The Best Team Money Can Buy: The Los Angeles Dodgers' Wild Struggle to Build a Baseball Powerhouse (40 page)

Special thanks to Mason, Jori, Dan, and everyone from the Norton School of the Occasionally Employed for allowing me to sit on your porch to write the first four chapters of this book.

To all the Dodger players, family members, and staff who helped in my reporting of this book, and in everything I have written about the club over the years, including (in alphabetical order): Nancy Bea, Steve Brener, Yvonne Carrasco, Jon Chapper, Carl Crawford, A. J. Ellis, Cindy Ellis, Mark Ellis, Andre Ethier, Tim Federowicz, Adrian Gonzalez, Dee Gordon, Zack Greinke, Jerry Hairston, Orel Hershiser, Trey Hillman, Rick Honeycutt, J. P. Howell, Kenley Jansen, Jaime Jarrin, Stan Kasten, Clayton Kershaw, Matt Kemp, Davey Lopes, Don Mattingly, Preston Mattingly, Mark McGwire, Rick Monday, Mitch Poole, Nick Punto, Yasiel Puig, Hanley Ramirez, Josh Rawitch, Paco Rodriguez, Lon Rosen, Hyun-Jin Ryu, Skip Schumaker, Vin Scully, Charley Steiner, Josh Tucker, Juan Uribe, Tim Wallach, Mark Walter, Logan White, and Pepe Yniguez. Many more people helped with the reporting of this
book who insisted on remaining anonymous. I can’t name them, but I extend my deepest gratitude.

There are five people who midwifed me through this process and encouraged me when I thought all was lost. They are: Nick Piecoro, Keith Law, Tyler Kepner, Buster Olney, and Stephen Rodrick. My sanity would not have been possible without them, and this book certainly would not have been.

I want to thank my mother, Mandy, and my sister, Sarah, for providing the support I needed to finish this book, including mountains of Bagel Bites. You gals are the best.

I would like to thank my editor, Bob Bender, his assistant, Johanna Li, and my agents, Jared Levine and David McCormick. David: you encouraged me to start this crazy project, and then sold my collection of notes to Simon & Schuster. I cannot imagine a better fit for me. Bob: you held my hand through this process, and made this book infinitely better with your suggestions and judicious cuts. Your calmness rubbed off on me, which is no small task. I am forever in your debt for helping to make this dream come true. Any writer would be lucky to have you edit her. And to Jared: thank you for being my sounding board and my friend, as well as the captain of this ship. And thank you for loving the Dodgers.

Last but not least, thank you to Simon & Schuster for publishing this book. That was pretty awesome of you guys.

© ANDREW BICK

MOLLY KNIGHT
wrote about baseball for
ESPN the Magazine
for eight seasons. Her work has also appeared in
The New York Times Magazine
,
Glamour
,
SELF
,
Baseball Prospectus
, and
Variety
. A native of Los Angeles and lifelong Dodgers fan, she lives in L.A.

Visit the author at
www.mollyknight.com

Follow Molly Knight on Twitter at:
@molly_knight

MEET THE AUTHORS, WATCH VIDEOS AND MORE AT

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authors.simonandschuster.com/Molly-Knight

PROLOGUE

I didn’t think Clayton Kershaw:
Most of the information from the prologue comes from an interview I conducted with Clayton Kershaw at his Dallas home on January 15, 2014.

Ellis, described Kershaw to me as:
Interview with A. J. Ellis on April 1, 2013.

seventy-five cents per heartbeat:
Tweet from Buster Olney
@Buster_ESPN
, January 15, 2014.

CHAPTER 1: THE BILLIONAIRE BOYS’ CLUB

“It was just really, really weird”:
Don Mattingly addressing media at the Dodgers’ spring training in Glendale, Arizona, on February 18, 2013.

“I wanted to do all these things”:
Interview with Stan Kasten on July 15, 2014.

Some seventy-eight thousand fans:
On April 18, 1958, the Dodgers played their first game in Los Angeles at the Coliseum in front of 78,672 fans. They beat the Giants 6–5. The previous record for the largest regular-season crowd was the 78,382 who saw the Chicago White Sox at Cleveland on August 20, 1948.

For his efforts:
O’Malley was on the April 28, 1958, cover of
Time
magazine.

In 1950 the state’s population was just over ten million:
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, California had a population of 10,586,223 in 1950, and 29,760,021 by 1990 (
www.census.gov
).

Jaime Jarrin:
referenced Neruda after the Dodgers beat the Braves to win the NLDS on October 7, 2013. According to an article in the
Los Angeles Times
written by Hector Becerra, Jarrin described Kershaw’s curveball to listeners as “aristocratic” that night, and when Juan Uribe stepped into the batter’s box just before hitting the series-clinching home run, the brilliant Jarrin said, “An interesting game is coming to an end, with two teams battling like dogs, faceup.”

O’Malley’s son Peter was quoted:
From a January 7, 1997, article in the
New York Times
written by Murray Chass. O’Malley said: “I think family ownership of sports today is probably a dying breed. If you look at all sports, it’s a high-risk business. Professional sports is as high risk as the oil business. You need a broader base than an individual family to carry you through the storms. Groups or corporations are probably the way of the future.”

Fox never wanted:
From many articles, including an August 18, 2002, piece in the
Los Angeles Times
by James Bates. “[Rupert] Murdoch realized the potential TV value of the Dodgers when he bought the team in 1998. Before he became owner, he never set foot inside Dodger Stadium. On his first opening day . . . he grilled executives on player contracts, expressing astonishment at baseball’s rules on guaranteed contracts.”

But the idea of entering into a bidding war:
From many articles, including an August 5, 2007,
New York Times
piece by Jim Schachter. “The purchase [of the Dodgers] was part of Fox’s rivalry with Disney, for dominance in sports broadcasting.”

the club was hemorrhaging tens of millions:
The Dodgers lost money from every year from 1994 to 2002, including an MLB-leading $54.5 million loss in 2001.
Los Angeles Times,
August 18, 2002, by James Bates.

McCourt financed his $430 million purchase:
McCourt divorce filings and court testimony revealed the family put “not a penny” of their own money into buying the team.

Fox wanted to get rid of the team:
According to court documents presented during the McCourt divorce trial, Fox lent McCourt $145 million to buy the Dodgers. He was to repay that loan in two years.

His local claim to fame:
According to a November 5, 2003,
Los Angeles Times
article by Thomas S. Mulligan and Roger Vincent, “during the New Year’s Eve 1980 closing on the [parking lot] in a plush Boston law office,
a rival developer launched himself across a conference table at McCourt and threatened in colorful language to throw him out a window.”

“Stock smelling salts”:
An email from McCourt Group COO Jeff Ingram to the McCourts in January 2001. Presented as evidence during McCourt divorce trial.

his estranged wife described him:
According to the November 5, 2003,
Los Angeles Times
article (Mulligan and Vincent), McCourt’s litigation opponents included Toronto’s Reichmann family, owners of Olympia & York; Hartford, Connecticut, developer David T. Chase; and Chicago’s Marshall Field family, owners of Cabot, Cabot & Forbes. Toward the end of his tenure with the Dodgers he was in litigation with both his wife and Major League Baseball.

“He was more stubborn than an army of cockroaches”:
Interview with a former Dodgers executive in June 2010.

Vanity Fair
magazine likened:
“A Major League Divorce,” August 2011 issue, by Vanessa Grigoriadis.

boycotted the wedding:
Interview with Jamie McCourt in her Beverly Hills office, June 22, 2010.

“They were equally delusional but Jamie was better at parties”:
From an interview with a former executive in June 2010.

led the National League in attendance:
Figures under McCourt (
Espn.com
):

2004: 3,448,283 #1 in the NL, #2 in MLB

2005: 3,603,646 #1 in the NL, #2 in MLB

2006: 3,758,545 #1 in the NL, #2 in MLB

2007: 3,857,036 #1 in the NL, #2 in MLB

2008: 3,730,553 #2 in the NL, #3 in MLB

2009: 3,761,653 #1 in the NL, #1 in MLB

2010: 3,562,320 #2 in the NL, #3 in MLB

September 2010 McCourt divorce trial begins:

2011: 2,935,139 #6 in the NL, #11 in MLB

March 2012: McCourt forced to sell team to Guggenheim Baseball

2012: 3,324, 246 #3 in the NL, #5 in MLB

2013: 3,745,527 #1 in the NL, #1 in MLB

2014: 3,782,337 #1 in the NL, #1 in MLB

(Attendance across baseball fell after the recession began in 2008. It is just now returning to prerecession levels.)

Despite promising fans that he would keep the team’s payroll:
The Dodgers and Yankees play in the two largest markets in the country. In 2000, when the Dodgers were owned by Fox, L.A. ranked second in payroll behind New York, and the difference was $2.6 million. By the end of McCourt’s tenure, the Yankees’ payroll was more than double the Dodgers’. Within two years of owning the Dodgers, the Guggenheim group pushed the club’s payroll past New York’s (via
USA Today
and the Associated Press).

Dodgers’ opening day payroll under Fox:

2000: $90,375,953 2nd in MLB (Yankees #1 with $92,938,260)

2001: $109,105,953 3rd in MLB (Yankees #1 with $112,287,143)

2002: $94,850,953 5th in MLB (Yankees #1 with $125,928,583)

2003: $105,872,620 4th in MLB (Yankees #1 with $152,749,814)

McCourt buys the Dodgers:

2004: $92,902,001 6th in MLB (Yankees had highest payroll at $184,193,950)

2005: $83,039,000 11th in MLB (Yankees #1 again at $208,306,817)

2006: $98,447,187 6th in MLB (Yankees #1 at $194,663,079)

2007: $108,454,524 6th in MLB (Yankees #1 at $189,639,045)

2008: $118,588,536 7th (Yankees #1 at $209,081,577)

2009: $100,414,592 9th (Yankees #1 at $201,449,189)

2010: $95,358,016 11th (Yankees #1 at $206,333,389)

2011: $104,188,999 12th (Yankees #1 at $202,689,028)

2012: $95,143,575 12th (Yankees #1 at $197,962,289)

Guggenheim Partners buy the Dodgers during the 2012 season:

2013: $216,334,965 2nd (Yankees #1 at $228,344,965)

2014: $241,128,402 (Highest payroll of any team in American sports history)

2015: $270 million (First again, with nearly $44 million going to players no longer on the team)

revealed McCourt’s plan to cut:
Evidence submitted in the McCourt divorce court trial on September 1, 2010, called for cutting the Dodgers’ payroll from $100 million in 2003 to $85 million in 2006. By the end of his ownership tenure McCourt had leveraged the Dodgers to the point that the team owed lenders $540 million. Court documents showed that most of the profit the Dodgers generated from ticket sales was going toward paying off interest on that debt.

daily home salon sessions:
According to divorce court filings, the McCourts spent $150,000 annually on a hairstylist who came to their home five days a week.

Russian psychic:
His name was Vladimir Shpunt. According to a June 10, 2010,
Los Angeles Times
article by Bill Shaikin (“Dodgers Tap Into V Energy”), Shpunt, who lived most of his life in Russia, had three physics degrees and a letter of reference from a Nobel Prize winner. He would essentially close his eyes and visualize the Dodgers winning. He also held a healing session with Dodger right fielder Jayson Werth after Werth injured his wrist. Werth later said that Dodger doctors had misdiagnosed the injury and that he did not receive proper treatment until he went to the Mayo Clinic. Shpunt also “diagnosed the disconnects” between former manager Jim Tracy and general manager Paul DePodesta.

a home on Charing Cross Road:
All home purchase information comes from McCourt divorce filings. It is also public record.

“I never stopped worrying”:
Jamie McCourt testified in her divorce trial. She also told me as much in an interview conducted in her office on June 22, 2010.