No Joking: McCourt Likes His Job a Lot

The bleeding has stopped and the trauma seems to have eased in the executive offices at Dodger Stadium. The new co-owner has a new management team in place, and time will determine how successful this work in progress, as Frank McCourt calls it, will be.

For now, after two months of the season and four of his and wife Jamie’s ownership, revenue and attendance are up about 15% and the Dodgers have been surprisingly competitive in the National League West.

The club embarks Monday on the interleague phase of a schedule that McCourt terms “pure serendipity,” because it calls for the Dodgers to make their first visit to his hometown Fenway Park and for the New York Yankees to make their first regular-season visit to play the Dodgers, on Father’s Day weekend. There even is evidence that the new owner has learned to poke fun at himself.

“I was speaking to a distinguished crowd at the Jonathan Club the other day,” McCourt related with a laugh, “and I began by saying that ‘It dawned on me as I was getting ready to speak that you probably thought you came to hear the Pulitzer Prize-winning author [of “Angela’s Ashes”] and instead you get the parking lot attendant.’ They got a kick out of that.”

There is more than one Frank McCourt, of course, and the one who bought the Dodgers for $430 million on Jan. 29 will be back in Boston next weekend, proudly showing off his team to several hundred blue-clad friends at Fenway -- “We’ll have our own college football-type rooting section,” he said -- while also getting an update on the prospective sale of his parking lots and other real estate assets.

In a wide-ranging interview, McCourt said he would have no problem meeting the financial deadlines in his leveraged purchase of the club and that he was not sure if he wanted minority investors.

He said that General Manager Paul DePodesta could increase payroll in midseason if the addition of one or more players would benefit the team and that, although Jim Tracy has been doing “a fine job,” he and DePodesta had not discussed extending the manager’s contract beyond 2004.

He also said that he remained committed to Dodger Stadium as the long-term home of the club.

“I’m more enamored with the setting than ever before,” McCourt said. “In time, of course, we may be looking at ways to enhance the environment and revenue potential, but I still think Dodger Stadium is more than viable in all regards.”

Of course, only three years ago McCourt considered Fenway and the Red Sox his dream pursuit.

His great-grandfather had owned a piece of the Boston Braves before they moved to Milwaukee, he grew up in the extended shadow of the Green Monster in a suburban Watertown house in which baseball often superseded the family construction business as dinner talk, and there were season tickets.

Ultimately, the Red Sox auction of 2001 went beyond McCourt’s resources, with a group headed by John Henry paying $700 million for the club, ballpark and New England Sports Network, a setback that prompted McCourt’s mother to call and ask, “Frankie, are you OK?”

“Sure, I was disappointed at the time,” he said, “but as a kid growing up in that neighborhood, I never dreamed I’d be in position to bid for the Red Sox, so I viewed it as nothing but positive.

“We learned a lot in the process, and I firmly believe that if we hadn’t bid on the Red Sox, we wouldn’t own the Dodgers today. It’s as simple as that, because what it confirmed for us was our love of the game and our desire as a family to be back in it.”

A Boston talk-show host recently predicted that in the next few years, McCourt and Henry would find a way to swap franchises.

McCourt laughed and said that owning the Dodgers was the ultimate.

“If one is willing to take the risk, as we clearly were in picking up and establishing these new roots, this is actually far more exciting and has far more upside for us than owning the hometown team,” he said.

“I mean, the Red Sox are ... farther along in terms of tapping out the market there than the Dodgers are here. The Dodgers are just scratching the surface of what they can do, what we can do, in a much bigger city and much larger market.

“The upside for us, in both a personal and business context, is much greater.”

The perception, though, is that McCourt was tapped out when he tapped in, and his financial status played into a complex purchasing process that wasn’t resolved until the club was packing for spring training. The lengthy process foiled his effort to sign Vladimir Guerrero, who had joined the Angels by the time McCourt was approved as the owner. The Dodgers failed to acquire a significant hitter until the Cleveland Indians got fed up playing counselor to Milton Bradley on the eve of the regular season.

Now, as Guerrero carries the injury-ravaged Angels toward October, McCourt reflected on the loss of the All-Star outfielder.

“I’d be kidding you if I said that I wouldn’t have wanted to see the process move more quickly and that I wouldn’t have wanted more time between our approval and the start of the season,” he said, “but my philosophy in life is to do the best you can, given the circumstances you have to deal with. I don’t dwell on the past, I focus on the future, and if you’re asking if I have regrets, the answer is no. We had to deal with the circumstances as they were.”

And now?

“Everything is moving along according to plan,” he said, adding that he had the flexibility of income-producing assets that could be sold in time and the “unlimited ability to continue to roll financing over.”

“As long as people get their money when they’re owed their money, it doesn’t matter how that’s done, as long as it’s done,” he said. “We’re happy with our investment and not even sure we’re going to bring in additional investors.

“My focus in the first 100 days has been on making the necessary changes at the senior level of the organization and establishing a sense of purpose, and whether I elect to continue owning the club in entirety and have that much tied up in it is a separate issue from how quickly the revenues grow, because we’re not doing this with the idea that we’re going to make a lot of money.

“It’s really a matter of deciding whether you want to have a couple hundred million dollars tied up in a ballclub or do you want to return some of your money and use it to do other things. At this stage of the game, I’m very happy with the money being invested in the Dodgers. I’m a big believer in the franchise.”

It’s too early to predict how the McCourt ownership will play out, but in the wake of the tumultuous Fox era, having the owner on-site and acknowledging the need for urgency, stability and sense of purpose is a positive thing.

For now, with his Dodgers vying for the division lead, and scheduled to play his hometown Red Sox next weekend and his role-model Yankees a week later, just how much serendipity can one man take?

“Well,” McCourt said, “playing either of them in the World Series would be the only thing that would improve on what we have coming up in June. It’s just very special.”