Letters: Frank McCourt playing foul ball

It looks like Frank McCourt’s plan to put an NFL team in Chavez Ravine is right on track. With Tom Schieffer, he now has a receiver.

Jim Meser

Simi Valley

::

Frank McCourt could settle his divorce, sell the Dodgers for an estimated $650 million, pay off his $475 million in debt and conceivably walk away from this soap opera with a cool $90 million plus all the homes he bought with his ex-wile. But no, Frank is going to battle the commissioner, the league and the fans.

Frank, wake up, you have two strikes, two outs and it’s the bottom of the ninth. Do what’s best for the team, fans and your family. Settle, and move on. If you don’t, the fans won’t come, your legal costs will eat away at your profit, and your legacy will suffer more than it has already has. Move on, already.

Brian K. Haueter

Ventura

::

I have experienced the inordinate sense of responsibility and public trust to a community that comes with the business of a baseball team operator as an owner of minor league baseball teams, even at our level of independent professional baseball. The words across the front of your players’ uniforms say it all and with whom your primary obligation reposes.

Frank McCourt has missed the boat since he arrived in our hometown. It has been always about him and his personal aggrandizement, and not making the Dodgers as royal and superior as they rightfully are, and should be, in the second-largest market, if not the grandest city of them all.

Time to exit, stage left, Frank. Do the right and graceful thing. Game over.

Robert J. Young

Managing Member, Orange County Flyers

::

So Steve Soboroff insists Frank McCourt is a changed man who has seen the errors of his financial ways. Easy to prove. All McCourt has to do is sell the multimillion-dollar properties he purchased with money siphoned from the Dodgers and repay the team in full. I’m sure I speak for Dodgers fans everywhere when I say we’ll waive the interest.

Daniel J. Lubin

Rancho Palos Verdes

::

Steve Soboroff should read the old fable about the scorpion and the frog. The scorpion asks the frog to carry him across the river and promises he won’t sting. Once in the river, the scorpion stings the frog anyway. When the frog asks why, the scorpion says he can’t help it, it’s his nature.

Just to be clear, Steve, you’re the frog.

Jim Lawson

Santa Barbara

::

As Frank McCourt’s front man, Steve Soboroff has either taken the Kool-Aid or is sly as a fox gaining inside information in order to align himself with a buyers’ group later. Regardless, Soboroff is now rearranging the Titanic chairs in the Dodgers’ front office while becoming Jamie McCourt’s newest enemy.

Stuart Weiss

Los Angeles

::

Frank McCourt says “nobody handed me the Dodgers.” Nothing could be further from the truth.

Matthew Klipper

Studio City

::

Frank McCourt seems to feel that a potential financial deal with Fox will bring financial stability to the Dodgers. The problem is that financial stability is only one of several issues that call into question Mr. McCourt’s ability to manage much of anything.

Where, for example, is the commitment to reestablishing what was once an outstanding farm system? Where is the commitment to actually improving the team? All of which leads to another question: How well vetted was the sale of the Dodgers to Mr. McCourt in the first place, and exactly why was he rebuffed in his efforts to purchase the Boston Red Sox?

Lewis Redding

Arcadia

::

In exchange for the $3 billion to keep his ATM operating, what did McCourt give to Fox? Naming rights to Dodger Stadium? The right to run promos inside the stadium for Fox shows? Replacement of Charlie and Rick with Fox announcers? Foxes skulk together.

Damiana Chavez

Los Angeles

::

So finally MLB picks Thomas Schieffer to run the Dodgers. Apparently it took a while because they were looking for an insider with a wealth of baseball knowledge, a successful businessman and respected investor who could quickly turn a business around 180 degrees. Someone whose character was consistent with the basic tenets of the Dodger organization.

Oh, and Frank McCourt’s choice, Lenny Dykstra, was unavailable.

Ben Coats

Ventura

::

Has anyone checked Frank McCourt’s birth certificate to determine just what planet he comes from?

Allan Kandel

Los Angeles

::

CITY TO McCOURT:

DROP DEAD

Brian Gadinsky

Westwood

Closing time

Yes, the Yankees got into Jonathan Broxton’s head last year and he has not been right since. Yes, he needs a third pitch. No, he does not need Ned Colletti trying to “motivate” him like he motivated Matt Kemp last year. We all saw how well that turned out. I think the biggest thing separating our Dodgers from a great season is not making our owner go away but figuring out a way to keep our general manager off of talk radio.

Larry Weiner

Culver City

::

How many more beautiful pitching performances by Dodgers starters does Jonathan Broxton have to ruin before the Dodgers get rid of him? Broxton doesn’t fool anyone anymore. He doesn’t have the velocity he once had and all the other teams are wise to him. The Dodgers fans don’t deserve to be tortured every time they see Broxton warming up in the bullpen, knowing he’s about to come in and knowing the inevitable eventual outcome.

Bud Selig saw a problem and got rid of it. Can’t the Dodgers do the same?

Paul Kessler

Los Angeles

Purple panic

It’s hard to believe the Lakers can get criticized for allowing the series against the Hornets to go six games, with the team undeservedly faulted because they “don’t bring it every game.”

It’s not like they’re playing the Washington Generals, who were beaten up without fail by the Harlem Globetrotters.

Critics are unrealistic and unaware of the challenge it takes, emotionally and physically, to win year after year, as the Lakers have done.

Richard Karliss

Malibu

::

T.J. Simers’ column, with its mix of sardonic wit and realistic analysis, is the best therapy for me after the Lakers lose. Nothing else helps me deal with all that depression and anger. Monday’s was brilliant.

I wonder if Phil and the guys ever read what he writes. Are the great Buddha and a bunch of kids actually open to advice from a sports columnist? I doubt it.

Let’s hope he doesn’t have to do this too many more times. But, if they keep tanking, I’m counting on him to get me through it.

Richard McCurdy

Burbank

::

When is the Los Angeles media, print and electronic, going to stop swallowing Kobe Bryant’s “season-ending injury” charade, when someone like Charles Barkley gets it?

Please! The Rockets’ Yao Ming and Trail Blazers’ Greg Odom are injured.

Bryant has to be closing in on Susan Lucci’s record for “years without winning” an Emmy, as the NBA’s reigning soap opera Drama Queen!

Bob Jackson

Simi Valley

Bright future

In what is already the best NBA playoffs in recent memory, it is clear that youth is being served. Whatever the outcome, the era of Kobe and D-Fish, Timmy D, Dirk, KG and the rest is coming to an unceremonious end. The next generation includes the likes of Derrick Rose, LaMarcus Aldridge, Chris Paul, Russell Westbrook and Kevin Durant, and (if I must) LeBron. Based on what we’ve seen so far, the league appears to be in very capable hands.

Cy Bolton

Rancho Cucamonga

Out of order

What NFL players were unable to secure through negotiation they have won through the courts, at least for now, as federal Judge Susan Richard Nelson has decreed that the owners are not entitled to run their businesses as they see fit and must end the lockout, thereby placing a heavy thumb on the scales of justice for the athletes.

It is a disgrace that multimillionaire players and owners were not able to reach agreement on how to slice the gargantuan pro football revenue pie of $9 billion a year, that the same type of loathsome greed that we witness involving so many corporate executives has infested the world of sports.

The message from Judge Nelson is clear: Give the players everything they want; continue to pay them more money than they could ever spend without regard to whether the gravy train is sustainable or makes economic sense.

As is seen in the case, our courts are often divorced from reality and common sense. The courts have gotten it wrong once again.

Oren M. Spiegler

Upper Saint Clair, Pa.

Playoffs?

In Chris Dufresne’s article on college football on April 29, he quotes the Big 12 commissioner regarding a possible playoff system: “I just don’t know how people think that works.”

Isn’t there currently a playoff system in effect for Division I-A. Division II and Division III football? Do these BCS honks think we are stupid?

Barry Gross

Irvine

Ice creamed

The Kings are one year older than me and are quickly becoming the Chicago Cubs of hockey with yet another early summer vacation with a loss to the San Jose Sharks. Like last year (to the day!) when we lost another Game 6 at home to the Vancouver Canucks, thousands of fans who paid top dollar for playoff tickets walked out of Staples Center ticked off and numb with yet another year of false hope and no Stanley Cup.

The Kings have never won a Stanley Cup, have only made it out of the first round five times in their history and have made two quick (no pun intended) exits from the postseason the last two years after close to a decade of not making the playoffs at all.

It’s a terrible feeling to come up woefully short year after year and Kings fans know this feeling all too well. I am still a die-hard Kings fan, but my hopes of ever seeing my favorite team win a Stanley Cup in my lifetime are quickly diminishing.

Josh Mills

North Hollywood

::

I’ll be a fan until I die, but it’s frustrating to know that the single most notable on-ice moment in Kings’ history is an illegal stick by someone who did between periods commentary during home playoff games.

Erik Schuman

Fountain Valley

::

I thought this might be the year that both the Kings and Ducks would go deep into the playoffs.

I also thought the Clippers would be the team of the ‘90s.

Ron Reeve

Glendora

::

The Los Angeles Times welcomes expressions of all views. Letters should be brief and become the property of The Times. They may be edited and republished in any format. Each must include a valid mailing address and telephone number. Pseudonyms will not be used.

Mail: Sports Viewpoint

Los Angeles Times

202 W. 1st St.

Los Angeles, CA 90012

Fax: (213) 237-4322

Email:

sports@latimes.com