Words.
"The very idea of the Dodgers filing for bankruptcy boggles the mind. Forbes estimated the club’s value last year at $727 million — fourth among baseball’s 30 teams. Yet as the end of the month loomed, it was apparent that McCourt could not meet payroll.
The unraveling of the Dodgers began soon after McCourt and his wife, Jamie, arrived from Boston, but the particulars have become public only since the McCourts embarked on contentious divorce proceedings last year. It turns out that the McCourts loaned themselves more than $100 million from the club to fund a lavish, multi-mansion lifestyle. As the franchise plunged into the red, Frank McCourt declined to increase ballpark security, even in the face of growing gang attendance. On Opening Day, a Giants fan was beaten unconscious — he’s still in a coma — in the parking lot of Dodger Stadium. Since then, public concerns about security, the team’s performance (it’s under .500) and pervasive disgust with the McCourts have cut attendance to near all-time lows.
...And so, the two institutions that have contributed the most over the past 50 years to Los Angeles’s sense of itself, to its amour propre, to its development not just as a big city but a great one, now languish in bankruptcy court..."
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