LA Dodgers: Frank McCourt Takes Ownership Fight To the Next Level

If all who have been following the ownership debacle of the Los Angeles Dodgers thought that Frank McCourt would go down without a fight, you might want to readjust that way of thinking.

McCourt came out firing after meeting with MLB executives on Wednesday afternoon in New York—a meeting in which MLB commissioner Bud Selig was not present.

At the meeting, he was apparently told that Selig would not approve of the pending deal between McCourt and FOX television, which would see FOX pay $3 billion over 20 years to secure exclusive broadcast rights for the Dodgers' telecasts.

McCourt is counting on the deal to bail out of the severe financial troubles plaguing both he and the Dodgers.

Soon after the meeting was over, he held a press conference and went on the attack.

According to the Los Angeles Times, McCourt told reporters that the deal in place with FOX was in fact in accordance with current baseball guidelines and that he viewed Selig's rejection of the deal as a means of forcing him out.

McCourt called the Dodgers' television rights "our asset" and said it was "un-American" that he could not control that asset.

"It is not appropriate for one party's property to be seized by another party," McCourt said, "just because they got divorced or for some arbitrary reason."

McCourt was also told that Tom Schieffer, appointed by Selig as a monitor to oversee the day-to-day operations of the Dodgers, would be acting as a receiver—a claim that Schieffer denied.

"I don’t want to get into an argument with Mr. McCourt, a transcontinental argument here," Schieffer told the LA Times.

"I’m just here to help and will be happy to listen to him and evaluate his arguments.

"But we want this franchise to focus on baseball. People don’t want to talk about what’s going on in the front office, they want to know what’s going on with the team."

McCourt was defiant on the East Coast, while Schieffer was trying to return the focus back to baseball on the West Coast.

In his defiance, McCourt said, "Nobody handed the Dodgers to me. Nobody is going to take them away."

No doubt that answer will be forthcoming.

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