HOSTILE TAKEOVER!

Citing poor financial management and poor executive management, MLB commisioner Bud Selig announced last night that the MLB will be taking over all day-to-day operations of the Los Angeles Dodgers until a new owner can be found. Frank McCourt the (current and legal) owner of the Dodgers, has said that he will fight to keep his team, even though he is in the middle of an incredibly messy divorce with his wife, with the Dodgers the biggest bid at stake. There's disagreements over whether Frank should be the sole owner of the franchise after the divorce is finalized, or whether his wife should be the 50% owner post-divorce. In the midst of this, the Dodgers were unable to meet payroll and Frank McCourt was planning to borrow $30 million of TV time money from Fox to finance the team, but Fox declined. Instead, McCourt planned to take a personal loan from Fox in order to pay the team, a serious no-no.

If you thought that was bad, it is without a doubt, McCourt's direct fault the savage beating on opening day at the Dodgers Stadium parking lot, because he fired the head security chief in the offseason and did not bother to hire a new one. Because there is still no security chief, the LAPD has taken over being security guards.

Bud Selig is pissed, especially because the Dodgers are one of the premier legendary franchises in Major League Baseball, among the Yankees, Red Sox, Cubs, White Sox, and Giants. This move is actually welcomed among Dodger fans, especially because it means that McCourts might be out of the news for a while and management of the team can improve, hiring a better General Manager and raising ticket prices for example; season ticket prices dropped from $27,000 to $17,000 in just one year.

This situation is actually a first for baseball, while the Montreal Expos and Texas Rangers were both at one point owned by the MLB, both were given away voluntarily, not taken over as in the case with the Dodgers. When the Expos were owned, the MLB decided to move the franchise to Washington to become the Nationals (which are still the butt of the league's jokes) and the Rangers went to the first World Series (cannot possibly be a coincidence). People can hope that the Dodgers will go through a "magical" turn-around like the Rangers, but it's not likely to happen with their complete lack of a bullpen or reliable hitter other than Andre Ethier.