For some reason, this is my favorite part of the article. It seems, we have an owner who wants to win no matter what. He is a baseball fan. And like us, comes up with Playstationesque trades and must be grounded by the baseball man in Kasten. I FUCKING love this. An owner with pockets, creativity, who wants to win, and always puts the fans first. FUCK YOU, McCourt.
The biggest oversight in the assessment of the Guggenheim comments: They are salvaging a generation of fans, and building for the next. Being a Dodger fan in Orange County schools defined who I was throughout my childhood. Because everyone else loved the Angels. When people heard the word Dodgers, they thought of me. Geographically, I should've been an Angel fan. But I'm not. My little leagues had Angel Nights. Everyone loved the rally monkey and the big "A". Not me. My dad is a Dodger fan and when he took me to my first Dodger game, it was like nothing I had ever seen. The stadium was built into a hill, there were big skyscrapers you could reach out and touch from the ravine. Vin Scully and Ross Porter introduced me to Farmer John and 76 gasoline. I watched the 1988 World Series VHS tape every day when I was a kid. But I suppose that was the problem, wasn't it? I wasn't born until 1992. I grew up on tapes and stories about the greatness of the Los Angeles Dodgers. Although they've had their share of good teams in my 20 years on this planet, my generation is defined by trading Piazza, Konerko, and Pedro Martinez. By FOX, and Frank McCourt. The Angels had been a joke for 40 years before they started having moderate success and winning a world series when I was 10. The Dodgers, in that window, were the West Coast's Yankees. Do you think Orange County Angel fans I went to elementary schools with knew that? Nope. And that's the point. Their generation (albeit 10 years of life) had the Angels being a good team. L.A was a foreign land and the Dodgers 'sucked'. I stood strong, preaching the greatness of the West Coast's flagship brand. But again, there's the problem. I refused to accept the fact maybe the prestigious Dodgers weren't so prestigious any more. The Dodgers, since moving to Los Angeles have won more games, more pennants, and more world championships than any team in the national league. No team in sports have had more fans come through the turnstiles. None. They have 56 Hall of Famers. The Dodgers are among the greatest franchises ever. But when 25 years pass, things change. The next generation knows only of the NOW. Orange County embraced the Angels more than ever-- and Los Angeles, although the Dodgers continued to be a top MLB draw, and people still loved the Dodgers, became a Laker town. Magic Johnson said (well before he was thinking of owning the team), that "Even in the Showtime era, no matter what we seemed to do, the DODGERS were on the front page of the LA Times.". The Dodgers are Los Angeles. But, after '88, the Dodgers stopped winning. The Lakers continued to win championships in a league they dominate. It's not about creating a brand. It's about RESTORING it, and building it for the next generation. What Guggenheim is telling me is that MY SON doesn't have to watch the 1988 World Series tape. Living in Orange County, Angel fans won't try to walk all over him. He will get to know the Dodgers for what they always should've been since O'Malley sold the team. For 20 years I've been living in a past I wasn't a part of. Now, with Guggenheim, the past will be the past. And for the first time, I get to watch the historic enterprise that is the DODGERS. I get to see greatness. The Dodgers are BACK for virgin eyes.
I'm at the season tix open house right now and hearing a lot of, "we are very limited" and "those are taken"...Dodger Stadium is gonna be rocking hard. This is gonna be fun. I will post some pics of construction later
