v******n
发帖数: 595 | 1 http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-0902-meyer
Dodger red?
A Chinese government bid for the home team? Say it ain't so.
Just when you thought the soap opera that is the Los Angeles Dodgers couldn'
t get more ridiculous, reports came Thursday that embattled owner Frank
McCourt had received a $1.2-billion offer for the club from L.A. businessman
Bill Burke, with some unspecified share of that $1.2 billion to come from "
certain state-owned investment institutions of the People's Republic of
China," according to the letter from Burke's group to McCourt.
The purported parties to the deal aren't talking about it. But if such a
deal were to go through — and it would first have to pass muster with Major
League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig as well the bankruptcy court — the
Dodgers would become the very symbol of the decline of American capitalism.
Consider, if you can bear it, the downward progression of owners that the
club has gone through since World War II.
Branch Rickey, who owned a share of the team in the 1940s and who, to his
everlasting glory, integrated the game by bringing Jackie Robinson to
Brooklyn, sold his share to Walter O'Malley, a super-smart businessman who
could bend elected officials around his pinkie. O'Malley brought the club —
including, to his everlasting glory, Sandy Koufax and Vin Scully — to Los
Angeles, picked up Chavez Ravine for a song, built a beautiful stadium (even
though he razed a neighborhood to do it) and ran the best club in the
business for the next couple of decades. In time, the club passed to his son
, Peter, who elected to unload the team, for a nice bundle of cash, to
Rupert Murdoch's Fox Sports enterprises, which was really after the
exclusive cable broadcast rights.
For some of us, Murdoch was problem enough. It was tough shelling out for
tickets, parking and beer when we knew the money was going to the guy whose
self-appointed mission was to reduce American journalism to the level of
right-wing rants.
Then, just as Dodger fans were resigning themselves to Murdoch, he managed
to come upon Frank and Jamie McCourt — while sloshing through who knows
what sewer — and sold them the team. Any real due diligence would have made
clear there was nothing in the McCourts' business history to suggest they
could run an honest Hula Hoop contest, much less a major league franchise,
but the deal was likely to cement Fox's broadcast rights, which was all
Murdoch's people cared about.
There's no need to rehash the McCourts' destruction of one of American
sports' most fabled and successful franchises. At this point, anyone who
takes the team off their hands would be a better owner, right? Could there
really be a more problematic proprietor?
And then, along comes China. And not just some private Chinese investor,
mind you, but a state-owned bank. The Chinese government.
In their defense, the Chinese certainly have plenty of money to put into the
team if they see fit. But if it was harder to root for the Dodgers under
Murdoch than under the O'Malleys, and harder still under McCourt than under
Murdoch, imagine rooting for a team owned by an authoritarian government
that jails its citizens for organizing unions or worshiping the wrong gods,
and depresses its currency to decimate what remains of American
manufacturing.
Over the last 30 years, the financial whizzes who dominate this country have
sold off our industry to China in return for some quick and huge returns,
never mind that they were wiping out the American middle class in the
process.
It's too late to stop the sale of our industrial might, but the proposed
sale of a team in which millions of fans have invested their dreams for
decades may be the moment when Americans say they've had enough — that the
claims of the many, which matter so little in the normal conduct of American
big business, should at least this time outweigh the interests of the few (
particularly when that "few" is really just Frank and Jamie).
For better and worse, the Dodgers are looking more and more like an
encapsulation of everything big that's happened to America in the last 70
years. The move from the snow belt to the sun belt, the rise of racial
equality (and think not just Jackie Robinson but also Fernando Valenzuela
and Hideo Nomo), and the decline of our version of capitalism — all of
these American stories are Dodger stories too.
Let's hope that our purchase by China isn't how either of these stories end.
Harold Meyerson is editor at large of the American Prospect and an op-ed
columnist for the Washington Post. | M*****8
发帖数: 17722 | 2
couldn'
businessman
"
这是没有战略眼光和意义的虚荣投资和高峰价接盘。
我看黑石的错误又要重演。要多脑残才会长记性？
买完后，媒体主子们必然炒作，制造中国威胁论。
到时候，TG为了停止受恶意舆论影响，谷底价割肉。
【在 v******n 的大作中提到】
: http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-0902-meyer
: Dodger red?
: A Chinese government bid for the home team? Say it ain't so.
: Just when you thought the soap opera that is the Los Angeles Dodgers couldn'
: t get more ridiculous, reports came Thursday that embattled owner Frank
: McCourt had received a $1.2-billion offer for the club from L.A. businessman
: Bill Burke, with some unspecified share of that $1.2 billion to come from "
: certain state-owned investment institutions of the People's Republic of
: China," according to the letter from Burke's group to McCourt.
: The purported parties to the deal aren't talking about it. But if such a
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