West coast baseball has had a whole host of problems this year. The Oakland Athletics are floundering in their attempts to find a new stadium somewhere in the Bay Area and really are not getting any support from Commissioner Bud Selig and Major League Baseball. In Southern California, the Los Angeles Dodgers find themselves a pawn in Frank McCourt's divorce battle with his wife and power struggle with Selig.
The two worlds collided on Sunday as A's managing partner Lew Wolff spoke out in support of Commissioner Bud Selig. In bankruptcy proceedings, McCourt has bashed Selig's own salary in light of MLB's claim that McCourt has taken too much money out of the Dodgers.
McCourt's filing in Los Angeles Superior Court states:
"Even taking the commissioner's false claim that $100 million was taken out of the Dodgers at face value," the filing read, "it is difficult to understand how the commissioner can complain about this when he pays himself a salary of approximately $20 million a year - meaning that he has taken out between $120 million and $140 million from baseball revenues during the same period that he complains about $100 million being taken out by the owner of a team."
The issues between MLB and the Dodgers has arisen over the Dodgers financial struggles that have led to potential loans against television revenue, bouncing payroll checks and a host of other problems. McCourt thought he had a television deal worked out to preclude some of these issues but MLB rejected the proposed idea.
In the Los Angeles Times article, Wolff spoke out in support of Selig:
"For anyone to seek to diminish Bud's accomplishments in order to rationalize their own actions is, in my opinion, ludicrous and hugely disingenuous ....
"My hope is that the Dodgers will be sold to a party that will restart this great franchise, and that Frank and his family will benefit from a positive sale," Wolff said. "But to try and equate or compare what Bud Selig has done with the administration of the current Dodger franchise is unsupportable."
Wolff refutes the notion that he is simply trying to curry favor with the commissioner while awaiting word on MLB's Blue Ribbon stadium committee. However, it certainly can't hurt providing some support for the often embattled commish.