This is the McCourts lobbying batting practice balls to Plaschke. How could he miss?? Senora McCourt is a twit.

I hear she was on the Mason & Ireland show today in a vain attempt at damage control. She's smart enough to get to a certain level of accomplishment, but she and her spouse have Peter Principled their ways into unintentional hi-larity since buying the Dodgers. (It's best if you view them as comic relief post-Walter O'Malley.)

Actually, you can listen to the podcast here.

I hate the McCourts for putting me in a position where I agree with Plaschke.

No, fans should not have to worry that signing CC Sabathia means some poor child doesn’t eat that night, that’s beyond belief. Who runs this team, Charles Dickens?

Jeez, talk about ass-backwards. Dickens wrote his books in part as a protest against the conditions that the poor found themselves in during the industrial revolution. He was one of the leading social advocates of his time, simply because his books were so popular, and did much to create awareness of those problems...

Huh, I guess you're right...Plaschke probably means it as in Dickens would with-hold food from kids to pay for Sabathia.

But my first impression was that Plaschke was saying "Who Runs this team? Some guy that thinks its his responsibility to use a large portion of the revenue he generates from fans to help out the poor, like Dickens"

Upon reflection I think your interpretation is more likely what Plaschke meant

Does Plaschke ever write a column that doesn't use cliched prose?

McCourt has run the Dodgers like he owns the Brewers and Attanasio seems to not be held back by the fact he owns the Brewers.

If the Dodgers don't re-sign Ramirez, they had better sign C.C. Sabathia. If either -- or both -- winds up in Anaheim, Moreno will erase the October frustration in his fan base, woo some more blue Angelenos and make the Southland more red.

I would like to see the LA fans take the McCourts up on their offer. Yes, we want the kids' fields. Spend CC's $30 million there. In fact spend all your payroll on charity and see how profitable your baseball team is.

You all are pretty heartless. I, for one, agree with McCourt, who only wanted to survey the team's fans for opinions on the matter. Is there really anything wrong with listening to your fans?

The fans want their money to go to one field only, the one occupied by the Dodgers, anything else is unethical and even immoral.

Hmm, so it is immoral for a business to do some of its marketing by giving money to charity?

Typical not thought out Plaschke drivel.

Hmm, so it is immoral for a business to do some of its marketing by giving money to charity?

Well, a privately owned company can do anything the owners want with it's profits. Of course, diverting payroll to charity is not really the way you do it. You set payroll to maximize profits, and then you do what you want with the profits, hell, give it all to charity if you want.

For a public company, management's only obligation is to maximize long-term shareholder value (within the bounds of law and ethics), so you'd have to argue that the charitable giving produces sufficient marketing benefit that it is in fact profit maximizing to give money to charity. For some businesses this is undoubtebly true, for others false.

I'm only half-kidding in saying this...but yes, I think it's a mistake to listen to fans

I think that the most annoying thing, and the root of most of baseball's problems is the fans. Burke must have been a follower of baseball because the "great unwashed masses of humanity" is pretty apt I think.

Present company excluded of course
The right to observe baseball matches should be strictly limited to those who can make informed decisions about how they root for their team.

I've said this before, and I will say it again. Allowing McCourt to purchase the Dodgers was done solely to appease Rupert Murdoch who wanted to sell the team and who also gave a lot of money to MLB through the "Saturday Game of the Week" and playoff coverage (Fox's TV contract was set to expire in one year). Baseball thought more about Murdoch than McCourt, who should have never been allowed to be an owner.

McCourt got a bunch of parking lots in South Boston, which has since become prime real estate. When courting Selig and MLB, Frank talked a big game about renovating South Boston along the waterfront as well as a new stadium for the Red Sox. In the 25 years that McCourt owned these parking lots, they have remained parking lots.

Outside of the parking lots, McCourt financed his $421 million purchase of the Dodger with debt. According to this article, the transfer of ownership of the Dodgers was most commonly reported as a sale. However, after closer inspection, it seems more like a foreclosure. McCourt owed Fox $145 million within two years after the transfer of ownership, but instead gave Murdoch his parking lots.

In March 2005, McCourt refinanced his $250 million short-term debt used to purchase the Dodgers (now a 25-year loan). The refinancing pays off the debt to Bank of America and the $71 million of seller financing by Murdoch. That's right, McCourt had to be loaned money by the person selling the team in order to complete the deal. This should have been a red flag right there.

Because of his questionable finances, McCourt has been raising ticket and parking prices. Now, ST ticket prices will be as high as $90. McCourt refused to take on any payroll at the deadline last season, which means he gave away some good prospects that he could have kept. Now there is this whole mess about donating money for public baseball fields. I would bet that if McCourt donated some money to charity, there would be some hefty tax breaks. Not only that, but an article yesterday at BTF said that there was another company who would be willing to match any money donated by McCourt up to a certain limit. Bottom line, if McCourt can get a mandate from the fans to improve the communities by means of these ballparks, he stand to save a lot of money than if he were to invest money in the Dodgers.

The right to observe baseball matches should be strictly limited to those who can make informed decisions about how they root for their team.

Use that criteria, and every MLB park -- yea, even New York, St. Louis and Boston -- will make the current Marlins look jampacked by comparison.

Yeah that's mostly the reason I'm half-kidding about it

Baseball is better with 50,000 people cheering during the game. It's the one positive they bring. Maybe someday we'll be able to create some kind of artificial intelligence ambience program to simulate a cheering crowd and be done with them once and for all.

No, but it is moronic for the owners of a baseball team to go out and poormouth, claiming that they have to make a decision between paying a free agent and building community baseball diamonds.

Especially when they most likely want to do neither.

#15 -- the big open question is, at what point does attendance problems kill the McCourts' cash flow until they can no longer operate? Certainly the $90 spring training tickets were odd, but what was stranger still was the absence of tickets under $30 for any seats between the bases. There was a recent Forbes article about how the Dodgers, Yankees, and Mets were the most vulnerable franchises thanks to their recent steep ticket price hikes times poor regional economic outlooks. Of the three, clearly McCourt has the absolute worst financial position. It's conceivable he could be forced out, but that would be too much like a Christmas present.