Why? Because I have been seeing all those other potential buyers out there looming just beyond the gates of Stadium Way like Wal-Mart shoppers prepared to pepper-spray any bastard who gets in their way. It is buy or die.

Now that the People’s McCourts case is all but closed, I have decided that I too want this community property of theirs and will go to any length to make it mine. Oh, I might look unqualified to Major League Baseball’s naked eye–I’ve never owned a Massachusetts parking lot or anything–but I do own a minority stake in Class A ball’s Yakima Bears, a minor-league affiliate of the (boo, hiss) Arizona Diamondbacks, so I may very well have more moneyball acumen than that Harold & Kumar Buy a Baseball Team comedy act of Frank & Jamie.

You ask, “Mike, can you afford this?” I can. I have more money than Greece. I am too big to fail. I have more than $400 in my 401-K, which is more than anybody at American Airlines or Tribune Company can say.

Here is a 25-man (or so) Dodger-bidder roster I have been able to assemble thus far. (I say “man” because to my knowledge no woman has yet come forward seeking to follow in Jamie McCourt’s red Louboutin-soled footsteps as our resident queen of diamonds.)

-ELI BROAD. I see Eli’s name bandied about, mainly because the Dodgers could cost you in the neighborhood of $1 billion, and Eli resides in this neighborhood. I haven’t a doubt that Eli’s got a billion bucks–and I mean on him. If he wants to bid jointly, Eli and I together could come up with upward of $1,000,000,500.

-RON BURKLE. I see Burkle’s name bandied about, because anytime anything on the West Coast is for sale, Burkle’s name gets bandied about. When I worked for the L.A. Times, there was a rumor that Broad or Burkle might buy the L.A. Times, a rumor I believe was begun by the L.A. Times. I know that Ron is co-owner of the Pittsburgh Penguins, so perhaps he prefers having pucks to having balls.

-OREL HERSHISER. Dubbed “The Bulldog” by Tommy Lasorda back in the ’80s before nicknames like A-Rod and J-Lo came along. (“O-Her” would have sucked.) “I have seen Orel Hershiser sit at a gambling table with $5,000 in his pocket and seen him wager the whole thing on one hand of baccarat,” the old catcher Rick Dempsey once told me. “He’s not afraid of anything. He’s a gambler. He’ll go for broke on one pitch.” I approve of an owner who goes all-in. Frank McCourt was more like none-in.

-STEVE GARVEY. Steve’s got guts. This is a man who had the courage to wear a 1984 San Diego Padres uniform in public. I have seen better-looking costumes on rodeo clowns. I’d prefer the clam-digger shorts worn by Bill Veeck’s White Sox. Of course, the Dodgers will require cash.

-PETER O’MALLEY. Dial O and there he is. Out of the past. Back to the future. He’s the son of Walter O’Malley, who brought the Dodgers from Brooklyn to the West Coast in 1958. He would lend the organization a lot more class than subsequent owners have, with their promotions like “Manny The Overpaid Steroid User Bobblehead Night” or the more recent “Beat A Fan Into A Coma Night.”

-MARK CUBAN. The mayor of Los Angeles has publicly implored the Dodgers to sell only to someone with L.A. ties. Mark Cuban is to California what whale watching is to Iowa. He is a Pittsburgh Pirates baseball fan, a Dallas Mavericks basketball fan, and a man so refined that he changes T-shirts before verbally abusing a game official from his seat.

-DENNIS GILBERT. Dennis sits behind home plate. I know this because anytime I see a home game on TV, I say, “Well, there’s Dennis Gilbert again behind home plate.” To which my wife responds, “Who is Dennis Gilbert?” I then explain for the 10,997th time who he is. A former agent. A baseball associate of Jerry Reinsdorf’s. A guy who did magic tricks for me around a batting cage once. A fine fellow in my book.

-MAGIC JOHNSON: Only Mr. Earvin “Magic” Johnson, Jr., a young man of humble origins from Lansing, Michigan, son of an assembly-line worker and a school custodian, could one-up Lakers owner Jerry Buss by buying the Dodgers and bringing Showtime to the ravine. I can tell you this much: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is going to look truly cool in his uniform out there swinging a fungo bat in batting practice.

-JOE TORRE. “Who knows? It’s certainly something you’d have an interest in,” Joe recently non-responded to The New York Times. Joe Cool, that’s him. He survived working for George Steinbrenner, which was like being designated whipping boy for the Marquis de Sade. Joe would make a superb Dodger boss. He might even model his ownership methods on Steinbrenner’s, wildly overpaying players and firing Don Mattingly five or six times.

-FRED CLAIRE. Fred was general manager when the Dodgers were victorious in 1988. The franchise has racked up zero championships since 1988. I am partial toward Fred because he was once a struggling young sportswriter, just like me, and now apparently can make a few calls to raise a billion dollars or more, just like me. I know he always has the Dodgers’ best interests at heart–plus, he never would have traded Mike Piazza.

-LARRY ELLISON. He is a billionaire, trillionaire, Zuckerbergaire, or whatever comes next. He owns the Oracle Corporation, which, for all I know, makes oracles. He also made a bid to buy the NBA’s Golden State Warriors. I would rather own a condo in Chernobyl than own the Golden State Warriors. They couldn’t beat the Lakers in a seven-game series if it was five of them versus Kobe and four Laker Girls.

Others whose names have surfaced, fairly or un, include the L.A. Marathon’s frontman, Bill Burke, who is said to have big yuan from China behind him; Larry King, the longtime TV talk-show host, who ought to get back on TV so we won’t need to endure Piers Morgan; businessmen Alan Casden and Alec Gores, whose names I found in the Times in a Steve Dilbeck blog; and actor Ashton Kutcher, which is a totally made-up rumor that you should tweet.

Other people’s money could come from Warren and Jimmy Buffett, Bill and Dr. Conrad Murray, Snooki, the Situation, Jay-Z, Ice-T, Kenny G, the guy from TMZ, the Ruth Madoff family trust, the Winklevoss twins, the E-trade baby, Metta World Peace and his wife I Heart World Peace, Kanye and Jerry West, Barry and Phyllis Diller, the town council of Bell, three of the real housewives of Beverly Hills but not the one named Vanderpump, 50 bankers from bankrupt banks who each have a $50 million bonus due, and, of course, me. You could do worse. (You have.)

Mike Downey is a former columnist for the Los Angeles Times.

*Photo courtesy of srd515.

The post Who’s Gonna Buy the Dodgers? appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Welcome to the first Super Bowl to be played in the greater L.A. metro area since the Dallas Cowboys embarrassed the Buffalo Bills in the big game (doesn’t everybody?) played in Pasadena on January 31, 1993. I presume that this phrase “L.A. metro area” does not encompass the lovely seaport community of San Diego, which is still royally ticked off at that smug, smoggy, smelly, stupid city up north for hijacking the Chargers lock, stock and jockstraps in 2013 — particularly inasmuch as these very same Los Angeles Chargers will go up against Green Bay in today’s contest, attempting to add to San Diego’s record-tying total of zero NFL championships.

Yes, sir (and ma’am), pro football is back in L.A. For all those who bored the living hell out of us for years by insisting that the L.A. area neither wants nor needs the NFL, phooey on you (and the Charger you rode in on). Some of us DID want pro football all along. Some of us DO want pro football. Some of us are thrilled to have it back. Some of us don’t want our kids and grandkids to grow up in L.A. feeling like expats, rooting from afar for some dumb team in New Jersey or New England or New Orleans. Some of us would like to take these kids to a game once in a while, rather than bore them from here to eternity with stories of how we once went to a Rams game in our AMC Rambler in person and, boy, could that Merlin Olsen play!

How fitting that Super Bowl L is being played here, just as Super Bowl I was. Not a lot of us can honestly say we were there in person on January 15, 1967, the day Bart Starr, Ray Nitschke and the Packers enjoyed a pretty darned easy 35-10 victory over Fred (the Hammer) Williamson, Mike Garrett and the Kansas City Chiefs. I can’t, and though I later would attend around 25 of these “ultimate games,” I sure did hate to miss the only one at which the halftime entertainment was that multi-talented, world-famous, superstar of superstars, Al Hirt.

Football has changed in a big way since then. The players are larger, faster, richer. Quarterbacks now are better protected by the rules. Wide receivers now are boastful, unbearable clowns who act as if every catch they make was the greatest catch ever made. Offensive linemen now tip the scales at anywhere from 300 pounds to the approximate bulk of the entire state of Mississippi. Defensive backs cannot hit, touch, come near or breathe hard on a receiver at the risk of being called for interference. Coaches who once dressed like Vince Lombardi or Tom Landry now look as though they all get their clothes custom-tailored by Foot Locker.

I wasn’t sure the day would ever come when the nation’s most entertaining sport would return to the world’s entertainment capital and, indeed, it has not, for this is sheer fantasy football I am conjuring for you now. Farmers Field is nothing more than a sketch on a pad. No site for a Super Bowl has been chosen yet for 2016. No assurances have been made that Los Angeles will get a new team should a new stadium be built. San Diego still has its fine little squad with the lightning bolts on the helmets. For all we know, it would be Jacksonville’s team that moves here — quick quiz: name five Jaguars, and I don’t mean cars — or even Oakland’s, which used to be the most obnoxious, unpleasant, creepy people in the entire L.A. region before the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.

What I don’t know is if a new stadium truly could be constructed without a penny more being taken from California taxpayers, God help us all. Or if the general public really would benefit the way Magic Johnson recently speculated it would, becoming, in effect, Jobs R Us. I guess the new stadium would need plenty of ushers, vendors, guards, parking lot attendants, scoreboard builders, time keepers, cheerleaders, mascots in funny costumes, offensive coordinators, whatever. I would be in favor of that, what with America’s unemployment closing in on what feels like 99.99999 percent?

They say (you know, “they,” we’ve all met them ) that we don’t need no stinking football here now, that we already have a beach, a zoo, a museum or two, a coast, a whole lot of shopping, a couple mountains nearby, a desert out there somewhere, a few dozen amusement parks, all that jazz. I guess we have so much entertainment to keep us occupied, those of us who follow pro football are supposed to happily conclude: “You’re right, I don’t want to go see an NFL game today. I can go to Sea World!”

Would it work? Would it last? Beats me? The NFL was here to stay, until it wasn’t. Al Davis and Georgia Frontiere picked up their balls and left. A little town in Wisconsin had a pro football team, but we didn’t. A sprawling town in northern Florida with no baseball or basketball or hockey team had a pro football team, but we didn’t. Baltimore had a team, lost a team, got a team back, but we didn’t. Cleveland had a team, lost a team, got a team back, but we didn’t. We MIGHT have gotten a team, but L.A.’s politicians brilliantly tried to stuff the Coliseum down the league’s throat, so the league spat it right back and put a team back in Houston instead, telling L.A. to make like a center and take a hike.

I have no crystal football to tell me how Los Angeles will respond if a new stadium goes up and the NFL comes back. I personally believe it will revitalize that part of L.A. that is already well on its way to becoming a real “downtown” and not just some slum that sits in between Century City, Bel Air, Pasadena and Universal Studios. I have a vision of dozens of hotels and restaurants where there are now New York-style entertainment complexes mixed with Chicago-style architectural developments and a little of San Francisco’s artsy-fartsy cultural stuff for good measure. I see the 2032 Olympic Games coming soon to a stadium near you.

But let’s wait and see. Maybe it won’t get off the ground. Maybe this stadium thing will end up being all talk and no action, and the lack of a team in alluring L.A. will continue to be a means for the NFL to keep all other cities in line. Maybe the debt ceiling in the United States will leave this entire republic as broke as a Borders book store or the couple who once bought the Dodgers. I sure hope this is not the case. Los Angeles does not need the NFL. Los Angeles might not get the NFL. But, dammit anyway, some of us out here DO want the NFL, so don’t keep saying we don’t.

Mike Downey is a former columnist for the Los Angeles Times.

*Photo courtesy of random letters.

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