Baseball: Divorce hits Dodgers into bankruptcy

The tragic comedy that is the Los Angeles Dodgers has intensified as one of American sport's most famous franchises filed for bankruptcy - a last ploy by its heavily indebted owner to keep the team from being taken over by Major League Baseball.

This has been an especially turbulent summer for professional sports in the United States, with the National Football League paralysed by an unresolved four-month lockout and the National Basketball Association widely expected to face a similar shutdown soon. But nothing rivals the ruin of the Dodgers.

Trouble had been predicted almost from the moment Frank McCourt, a carpark magnate, acquired it in 2004.

The situation turned critical when he and his wife last year embarked on acrimonious divorce proceedings focused on who owned the team, the McCourts' most valuable asset.

The Boston-accented real estate developer bought the team in a highly leveraged US$430 million deal that was the second-highest for a baseball team at the time.

He became just the fourth owner in franchise history and the sale marked the return of the team to family ownership, although the McCourt clan has been nothing like the O'Malleys.

The O'Malleys owned the Dodgers or a stake in them for more than 50 years; an old-fashioned tenure of tradition. Any problems were kept in-house and employees were treated like family.

The O'Malley family's business was baseball. The McCourt family's business has become everybody's business.

Two years ago, McCourt and his wife and former team chief executive Jamie McCourt decided to divorce, prompting a tawdry fight over who owns the team.

Their court filings revealed a lifestyle of excess, extreme even by the standards of LA's super-rich: multiple lavish homes, private security, country club memberships, even a six-figure hair stylist on call for the couple.

This month, a solution seemed at hand when the feuding ex-couple reached a settlement, on the condition that Major League Baseball approved a 17-year US$3 billion ($3.7 billion) contract between the Dodgers and Fox television, including US$385 million up front that would have allowed the team to meet its immediate financial obligations, including salaries and almost US$50 million of deferred payments owed to former players.

But Major League Baseball, which is already in charge of day-to-day management of the team, vetoed the Fox deal. Not only did the divorce settlement unravel but Mr McCourt was left with no alternative but to file for bankruptcy protection if he was to prevent the team being taken over completely by the League, whose commissioner Bud Selig has enormous powers in such matters.

The Dodgers owner's reaction was bitter.

"We brought the commissioner a media rights deal that would have solved the cashflow challenge," Mr McCourt said. "Yet he's turned his back on the Dodgers, treated us differently and forced us to the point we find ourselves in today."

Selig said: "The action taken today by Mr McCourt does nothing but inflict further harm to this historic franchise".

Bankruptcy protection will allow the team to continue to operate with US$150 million of short-term financing, so players and other employees will continue to be paid.

The inherent value of the franchise, on paper one of the richest in baseball, also means the underlying finances are less dire than they appear. Liabilities were listed at between US$100 million and US$500 million, but assets are at between US$500 million and US$1 billion.

- Independent and AP