John Edwards has been on a downward spiral for some time now. While he once seemed like the dictionary definition of a rising political star — Senator from North Carolina, 2004 Democratic Vice Presidential nominee — he is now the biggest joke in the history of smooth-talking politicians.
His attempts to become president, then vice president, then president again, ended in total defeat. His good looks and charm were turned against him and his haircut expenses became a national punchline. He got busted cheating on his cancer-stricken wife. He planted a love child in the womb of a wacky New Age video vixen and tried to get one of his sycophantic aides to take the fall. He tried to negotiate for a Cabinet post and Obama laughed in his face.
Now for the ultimate dishonor: John Edwards reportedly made a sex tape!
Miami’s Fisher Island is an enclave of the super-wealthy, filled with luxury residences, sandy beaches and lush fairways.
It’s an exclusive community, and only residents, invited guests and the help are welcome. Famous names from Vanderbilt to Oprah have owned property within its elite confines.
Raul Quintana owned a $3 million condo on the island, with views of picturesque Biscayne Bay and fine furnishings. He’d rented it out on occasion, once to baseball All-Star Ivan Rodriguez, and once to Anna Kournikova’s peeps. It was only one of several properties Quintana had once owned on the island, before he sold several for a huge profit.
But when Quintana rented the condo out to a “modeling agency,” he soon found himself a hated outcast on Fisher Island.
It turned out that the “modeling agency” was actually the porn producers known as the Bangbros, and they used the condo to film a masterpiece called “Sexy Golfing Experience.”
Now Raul Quintana has been banished from the island as surely as if Jeff Probst read his name at the Tribal Council.
As the Miami New Times reported, “Quintana…is in trouble. His three remaining luxury units are now worth $5.6 million — almost $3 million less than their purchase prices. Banks might soon take them over. Fisher Island, he says, is his ‘Alcatraz.’
Then his voice breaks as he remarks, “Bang Bros really banged my life.”
This tragic tale came to our attention via Deadspin, which noted that you’d think golf/porn related controversies are the sole domain of Eldrick Woods, but in this case, you’d be wrong.
The New York Times ran an article a few years ago about labor strife on the island, and did a fine job of describing its unique and luxurious setting:
A 216-acre nub of land sliced from the tip of Miami in 1905 when the government dredged out a sea-lane from Biscayne Bay, Fisher Island was acquired in 1925 by William K. Vanderbilt II, scion of the robber-baron railroad clan, to build his winter mansion.
It epitomizes wealth to this day. The island is home at least part of the year to an assortment of magnates, like the investment guru Martin Zweig, the car dealership mogul Robert Potamkin and the financier Bennet S. LeBow, of tobacco fame. Celebrities like Oprah Winfrey and Mel Brooks have owned winter homes here.
According to the Census Bureau, Fisher Island was the richest enclave in America in 1999, with an average income per capita of about $236,000 — more than double the $91,000 average on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Residents say the real figures are actually far higher, partly because of the difficulty in gathering income data on part-time residents.
Indeed, from the imported Bahamian sand coating the beaches to the marble and mahogany-encrusted Vanderbilt mansion and the 186-foot, $250,000-a-week chartered yacht bobbing in the marina just outside, everything bespeaks luxury.
As the New Times article noted, Raul Quintana was once one of the island’s most notable residents: “In the early days, Quintana was among the top investors, buying 15 condos and spending $45 million, by his estimation. Back then, he was the flashy socialite who drove a Ferrari, sponsored polo matches at the Fisher Island Club, and always arrived by chopper.”
But Quintana fell on hard times after an acrimonious divorce. His ex took some of the property, and he sold some additional units to raise living expenses. Luckily for Quintana, though, he unloaded those properties at the top of the market.
Meanwhile, he’d begun the practice of renting out one condo for cash. He was obviously hard up for funds, because when the “modeling agency” offered him $600 for six hours, he had his assistant deliver the keys and didn’t even require a written contract. Tragically, he now says he thought a high-fashion photo spread might help him find future tenants.
Unfortunately, the temporary tenant wasn’t an MLB backstop or hot Russian tennis player.
It was the production crew for the Bang Bros…
You can’t help but love the evocative description of the porno flick that was penned by the New Times’ Gus Garcia-Roberts.
This prose is dripping with the contempt that can only be inspired by viewing the film, perhaps succumbing to its lure, and then letting a wave of self-loathing crash over you…
It turns out Quintana had rented his apartment to Bangbros.com, an online porn giant based in Miami. Its auteurs produced Sexy Golfing Experience, which sounds like an unauthorized Tiger Woods biography but is in fact a hard-core skin flick starring zeppelin-breasted actress Devon Lee.
The film is no innovation in cinema. In it, Tony, a ratty-looking dude with a thin beard and designer shades, commandeers a golf cart — clearly displaying Quintana’s apartment number — to rendezvous with Devon on a Fisher Island golf green. After the dirty-blond porn starlet does some butt-focused putting, the lovers drive to Quintana’s condo on a golf cart with a pudgy, bearded dolly grip riding on the rear.
Once in the apartment, they head to the balcony, where, in broad daylight and full view of any neighbor who might glance out a window, Tony applies baby oil to Devon’s buttocks for five minutes. They then go inside and run through the usual battery of positions, with only a thin white towel separating their carnal intermingling from Quintana’s brown suede couch and matching chaise lounge. Other scenes involve possible staining of one of the homeowner’s throw pillows and his carpet.
The “zeppelin-breasted” Devon Lee
It didn’t take long for word to get around about the first-ever Fisher Island porno, and for Quintana’s reputation to come crashing down.
Quintana didn’t find out about Sexy Golfing Experience until roughly three months after he rented out his apartment, he says, when a safari-helmeted security guard named Howard greeted him with: “Great film, Mr. Quintana!”
“The rumors always start with security,” says Fisher Island real estate agent and resident Claudia Campuzano. “Everybody on the island knows about Raul’s movie, and everybody’s watched it too.”
[...]
That earned him a new nickname: “The Porn King of Fisher Island.”
The Fisher Island Community Association found out about this and dropped the hammer on poor Mr. Quintana…
Citing non-specified bad behavior, they yanked privileges and laid out several restrictions:
They banned him from renting out his condos, seriously cutting into a major source of income.
He was forbidden to use the car lanes for residents on the ferry, and instead, he was banished to the employee lanes. Ouch.
Furthermore, they made him get advance approval for any guest that he wished to bring onto the island in the future.
When an irate Quintana stopped paying his association dues, the dispute turned into a legal battle over $250,000 in unpaid fees.
Quintana was banned from the Fisher Island Club, and he couldn’t even visit as a guest of another resident. He was also accused of threatening Community Association officials.
Now Quintana’s life is falling down around him. The New Times quoted a sympathetic neighbor:
“Everybody loved Raul,” says Ty, a Fisher Island resident and business owner who asked that his last name not be used. “But he’s lost everything. He’s been outcasted.”
Let this be a lesson to you, property owners — when a “modeling agency” calls you up and wants to use your real estate for a shoot, make sure you know what you’re getting into.
You just might find your condo on “Ass Parade” and your community association irate, while your reputation becomes that of a common pornographer.
After the reality masterpiece that was Bravo’s Real Housewives of New Jersey, it was clear that the Italian-American communities of the Garden State were fertile ground for future documentary exploration.
In other words, New Jersey is filled with Neapolitan jackasses only too willing to demonstrate their idiocies in front of reality-TV cameras.
Now MTV has stepped up, bringing us “Jersey Shore,” the story of eight strangers…of Italian descent and questionable taste…picked to live in a house in Seaside Heights for the summer…and have their lives taped…to find out what happens when GUIDOS AND GUIDETTES GO WILD!!!
The two-hour premiere was last night, and it was simply tremendous.
While we may be in for a cold, snowy winter, there’s little doubt that the summertime exploits of the Jersey Shore crew should keep us toasty warm around our campfire of judgment and schadenfreude.
These unabashed guidos and guidettes (I’m not even insulting them, this is their self-professed identity) took the house by storm in their first few days down the shore…
It wasn’t long before girls were cheating on their boyfriends, guys were fighting over fly honeys, lightweights were puking all over the place, the T-shirt store guy who employs them was blowing a gasket at their lack of work ethic, and the girls in the house were angrily feuding with the “whores” that the guys lured in from the boardwalk.
When you bring together the most stereotypically ridiculous fools from the Tri-State area to a summit meeting of this magnitude, hilarity is the inevitable result.
Allow me to introduce you to the gentlemen and women who are sure to entertain us in the weeks to come:
Mike aka “The Situation” and DJ Pauly D
These two fellas are 100% reality gold.
I don’t think I personally know any man who puts as much care into his hairdo as DJ Pauly D. He likes to call himself “Your girlfriend’s favorite DJ,” and while he hails from faraway Rhode Island, he definitely represents the cream of the Jersey Shore guido crop. Watching him load armfuls of his favorite hair products into his car for the trip south was a joyous experience. After all, when you style your hair twice daily and “it always looks perfect,” you cannot be messing around.
Then there’s Mike, or as he likes to be known, “the Situation.” Why? Because his abs are so awesome, they’re a Situation unto themselves.
Mike is a perfect cocktail of lady-loving braggadocio and complete crazed insecurity. He’s a smooth talker who projects a lot of confidence, epitomized by his first shift at the t-shirt shop. Mike is a boisterous salesman, and convinces droves of females to buy pink booty shorts with “I Love The Situation” embroidered on the rear.
Meanwhile, his salesmanship clearly impresses housemate Sammy, who looks on in admiration and awe. Not long afterwards, they lock lips at Club Bamboo…
However, Sammy is quickly tempted away by the muscular charms of housemate Ronnie, which sends the Situation into a manic, vengeful frenzy. He quickly blows any chance he might have had with Sammy by descending into a death spiral of butt-hurt accusations and bluster.
He’s so pissed off, he gets into a meaningless fight with another patron at the club, who he accuses of “looking at him.” Mike blows a kiss to this gentleman, which starts a scuffle. All of a sudden, DJ Pauly D comes out of nowhere and punches the offending-eyed varmint right in the kisser with a right cross!
That’s how boyz do, yo! Represent!
Good God, this is gonna make for an awesome season.
Jenny aka J-WOWW
This 23-year-old party girl from Franklin Square, Long Island shows up to the house with a boyfriend, but it doesn’t take long for her to be seduced by the charms of DJ Pauly D.
While out at the club in one of her many tittay-ball-exposing outfits, she starts humping up on Pauly and demanding that he look at no other girls but her. Later, she flees back to the house out of a desire to avoid cheating.
(A) Too late, J-WOWW…I think it qualified as cheating when you checked out Pauly’s pierced penis; and (B) I agree with Pauly’s assessment about the lifespan of that relationship…it’s not gonna be long before J-WOWW is back on the market again.
There was a particularly awesome moment in the Pauly-and-J-Woww-make-out scene where you could clearly see him thinking about grabbing her boob, before deciding to go for a face-caress instead. Nice move…she’s obviously the kind of girl who likes to take it slow.
Wait, no she isn’t!
With her ridiculous hair, skanky outfits, and evident promiscuity, Jenny is going to be a major asset to this television program.
Angelina
Every great reality TV show needs a raging bee-yotch on board, and Angelina from Staten Island fits the bill. Her backstory: she grew up on the crime side, the New York Times side, staying alive was no jive. At second hand, moms bounced on old man, so then they moved to Shaolin land…
Angelina has a boyfriend at home, so she won’t be messing around with anyone down the shore…oh, except for some burly cro-mag who she fooled around with the first night, but she later claims that she was completely black out drunk and doesn’t remember a thing. Suuure. Meanwhile, her boyfriend is in business meetings and won’t take her calls. This is a surefire recipe for an outside-the-relationship rogering. Stay tuned on that front…
Angelina has obviously never worked a day in her life and is a serious liability down at the t-shirt stand. This raises the question, why does MTV always hire a cast of twits and then force them to do some kind of job that they don’t have the work ethic and qualifications to handle? Moreover, why does MTV think this makes for compelling television? Just supply these idiots with booze and let them do the rest. I really don’t care about the day job.
I adamantly refuse to refer to this girl as “Jolie,” but apparently that’s what the girls in the house are calling her…
Finally, Angelina spent most of the first episode on a mission to “cock block” (her words) all of her male housemates. Don’t even think of bringing a Jersey Shore skank up into Angie’s crib, she will put that ho on blast so quick it’ll make your head spin.
Sammy and Ronnie
(pictured with The Situation)
You have to love Sammy Sweetheart, the only true Jersey Girl on this program.
Although she fronts like a nice girl extraordinaire, it doesn’t take long for Sammy to cook up an epic love triangle to start the show off right. She’s vibing with The Situation right away, they have mad chemistry at work and they hold hands on the boardwalk. But after Situation skanks out with some boardwalk hoes, she starts playing hard to get.
When she hooks up with Ronnie, sparking the aforementioned Situational meltdown, Sammy justifiably rebukes the Situation…but we have to wonder what tricks will be up the Sweetheart’s sleeve in the future.
As for Ronnie, this dude is hilarious. He takes off his shirt every chance he gets and styles his hair into a ridiculous fauxhawk. Representing the Boogie Down Bronx, he loves to brawl.
Vinnie is the least interesting dude in this house, but he makes up for it with his fair share of shenanigans and ridiculous behavior. I would have loved to see more footage of him with his mom back on Staten Island (three cast members are from the Forgotten Borough)…he is clearly the ultimate mama’s boy, and we see his rotund mother serve him up some lasagna, lay a fat kiss on his cheek and weep as he departs for the Shore.
His trademark move is his maniacal fist pump…a montage of Vinnie in action has to be seen to be believed.
He’s also the first (but assuredly not the last) housemate to contract a contagious disease: pinkeye. Whether it was from letting a chubby 40-year-old shake her junk in his face at the club or from carousing with panty-less hoes in the hot tub, Vinnie got some shit up in his eye and started his job off on the wrong foot, missing his first shift to go to the doctor for treatment.
But after slapping his ridiculous white shades on, he was soon back in action on the dance floor, fist pumping like there was no tomorrow.
This brings us to the eighth and final housemate…Nicole aka Snookie aka “Snickers or whatever.” Or as I like to call her, Oompa Loompa.
This hideous specimen considers herself the prototypical Guidette. Watching her act a fool down the shore was like watching an epic car crash. Just try to look away from the horror!
Oompa Loompa got wasted immediately, and then started smashing her fake-brown self against all the homies in the hot tub. They were understandably appalled and all tried to push her away. She passed out on the rooftop hammock, and when she woke up, all her housemates had left to go clubbin’.
Oompa, heartbroken, immediately made plans to go home, but her dad talked her out of it. Later, she heard Angelina denouncing some boardwalk girls that invaded her house and hot tubbed with the guys, and Oompa took it all personally. She started to pack her bags, but again, the housemates talked her out of it. Sammy Sweetheart offered to be her friend if she, like, REALLY needed one (I think this Sammy doth protest too much about her Sweetheart-dom. Secret bitch alert).
Oompa then rallied for her first night out. She got wicked pissah again and started humping her tiny humps on any dude that would give her the time of day. After trying and failing to steal a much hotter girl’s man, she finally found a victim…a weird Chris Kattan alike who was only too willing to accompany her back to the house.
Despite their protestations, the housemates all clearly hate Oompa and shied away from her and her weirdo boy toy. They went up on the roof to watch the sunrise, when he grew groggy and distant. Oompa was pissed because she thought she was gonna get some action.
She tried to rustle Kattan with her breastises, but this only caused him to boot all over the place. Epic!
There are tons of fights and people punching each other. Somewhat disturbingly, some random dude will also punch Oompa Loompa in the face, which is really not called for, no matter how ugly she is.
Most of the guys are fast approaching 30, but act like overgrown teenagers; the girls are junior-college age, though something tells me they are not exactly cut out for academe. Yet somehow, the girls (with the obvious exception of Oompa) seem far more mature and self-possessed than their flexing, greasy-haired counterparts…
I just happen to be 100 percent Italian, I happen to be in very good shape and my hair happens to be spiky… It’s not necessarily a stereotype; it’s just how it is… I know I didn’t hold back and I’m not too worried about what people think. When I look in the mirror I feel good.
Amen, Situation. When I watch this show, I feel good. You will too.
Kansas University super fan White Owl once had it all.
The 60-year-old Vietnam Vet and eccentric campus presence — real name Jimmy Tucker — was known by everyone around Lawrence, KS for his love of KU sports and his wacky antics.
Thanks to senior-friendly policies, he could attend classes for free, and roamed the campus hollering out rally chants and dancing about.
White Owl even got some national notoriety, being featured as a “Fan of the Game” on Fox broadcasts, and became something of a YouTube sensation.
Then life got even better for White Owl…he won the heart of a 22-year-old Kansas undergrad, and they made plans to get married.
In the world of sports, it’s obviously critical to have the best possible players on your team in order to win.
It’s essential to have the right coaches and trainers on board, to help those players do their best, and to put them in a position to triumph.
It’s vital to have the right management team in charge: scouting, hiring, and acquiring the players and coaches that a team needs to be successful.
All those things are important, clearly. But without principled, moneyed ownership to pay all the bills, choose the right lieutenants to call the shots, and provide all the ingredients to make the championship pie — without sticking their fingers into it as it’s cooling — a sports team will be hard-pressed to win championships.
That’s why Frank and Jamie McCourt’s ownership of the Los Angeles Dodgers has been a complete and utter disgrace.
This pair of Beantown parking lot magnates flew cross-country to purchase one of baseball’s greatest franchises in 2003. They’ve since given themselves full West Coast makeovers, and their egos have ballooned up to Hollywood standards.
For reference, this is what they used to look like:
The McCourts have used the Dodgers as their own personal cash cow and id vehicle, acquiring washed-up Red Sox players and dealing away top prospects for cash as they go on ridiculous spending sprees and jet around the country in Gulfstream IVs.
Now the McCourts are getting divorced, and feuding like children for all to see.
The resulting fallout could cripple the franchise, because neither is rich enough to own the team in the aftermath of a costly split, let alone invest the money the Dodgers need to get stronger.
Of course, they don’t care a whit about that, because Frank and Jamie McCourt are narcissistic boobs.
ROTI issued our first takedown of the McCourts last offseason, when we accused them of pinching pennies and not doing what it took to bring back stars Manny Ramirez and Rafael Furcal.
Those jerks shut us up by getting both players under contract. The Dodgers got out to a great start, won the NL West (not without a fight, though), and made it to the playoffs.
However, before the team was even eliminated, Frank McCourt fired Jamie from her position as CEO of the Dodgers, accusing her of insubordination and an inappropriate relationship with an employee!
Jamie retorted, “You can’t fire me – I OWN this team!”
This immediately kick started a divorce court battle that centered around the question “Who owns the Dodgers?”
Major League Baseball insists that one controlling owner be determined for each franchise, and in this regard, Frank McCourt is the owner of the Dodgers. He’s also got Jamie’s signature on a document to that effect.
However, it seems possible that the team is part of the couple’s community property, and thus subject to 50/50 division in California divorce court.
Further complicating matters is that the team was purchased in a highly leveraged deal. The McCourts were never that wealthy to begin with (by sports team ownership standards).
So, if you’re counting at home, the above adds up to $421 million in financing…for a $371 million purchase. That, friends, is a little scary….
We know that the McCourts aren’t worth anything close to the $1.2 billion Jamie suggests. At most, the couple seems to have something approaching $750 million in total net worth ($400 million in “other assets plus ~$350 million in equity in the Dodgers). However, it is my guess, based on the loan balances due on the residences and their history of operating heavily-leveraged businesses, that the couple’s net worth is under $600 million.
If the team is determined to be an asset of the marriage, either partner would have to become heavily leveraged to take the other out. If no agreement can be reached and the court orders the Dodgers to be sold to a third party, expect a bit of a discount on the purchase price, leaving both McCourts with even less…
What I really want to emphasize is that the McCourts aren’t worth as much as you think, and breaking up this marriage is going to cost them both dearly.
Not only that, but it’s going to cost the Dodgers dearly.
If you want evidence, just take a day trip south, where the San Diego Padres have suffered immensely after their owner, John Moores, divorced his wife. Moores was utterly strapped for cash and had to sell the team; in the meantime, the franchise floundered.
What makes this so much worse than the Moores/Padres situation is that the McCourts’ divorce is not merely harming the team’s bottom line — it’s playing out in the papers on a daily basis, overshadowing the club and humiliating Dodger fans.
Where to begin…let’s start with Jamie’s divorce filing…
There’s no way I could recap it all here, so check it out when you get a chance. For true legal junkies, there’s also this link to the filing itself.
She wants $320,967 in monthly spousal support if she gets her job back with the Dodgers. If she does not get her job back with the Dodgers, she wants $487,634 a month.
Jamie led a push to have the environs of Dodger Stadium given its own zip code and the name “Dodgertown, California.” That’s so lame I’d expect to see that as an accusation in Frank’s filings, not a supporting point in Jamie’s. Jamie made $2 million a year when she worked for the Dodgers. You can look at this one of two ways: as an awful damn lot of money to pay a person for coming up with stupid stuff like “Dodgertown, California” or as a total steal considering she made 1/6 the money Jason Schmidt did and actually, you know, did stuff.
Description of lifestyle: more on the private air travel (private jets at $12K an hour) fine hotels (always over $1000 a night) and nice dinners out ($400+ a pop). Good for them. What kills me though is that the next time there’s a labor impasse, Joe Fan is going to side with the owners and complain that the players are the greedy ones who make too much money to play a kid’s game.
Jamie wants her job back as Dodger CEO, but even if she can’t get that, she wants all the “perquisites, emoluments and benefits” that come with the job and with co-ownership of the Dodgers. That’s perks and fringe benefits to peasants like you and me. The list of perks is long and includes all of the sorts of things you might expect the owners of a billion dollar company to have: Private jet travel, five star hotels wherever she goes, use of the “Dodger credit card” and the like.
The only one that has me scratching my head is “private security when traveling in dangerous locations.” By that I can only assume she means road trips to Queens when the team plays the Mets.
Actually, what it means is that she wants Frank to foot the bill for the companionship of her personal “bodyguard,” Jeff Fuller. Also known as her road beef.
Los Angeles Dodgers owner Frank McCourt on Wednesday filed papers opposing his wife’s demand to be reinstated as the team’s chief executive, citing insubordination and an affair she allegedly had with her bodyguard.
The documents were submitted one day after Jamie McCourt filed divorce papers seeking to regain her $2 million-a-year job.
In a filing submitted by the Dodgers that opposes her return to the team, Dodgers attorneys allege that Jamie McCourt took a trip with her bodyguard, Jeff Fuller, in early July to Israel on team business, but then headed to France for 2 1/2 weeks and billed the Dodgers for the trip. Jamie McCourt is also accused of not giving her husband any information about her assignments as chief executive and not providing the team with her schedule of public appearances.
In a declaration filed by Frank McCourt, he references Fuller as well, saying before his wife went on the trip she asked him for three things — one of which was to have Fuller be her driver.
Many harsh words have been exchanged in a public back-and-forth waged daily in the Los Angeles papers between the McCourts’ divorce lawyers.
The guys they brought on board to do battle are extremely experienced LA attorneys with storerooms full of high-profile celeb divorce paperwork. Suffice it to say, their billing rates are ample, and every cent comes out of the Dodgers’ bottom line.
Some of the harshest rhetoric surrounds Jamie McCourt’s role as President/CEO of the Dodgers, and whether her efforts helped or hindered the team in the first place. (BREAKING: As this item went to press, the court denied Jamie’s attempts to be reinstated as CEO.)
Bill Shaikin of the LA Times has been a clutch journalist on the case, and here’s his wrapup of Jamie’s side of the story:
Jamie McCourt claims she was actively involved in the ownership and management of the team from day one, detailing her involvement in executive meetings, hiring and planning decisions, and marketing and community relations initiatives.
The two sides also revived their debate on how integral Jamie McCourt has been to the success of the Dodgers’ operations, with attorneys for Frank McCourt belittling her assertion that she was “the face of the Dodgers.”
“There is no ‘face of the Dodgers,’ ” his attorneys wrote, “and, even if there were, dozens of Dodgers figures would rank ahead of Jamie McCourt. The conflict between Jamie McCourt’s focus on her self-image and the values of the Dodgers’ organization is irreconcilable.”
Dodgers President Dennis Mannion has opposed her reinstatement, alleging that Jamie McCourt seldom showed up for work on time, missed meetings and put her interests ahead of those of the team.
Mannion denied Jamie McCourt’s claims that he had instructed team employees not to work with her and excluded her from management discussions and decisions. He said he would have welcomed her involvement had she shown up for work more often.
Mannion further alleged that Jamie McCourt focused on initiatives “designed to cultivate and promote her image as the highest ranking woman in Major League Baseball,” even when those activities “were not financially successful ventures and did not fit the strategic needs of the organization.”
The filing in particular cited DodgersWIN, described in her biography as a program that “brings women closer to the game, brings the game closer to women’s lifestyles, and helps inspire women to use their voices.”
That sounds like one of the stupidest ideas in the history of the game, second only to race-based discrimination. The game is the game, we don’t need to spend money making it “closer to women’s lifestyles.” Seems to me that plenty of women enjoy the game of baseball already without Jamie’s useless efforts. Are you kidding me with this??
Maybe if Jamie hadn’t wasted so much money on first-class accommodations and ludicrous programs like DodgersWIN, the team wouldn’t have had to essentially sell blue chip prospect Carlos Santana to the Indians — the SMALL MARKET CLEVELAND INDIANS — in order to save money in the acquisition of role player Casey Blake.
The sad fact is, while the Dodgers have won a fair amount of games in the McCourts’ tenure, those victories have been owed largely to ex-GM Dan Evans, who ran the team back when Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp was the owner.
Virtually every star Dodger was drafted during the Evans regime, or acquired with prospects drafted by Evans. That includes Matt Kemp, Jon Broxton, James Loney, Andre Ethier, Russell Martin, and Chad Billingsley. Manny Ramirez was acquired by trading Evans’ pick Andy LaRoche.
There’s one notable exception — star lefty Clayton Kershaw was chosen by the McCourts’ GM, Ned Colletti — but with the 7th pick in the draft you’d damn well better get yourself a guy with huge upside.
Under the McCourts’ penurious regime, the Dodgers have gutted their once-robust commitment to international scouting.
[T]he Dodgers have done relatively little to replenish the organization. Baseball America last spring ranked the Dodgers’ farm system 23rd among the 30 teams.
Gordon and pitcher Chris Withrow emerged as elite prospects this season, but the minor league depth is limited by the Dodgers’ limited investment in it.
The Dodgers have paid $8.5 million in signing bonuses for draft picks over the last two years — the lowest figure among all major league teams, according to Baseball America.
The Dodgers, so proud of their heritage in Asia and Latin America, today are a non-factor in bidding for top amateur players abroad. In 2008, according to Baseball America, major league clubs combined to sign 115 such players for bonuses of more than $100,000. The Dodgers did not sign one.
“They’re definitely not the pioneering team they were,” Baseball America editor John Manuel said. “They’ve squandered that advantage.”
Other observers, including Shaikin and LA columnist Bill Plaschke, accuse the McCourts of blowing a chance to acquire ace Cliff Lee — last seen mowing down Yankees in the World Series:
It has been written here countless times since the end of July that the Dodgers would have been a serious World Series contender if they had been able to trade for an available ace starter like Cliff Lee.
The Phillies acquired Lee instead, and it is the Phillies who are in the World Series this week, using Lee to steal a Game 1 victory from the New York Yankees.
The Dodgers finished second in the Lee sweepstakes this summer because the Cleveland Indians judged the Phillies’ prospects to be better. It turns out that the Dodgers didn’t improve their offer because the McCourts would rather invest in the cheaper lower-level minor leaguers than pay the remainder of Lee’s $6-million contract this year, plus his $9-million option next year.
Go away, McCourts. Now.
Sell the team and go live in one of your many mansions, or even better, pitch a tent in a parking lot.
Dodgers fans are being robbed blind by these two carpetbagging hedonists, and it’s only going to get worse from here unless they find a way to unload the team and do it soon.
Los Angeles deserves far better ownership than these two chumps.
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