The Best Team Money Can Buy: The Los Angeles Dodgers' Wild Struggle to Build a Baseball Powerhouse Read Online Free PDF Page A

and take nothing for himself. But when McCourt took the stand during his divorce trial, he admitted that the linchpin of his business plan as owner of the team was to significantly reduce player compensation. During the trial, a document submitted into evidencerevealed McCourt’s plan to cut the team’s baseball operations budget by 21 percent by the third year of his regime. On McCourt’s last opening day as owner, the Dodgers ranked an embarrassing twelfth out of thirty teams in player payroll, lagging behind such small-market clubs as the Minnesota Twins and Milwaukee Brewers.
    Frustrated fans wondered where all the money went. As divorce filings later revealed, while the Dodgers were slashing spending, McCourt and his family spent extravagantly on nine multimillion-dollar homes, a private jet on permanent standby,daily home salon sessions, and aRussian psychic back in Boston whom they paid six-figure bonuses to “think blue.” When the McCourts moved to L.A., they paid $21.25 million fora home on Charing Cross Road across the street from the Playboy Mansion—a move that must have been popular with the couple’s four sons, who were between ages thirteen and twenty-two at the time. They spent an additional $14 million renovating it, including hauling their old kitchen across the country from their family home in Brookline, Massachusetts. According to divorce court filings, they purchased the house next door after deciding their main spread wasn’t big enough for hosting guests or doing laundry. The McCourts also bought a Malibu mansion on Pacific Coast Highway from theactress Courteney Cox for $27.5 million. Then, when the family realized its beachfront backyard wasn’t large enough to accommodate the Olympic-size swimming pool Jamie required for her morning lap swims, they snapped up the home next door for $19 million as well. The cash continued to roll in. As the Dodgers’ chief executive officer, Jamie was the highest-ranking female in baseball. The McCourts were living the American dream, amassing their own personal real estate empire. It would have continued, if in the end the only thing they hadn’t loved more than money was hurting each other.
    Their marriage fell apart at the worst possible time for the franchise. After Jamie filed for divorce on the night before the Dodgers took on the Phillies in Game 1 of the 2009 NLCS, she alleged what many critics had suspected: that her husband had mismanaged the Dodgers’ funds to within an inch of the club’s life. Just before their divorce trial began, Jamie recalled a traumatic incident back when the family lived in Massachusetts: she had answered a knock on the door to find a sheriff sent to collect their mortgage payment. After describing that ordeal, she was asked when her financial anxiety had eased.“I never stopped worrying,” she said. Jamie revealed that in spite of their family flaunting its lavish lifestyle, she lived in constant fear that one day the government would seize all their possessions. McCourt denied her allegations and countered with a press release firing Jamie as the Dodgers CEO and accusing her of destroying their marriage by having an affair with her driver, a man he had hired to squire her around town because her poor eyesight made it difficult for her to drive at night.
    Since they had been married for decades, Jamie felt she was entitled to half the value of the Dodgers. Frank disagreed. Their divorce trial raged on. Because McCourt didn’t have the cash to buy Jamie out, he released a statement saying the Dodgers were his and his alone, and that he had a signed document from Jamie to prove it. The certificate in question was prepared when the couple moved to Los Angeles to buy the Dodgers after their estate attorney informed them that California was a community property state. McCourt insisted that it gave himsole ownership of the Dodgers, and his wife exclusive custody of the couple’s homes. In fact, he said, the division of