Own Goals Not Scored in L.A.

Within minutes, Lew knew. Bad news, delivered at first click.

The guy down the street had just traded Carlos Lee, to another guy trying to beat Lew.

Lew will get over it, in time. But three hours later, that time had not come. So Lew, a silver-haired grandfather who dispenses smiles like candy, muttered his opinion of the guy down the street.

“He screwed me,” Lew said.

You might suspect these are two competitive Westside executives, and you would be correct. You might suspect this is just another fantasy league, and you would not be correct.

Lew Wolff owns the Oakland Athletics. The guy down the street, Mark Attanasio, owns the Milwaukee Brewers. Both live and work in West Los Angeles, their offices one mile apart.

Lee was the premium slugger traded before last week’s deadline. The Texas Rangers, nipping at the heels of the A’s in the American League West, got him -- from Attanasio and the Brewers.

“I’m really upset about him feeding the Rangers that guy,” Wolff said.

We’ll check back on that in October. We’re really more curious about this: Why isn’t one of these hometown guys running the home team?

The sausage races in Milwaukee are cute, sure, and Billy Beane is a genius. But when Fox hung a “for sale” sign on the Dodgers and pleaded in vain for a local buyer to step forward, where were these guys?

Attanasio thought long and hard about the Dodgers, and about a conversation he had with a friend not too long before that. The rest of his life was rapidly approaching, the friend said, and Attanasio ought to decide what he wanted to do with it.

The answer was easy: If I can’t play on a baseball team, I’d love to buy one. He’s 48 now, young enough to be Wolff’s son and too young, at least by his initial thinking, to own a team.

“I wasn’t emotionally ready to do it,” he said.

He manages about $13 billion in specialty investments, and he wasn’t about to give up that job. In a decade, maybe he would, and then he would buy a team. So, rather than bid on the Dodgers, he pursued a minority stake in the Brewers. Pretty sharp networking for a rookie: No one buys a team without Commissioner Bud Selig’s approval, and the Selig family owned the Brewers.

One year after Fox couldn’t find anyone in L.A. to buy the Dodgers and sold the team to Frank and Jamie McCourt, Selig couldn’t find anyone in Milwaukee to buy the Brewers. He sold the team to Attanasio.

“I think this was fated,” Attanasio said.

In L.A., everyone comes from somewhere else, and no one cares where you’re from as long as you win.

In Milwaukee, where Selig is the local car dealer who brought the Brewers to town in 1970, where the Bucks are owned by Herb Kohl, one of Wisconsin’s U.S. senators, and where the Packers are owned by the community, well, Attanasio harbored a touch of trepidation.

That evaporated about a minute after he got there.

“Midwesterners are the greatest,” he said. “I had people stop me on the street and say, ‘Welcome to Milwaukee!’ Could you see that in Los Angeles?”

Wolff, 70, got to Wisconsin before Attanasio was born. And talk about networking: At the University of Wisconsin, Wolff and Selig were fraternity brothers.

Half a century later, Wolff was in L.A. and the Dodgers were for sale, but by then his ties to the Bay Area ran too deep, his ties to the A’s already in place.

His real estate portfolio features luxury hotels, including two in San Jose, where he invested heavily in downtown redevelopment. He once owned a small stake in the Golden State Warriors. His majority investor in the A’s is John Fisher of San Francisco, a billionaire son of Gap founder Donald Fisher.

The previous A’s owners had retained Wolff to solve the problem of how to get a new ballpark. They finally gave up last year and sold Wolff the team and the problem.

So the A’s and Brewers are run here, by men with other business interests that keep them here, by men who do not confuse ownership with celebrity. The stars are in the box score, not in the owner’s box.

“I don’t think anybody cares in Los Angeles at all, unless you’re a movie star,” Attanasio said. We’ll take his word on that. His brother Paul, executive producer of the Fox drama “House,” wrote the screenplays for “Donnie Brasco” and “Quiz Show,” among other films.

Wolff works out of a modest two-story red brick building, wedged between a residential neighborhood and an auto repair shop. Attanasio works out of a gleaming high-rise accented with marble, in a 20th-floor suite with views of the ocean and city.

From their offices, or from anywhere else in the world, the owners connect with their general managers and club executives, often daily, through phone, fax, e-mail, even video conference. For both men, the BlackBerry is practically welded to the thumb.

They’re addicted to attending games when they can, watching via satellite dish or computer when they cannot and, when all else fails, checking scores frantically.

“Last night was my wife’s birthday,” Attanasio said. “We went out to dinner and I only checked my BlackBerry three times. That was moderated behavior.”

If he can tell a story on himself, he can tell one on Wolff.

On one recent night, the A’s did not play, but the Brewers did. Not long after the game started, Attanasio’s BlackBerry lighted up. He clicked to open this e-mail from Wolff: “Prince Fielder can really play.” The BlackBerry lighted up again. He clicked again, to open another e-mail from Wolff: “I know I need to get a life.”

If the Dodgers should win the World Series, L.A. would throw them a parade. If the A’s or Brewers should win, L.A. would shrug.

We wouldn’t. We’ll buy lunch, for either Wolff or Attanasio. Heck, we’ll buy for both. We’ll meet at a nice Japanese place on Sawtelle. Each guy can walk there from his office, and no one would recognize him along the way.