McCourt only seems to respond when pushed

Kicking and screaming. It’s like you have to take Frank McCourt by the hand and force him to do the right thing.

So Wednesday the Dodgers announced they have decided to exclude alcoholic beverages from their new half-price food and drink promotion during six midweek day games.

Absolutely the correct thing to do. The absolutely obvious thing to do.

It’s just that it took nearly two weeks since the brutal beating of San Francisco Giants fan Bryan Stow in the Dodger Stadium parking lot on opening day to reach this conclusion.

McCourt has been behind on this story since the moment it happened. From when he issued his lame "satisfied" with stadium security comment, to offering a reward for the suspects, to admitting additional security measures were necessary, to collecting funds for the victim, to now cancelling the half-price booze promotion. Still no word on whether he will help with Stow’s medical bills.

It’s like he only responds after he receives political, media and public pressure. He’s always reacting to what someone else says first. Why is Supervisor Mike Antonovich always ahead of the curve on this story and not McCourt?

If angry downtown politicians and an irate media had not come after him to do something about the problems at Dodger Stadium, you think McCourt would have responded with any of this?

"You could have 2,000 policemen there, and it's just not going to change that random act of violence," McCourt said two days after the attack.

He was prepared to do absolutely nothing. Until he was taken by the hand, kicking and screaming.

-- Steve Dilbeck

Photo: Dodgers owner Frank McCourt speaks during a Dodger Stadium security news conference at Los Angeles Police Department headquarters on April 8, 2011 in L.A. Credit: Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images

Comments

[campc4]

McCourt is an idiot! I cannot wait for him to be forced to sale the team!

[go away frank!]

Frank McCourt is the biggest douchebag ever. He's an idiot who doesn't care about the game, his team, or its fans. How come other owners aren't telling him to do the right thing? Can't wait 'til he gets outta LA. Until then I'll be watching Dodger games on tv and attending Angel games. I won't waste one more penny of my money supporting Frank until he does something (other than hire ex-chief Bratton...which he onlyt did as a PR move) definitive to remove the gang thugs from the stadium.

Stay klassy, Frank! Stay klassy.

[LC]

This isn't true. McCourt hasn't signed a big time free agent and he's been pushed.

[Eliot]

I just don't understand why the SF Giants and LA Dodgers along with Major League Baseball dont' pick up the tab for Bryan Stow's hospital costs. They're fundraising from fans. The funds should come without question from the teams and the league itself. This would be the proper thing to do

[grumpy3b]

look its not as if low beer prices are the root of the issue. If that were the case 50% of the Angels fans would wake up married to a housewife of Orange County. Oops, guess I was wrong.

[Native Angeleno]

The key, for him, is whether any action or lack of action would cost him or make him money; that is the route he will take. McCourt sees the Dodgers as a printing press. Anything that interferes with the flow of money into his coffers is to be avoided, no matter how shabby the excuse. Anything that increases his take, like not passing on the proceeds to improve the players, or the stadium, or the security, is the low road he travels. He does so unashamedly, for the Dodgers, for him, is a conveyance for transferring cash, much of it unreported---he pays no taxes he can illegally avoid. He lives the high life, borrowing the money it took to "buy" the Dodgers, using the Dodgers to make him personally richer than Midas, using the Dodgers as collateral to borrow more, owing more now than he did when he originally borrowed the amount needed to "buy" the Dodgers, using the attraction of the Dodgers to feather his nests via ever-increasing tv revenues, it's all about the money, for him, and not the team, or the game, or least of all the city he carpetbags, the tradition he dismisses, and the fans he soaks, and fools.

[Rob McMillin]

>>If angry downtown politicians and an irate media had not come after him to do something about the problems at Dodger Stadium, you think McCourt would have responded with any of this?<<

Uh, duh, no?

The entirety of the McCourt tenure has been one of absolute tone-deafness.

[Hollywood Mark]

500 at Yankee games. Dodgers have 30.

[Steve Wimer]

McCourt needs to leave town!

[StanL]

When I saw the byline and read this blog, I didn't need to see who the author was. I knew it could of only been authored by one of the three blog authors.

[alanw19]

Go away frank. Just go away.

[McCourt blows]

McCourt needs to be pushed...off of a cliff.

[derek]

The City Council needs to do the right thing and push Frank out of LA. The way to do that?

Revoke the dodgers alcohol license for the rest of the season. Attendence would plummet, and revenue per attendee would plummet, speeding up the inevitable demise of McCourt instead of continuing this slow painful death march until the dodgers, like McCourt, are worthless.

[BlueinAZ]

I suppose that the thing that must be the most grating for Frank is that the curtain has been pulled back, that he has been unmasked, that he has been revealed for what he truly is, and that all his motives are so obviously and intuitively transparent. There's nothing left in his bag of tricks. No more cards to play, no more lies to lie. And it must be terrible for him. He can't even delay on the half-price drink promotion without everybody seeing straight through him. He's a laughingstock.

[Alfred E. McCourt]

As I have said here before...
.
...and I will do so again now:
.
What? Me worry?

[Since '58]

I am so tired that S.O.B. It's fruitless to discuss him any more. The City Council can't revoke his liquor license. It's a state license. The City Council is powerless to do anything except to possibly publish some kind of a resolution condemning him as an owner and a blight on the city. No, McCourt is here until somebody smarter than he or his lawyers are can figure out a way to pry him lose from this franchise.
Selig faces a slippery legal slope if he doesn't approve of the impending Fox deal.
Fox has more juice than Selig. That's why the world Series is played at night in 20 degree weather in November. Maybe if Fox decides to get rid of him, we may have a chance. But Fox won't unless it feels it's a good deal for them financially. Frank will not leave on his own. We're stuck with that fetid pile of you-know-what.

[Labeldude]

Excellent post Native Angeleno.

[Rabo]

If it wasn't for this sad tragedy to hit national attention I personally think mccourt would of turn the other way and and would of dodge the incident like he's been dodging the media for the last few years. The reason for that believe is that he doest'n care about the team and more less the fans. If he was such a great owner he would of just flat out came out clean by admitting that he can no longer run the team and do whats best for the fans by selling it and bringing someone else in to run the team in a proper manner.

[Chumpforce1]

Let’s hope the bulk of the LAPD presence tonight is stationed in the areas where the vast, vast majority of all the fights occur and gang-bangers sit…in the Pavilion and general admission sections of the stadium. Sadly I fear in order to avoid charges of race profiling and under pressure from team ownership, city leaders and other groups (who refuse to even address the problem (Mexican Gangs) and only refer to the gang-bangers as isolated “thugs”, “hooligans”, etc), just as many officers will be stationed by the luxury boxes as the left field pavilion.

Similar to the TSA giving the same amount of security scrutiny to the 89 year old grandmother from Boise, ID in a wheelchair as they do to the 21 year old Muslim student here on an expired visa and holding a Saudi Arabian passport.

Way to go Dodgers!

[yourstruly1]

Frank McCourt is a psychopath in a business suit. He has no empathy for people whatsoever; to him they're just suckers to be robbed, be they fans, family members, business partners, or the Dodgers themselves. Hey, as long as violent gangbangers cough up the green stuff for tickets, jerseys, food, and beer by the gallon at Dodger Staduim, why should he care if these thugs attack other people in the stands or even kill them in the stadium parkinglot? McCourt has their money in his pocket, and that is no doubt how he sees it.

[slipslap]

McCourt is a limp tool.

[Walter Walker]

I still think the answer to more than one problem is to have Frank McCourt stand alone in the Dodger parking lot after game (or games if he survives more than one).

[16blows]

Aphorist/essayist EM Cioran describing the growth of humanity - "the flesh spreads further and further like a horrible gangrene upon the surface of the globe. It cannot impose limits upon itself - it continues to be rife despite its rebuffs, it takes its defeats for conquests, it has never learned anything."

I understand, Frankly... seen it with mine own eyes, heard own ears.

So call it a sense of humanity, soft-headedness or simply hallucinogenic escape, but, sometimes in quiet moments do I wander (yes) as I wonder (aimlessly)... does McCourt ever regret coming to LA?

No, not for the erratic impulse control spree-buying of homes, nor the loss his once betrothed ne'er became forever & not for how does now appear his epitaph will read 'he came, he stumbled, he fell'.

Just because his run of bad luck seems like an fungus or plague to spread...an overabundance in contrast his spread too thin self same - it's almost as if he's become a magnet attracting ill-will or even a carrier.

It almost seems as if the man is cursed.

Or we are.

Are we?

It was back in 1920 that the Boston Red Sox sold Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees for ca$h, plus an additional loan collateralized by Fenway Park... an pox on their house visited for four score and four more.

84 years later, 'The Curse' came to an end as Boston celebrated their World Championship in baseball to add theirs in football, basketball & too hockey years past.... City of Champions was born in the year 2004.

Hmm.

2004.

'The Curse' exits Boston.

Frank McCourt too.

Arrives LA.

Buys the Dodgers.

Ladies & gentleman, 'The Curse' has been exported... he may not regret his coming to LA, but I do; call me cynical.