Selig, owners share blame in Dodgers’ demise

The door would open each night and my mother would peer inside and I would have already taken a pre-emptive strike by turning down the radio's volume and holding my breath as if Ghostface was hiding in the closet.

It was survival mode at its most basic level, a 10-year-old pretending to be asleep so that when he eventually dozed off, it would be on his terms, meaning hopefully to the sounds of another Dodgers victory.

That, and Mom usually checked in during the middle innings, when Jerry Doggett was calling the action and I had no idea what was happening in the game.

Which was OK, because I'm certain Jerry, bless his bumbling soul, didn't either.

But then Mom would close the door and I would slowly turn the knob to the right and soon the articulate genius of Vin Scully would seep through the darkness and all would be right again in the mind of a kid who heard about the Holy Trinity at school and assumed Sister Florence was demanding we bow our heads and pray to Garvey, Russell and Cey.

Those are the Dodgers that I remember, that I grew up on, that I lived and died with, cheered and cried with, the ones that gave me my all-time favorite athlete of any sport -- Stephen Wayne Yeager -- and a rant by Tommy Lasorda on Kurt Bevacqua that would have earned me a school year's worth of detention under a nun's saintly glare of disgust.

Frank and Jamie McCourt are not the Dodgers. Never were. Never will be. They are horrid people who make Matt Williams likable.

And that's on their best day.

I realize many are basking in joy today at the pathetic state of the franchise, that the Dodgers always have been like minivans.

There is no middle ground.

It's a love or hate thing.

I can see all the Giants fans now, throwing parties at the Dodgers' continuing demise while also still celebrating their home run hero being found guilty on just one charge in a Bay Area trial overseen by a judge whose constant rulings for the defense suggested she wore a No. 25 jersey under her robe.

A World Series championship and now this with the Dodgers. San Francisco hasn't been this giddy since James Marshall discovered all that gold stuff at Sutter's Mill.

Which is fine.

They have reason to laugh. All of baseball does.

It's difficult to find the negative in Bud Selig seizing control of the Dodgers from the unsavory McCourts, and yet baseball's commissioner and his group of fat-cat owners need also share blame today in what has been the systematic disfigurement of a franchise once held among baseball's most precious jewels.

They unanimously put the McCourts in charge despite concerns by many within Major League Baseball as to the couple's long-term financial stability, and that was before McCourt hired his two sons for $600,000 annually to do nothing and spent $150,000 a year on haircuts amid reports he and his soon-to-be-ex took more than $100 million out of the club for their personal use of which they paid no taxes.

It is sickening what has happened to the Dodgers under control of these two louses, and the only hope now is that Selig can successfully fight any legal action McCourt takes, though I'm hoping a guy who needed a $30 million loan to make payroll recently and is involved in what could prove the nastiest divorce in California history is strapped enough to reconsider suing anyone right now.

Selig quickly needs to right the colossal wrong that was allowing the McCourts to assume control of the castle. Sell the team. Fast. Sell it to someone with the financial means to produce a winning product and the interest level that baseball decisions come before daily visits from the stylist. Sell it to Mark Cuban.

(The latter is far more hope than likelihood, given we already have seen what Selig's small-market roots think of the blunt billionaire from Dallas. Too bad. Cuban would do wonders.)

But this is how far the Dodgers have sunk. Selig, no fan of the O'Malley family ownership and who then opened the doors for Rupert Murdoch and Fox to own the team, followed by the louses, is now Los Angeles' best hope. What a messed-up world.

What I wouldn't give for one more night of wondering just what the heck it is Jerry Doggett is watching.

Or drinking.

Now those were the Dodgers.

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ed Graney can be reached at egraney@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4618. He can be heard from 3 to 5 p.m. Monday and Thursday on "Monsters of the Midday," Fox Sports Radio 920 AM. Follow him on Twitter: @edgraney.