His Los Angeles sports MVPs for 2011: Dodgers fans

The most sweeping statement in the history of Los Angeles sports started with a smallest of words.

No.

Maybe you said it. Maybe you were the first one. Maybe last spring somebody offered you a chance to buy Dodgers tickets, and maybe you surprised yourself by thinking about it, and maybe, finally, the idea of giving money to owner Frank McCourt made you physically ill.

Maybe then, for the first time in your long history of instinctively showing up at Chavez Ravine because of your blind love for the Dodgers, you said it.

No.

The word became a mantra. The mantra became a mission. Your refusal became your neighbor's refusal, which grew into your community's refusal, which spread wildly through a city that eventually made one of the most unusual, difficult decisions in the history of the American sports fan.

You decided you loved the Dodgers too much to support them.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no . . .

You claimed you would never attend another Dodgers game as long as Frank McCourt was the owner and, unimaginably, you didn't. You claimed you would disappear until McCourt disappeared, and, unbelievably, you did.

No, to the three-game ticket package. No, to the annual birthday trip. No, to the fireworks night, the bobblehead giveaway, the one Cubs game with buddies visiting from Chicago.

Countless "no's" turned into thousands of empty seats, which morphed into a summer-long national embarrassment, which caught the attention of Major League Baseball officials, who finally stepped in and finished the job you started.

Today, the worst owner in the history of the Dodgers has agreed to sell the Dodgers, and it is not overstatement to say it never would have happened without you.

For this, Dodgers fans, you are my Los Angeles Sportsmen and Sportswomen of the Year.

An appropriate trophy would be a framed photo of Section 314 in the right-field pavilion during an afternoon game in late August, an image featuring long gleaming rows of bleachers occupied by exactly six people. I know, because I interviewed all of them.

Congrats, Dodgers fans, for doing something not even the tough fans in New York or Philadelphia have ever done. They've booed players and managers out of town, but you actually ran off an owner.

You bought so few tickets, attendance dropped 18%, the lowest in 11 years. So many of you stayed away, McCourt lost an estimated $27 million in revenue.

Fans have boycotted bad teams before; that's easy. Refusing to show up to watch a team you support to send a message to an owner you despise, that's tough.

Congrats, Dodgers fans, for having the strength to miss Clayton Kershaw's Cy Young starts, Matt Kemp's MVP-worthy year, and the emergence of a tough young bullpen. As the season progressed and the glowing statistics mounted, you were increasingly tempted to run over to Dodger Stadium for a few quick innings; what would be the harm? But you didn't.

Late in the year, I received an email from a longtime fan who made me believe this boycott would survive the season. She had been offered free tickets and still turned them down, saying that she couldn't even bear to give McCourt money for parking or hot dogs.