually begins to believe his own ramblings.”
Let’s see here, the reason he did not talk to the media for the last 18 months was because his boys asked him not to discuss the divorce. Really? So don’t talk about the divorce. There were only about 99 other topics to discuss.
“Recently, my boys came to me and said it was OK for me to speak out and to defend myself,’’ he told The Times’ Bill Shaikin. “I’m going to do that. I’m going to continue to do that. I love this team. I love this game. I love this community.’’
He could have been defending himself against his mismanagement of the team for the last 18 months without talking divorce. Now backed into a corner by MLB, he suddenly plays his divorce like a sympathy card.
And I’m getting real weary of his “love the team’’ and “love the community’’ routine. He’s not from our community and doesn’t know it. He’s from Boston and now lives in one of the Southland’s most expensive hotels a block off Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills.
Somebody clearly told him he needed to sound contrite, but he can’t quite pull it off. He apologizes but only in the vaguest of terms. He can never quite say what it is he’s apologizing for. He apologized for what fans think he might have done wrong.