Turner Sees It as a Fox in Baseball’s Henhouse

Fox!--the television network that revolutionized sports by telling us the score--has been green-lighted to gain control of the Dodgers, which means that Rupert Murdoch could soon succeed Peter O’Malley as lord of the ravine.

Well, I guess that’s that.

Murdoch, she wrote.

This is good news for some, but not for Ted Turner, the Pecksniffian owner of the Atlanta Braves, who questions Murdoch’s moral qualifications.

I don’t want to say Murdoch hates Turner, but I do suspect that Fox wanted to advertise last year’s World Series as “the New York Yankees vs. some team from the National League.”

Baseball’s ownership committee has granted O’Malley permission to open his books to Rupert and his Fox hounds. I believe Rupert said he would be right over, with his magnifying glass.

O’Malley likened this to being “in the seventh inning of a nine-inning game,” which I take to mean that the only person who could blow this deal now is Todd Worrell.

Therefore, it looks as though, indeed, the future of Los Angeles baseball will be a 21st Century of Fox.

I see nothing in particular to be afraid of, unless the producer of the new pregame show makes Vin Scully partners with Terry Bradshaw and Howie Long.

(Terry: “Whoa, I tell ya! That Hideo Nomo, he could throw a lamb chop past a wolf! Wooo-eee!”)

Back on Jan. 6, when O’Malley put up his no-bedroom, hundred-bathroom fixer-upper near Echo Park for sale--300 acres, 3,400 trees, parking for 16,000, mountain view, “owner motivated”--I wondered if he might change his mind.

You know, get nostalgic about the place, find knife notches in the woodwork indicating how tall the kids were. . . . I figured O’Malley might take the place off the market by summer. A lot of us wondered if he would have second thoughts.

Evidently not.

“I believe Fox will be an outstanding owner of the Dodgers,” O’Malley said this week, dispelling any doubts over Murdoch’s money being enough to make him sell the old family spread.

For $300 million to $400 million, just think of what O’Malley could buy!

(One, maybe two new players.)

A throw-in of the deal is the Dodgertown baseball compound in Vero Beach, Fla., with its 60 acres of citrus groves and longtime easy access to Anita Bryant.

Personally, I feel Vero Beach will be turned into a Fox World theme park, with rides, games and characters in funny costumes, dressed as cast members from “Melrose Place.”

An O’Malley has owned the Dodgers ever since they moved to Los Angeles and kicked families. They also kicked off squatters and goats. (Some of them resisted and even bit the U.S. marshals who ran them off, and I’m not talking about the goats.)

But as of Thursday, permission was given to Murdoch to go over O’Malley’s books. This is Step B in the sale process, Step A being identifying a potential buyer, Step C being slipping him past Ted Turner.

(Turner challenges the moral turpitude of a man whose foreign newspapers run photographs of scantily clad women. I, myself, prefer to look at photographs of a scantily clad “Barbarella.”)

What no one knows is, I have already been given a look at the Dodger books.

Here is what Fox will find:

1981--Profits: $1 million. Expenditures: Lasorda postgame buffet, $2 million.

1988--Profits: $10 million. Expenditures: Damage to helmets, bats, whirlpool, other equipment by Kirk Gibson, $11 million.

1993--Profits: $50 million. Expenditures: Vince Coleman firecracker insurance claims, $51 million.

1994--Profits: $100 million. Expenditures: Grilling hot dogs instead of boiling them, $101 million.

1995--Profits: $150 million. Expenditures: Nomo interpreters, additional seats for 1,000 Japanese media, $151 million.

1996--Profits: $200 million. Expenditures: Removal of Sinatra, Rickles photographs from manager’s office, $201 million.

So, as you can see, Murdoch might actually lose money on this deal.