Everybody’s Going Downtown . . . but the Dodgers?

I have been trying to follow the bouncing ball in Los Angeles for a long time now, but all I keep getting is whiplash.

How on Earth did we go from L.A. luring a new football team to an old stadium to L.A. luring its old baseball team to a new stadium? The Dodgers . . . moving downtown? What next? The Queen Mary moving downtown? The La Brea Tar Pits?

Let me see if I’ve got the events of the last couple of years straight:

1. The NFL loves the notion of the Dodgers’ wanting to play baseball next door to a new football stadium. The NFL doesn’t have much use for L.A.’s old football stadium.

2. Influential people persuade the Dodger owner, Peter O’Malley, that it will be better for Los Angeles if a new football team plays in the old stadium.

3. O’Malley yields the field, sells the Dodgers and their stadium.

4. The influential people pitch their old stadium to the National Football League, with an ownership group led by Ed Roski. A second group pitches a new stadium in Carson, with an ownership group led by Michael Ovitz.

5. To strengthen his group’s bid, Roski welcomes a new ownership partner, Eli Broad.

6. A new football team is approved for Los Angeles, without specifying which ownership group or which site.

7. The Dodgers supposedly are willing to consider playing in a new baseball stadium, next to the old football stadium.

8. Ovitz says he will abandon his new stadium, now willing to be part of the ownership group of the new football team at the old stadium.

9. Roski, whose old stadium is the winner, is reportedly about to be asked to welcome more new partners, including the ones who tried to prevent him from getting a football team in the first place.

10. And now, the NFL again loves the notion of the Dodgers wanting to play baseball next door to a football stadium. Only in retrospect, did O’Malley ever need to sell the Dodgers in the first place?

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Dodger Stadium--beautiful place that it is--does not have the corporate (luxury) boxes necessary to raise enough money to meet the payroll of today’s players. Ticket sales are not enough. And ticket buyers also resent it if ticket prices are raised.

In a brand-new stadium, the owner can make enough money off millionaires who want to watch a game in style to pay for the millionaires who are playing the game itself.

Therefore, if L.A.’s powers that be had lured the Dodgers downtown back when O’Malley owned them, he could have tagged along for the ride. But since the Dodgers were O’Malley’s only business, unlike the man to whom he sold the team, Rupert Murdoch, he was in no position to continue in baseball economically without the extra income he would have made from an involvement in football.

Everybody’s being drawn like a magnet these days to downtown L.A., where the “Figueroa corridor,” once corroding, now seems to be turning into the happiest place on Earth. From the Staples Center to the New Coliseum, we will soon see a pro football team, a hockey team, two basketball teams and possibly a baseball team.

Los Angeles, the town with no downtown, is turning into New York City, while New York’s activities keep moving to New Jersey.

Why is this happening?

If I could read the NFL brain trust’s minds last week: If the Dodgers are willing to move there, how bad can that area be? It must be a nicer place for families to sit outdoors at night than NFL owners have always thought it to be.

I’m not shocked that the city of Carson didn’t win this fight of heavyweights, but the last thing I expected was for Chavez Ravine to be at risk of losing its Dodger identity forever. I guess the neighbors there who didn’t want football will really be happy now. A lot less traffic from now on, on any night.

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A chance for Carson still exists, that being Al Davis defying his league and his lease and moving his Raiders there from Oakland. But what then? Could Ovitz own part of one football team and part of another team’s stadium?

I rule out nothing now.

For many months, I have felt that what the NFL truly wants is for Dodger owner Rupert Murdoch and his Fox television money to become involved with L.A.’s new team. And now, indirectly, Murdoch is. The NFL looks much more favorably on the Coliseum, now that it’s Mr. Dodger’s neighborhood.

As long as taxpayers don’t have to foot the football bill, I don’t care where our chips fall. But who would have expected them to fall where they did?

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Mike Downey’s column appears Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Write to him at Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles 90053. E-mail: mike.downey@latimes.com