Angry like the Wolff

Whoa.  When did John McCain and Ernest Borgnine find the time to clone this guy?

Just a quick update this morning: lost in the shuffle that was yesterday's disastrous trade deadline, Bill Shaikin of the LA Times reports that Oakland Athletics owner Lew Wolff publicly called for Frank McCourt to sell the team, making him the first MLB owner to make an on-the-record statement regarding the Dodgers' ownership woes.  

And the impetus behind finally making a public statement?  Not the $35,000,000 reportedly spent on the divorce.  Not the fact that the team filed for bankruptcy.  Not the dozens, if not hundreds, of personal mud-slinging attacks between McCourts in public, bringing transgression after transgression against themselves and the Dodgers to light.  Wolff finally went public because McCourt dared to question Bud Selig's salary as MLB commissioner.

"For anyone to seek to diminish Bud's accomplishments in order to rationalize their own actions is, in my opinion, ludicrous and hugely disingenuous," Wolff is quoted in the article as saying.  

You know what?  We'll take it.  As ridiculous as it is that this is what finally pushed the owners to publicly speak out, the fact of the matter is that this is a pretty big deal.  The owners are, to put it mildly, notoriously tight lipped, and while off the record comments and 'anonymous' interviews with GMs and owners that are critical of  McCourt have surfaced in the last few months, that fact that one went public shows just how fed up they all must be.  That it was Wolff, who makes his home here in Los Angeles and has been brought up several times in the past as a potential Dodgers owner if/when McCourt is ousted, just makes it better.   

We've stayed away from most of the divorce coverage here because 1) we are woefully ill-equipped to understand most of the hundreds of pages of court documents filed back and forth (we're not very bright here) and 2) we're doing our best to remain positive in our coverage of the team.  But having another owner unload on McCourt is too juicy to pass up.  The best quote from Wolff is towards the end of the article: "I can't think of one owner that is not supportive of the actions taken by MLB," Wolff said.  You'd think that if that weren't true, other franchise owners would have released a statement in support of McCourt by now- that is a clear line in the sand drawn by Wolff that no one will back McCourt in his showdown.  


So far, there hasn't been a peep from any other franchise.