“We’re coming home,” Dodgers owner Frank McCourt jubilantly told a hastily assembled Brooklyn, New York news conference. “The Dodgers are returning to Brooklyn, and we’ll break ground on a new Ebbets Field on July 27.”
McCourt was referring to the date of the Baseball Hall of Fame induction of the late Walter O’Malley, the Dodgers owner who shocked the sports world by moving the Dodgers to Chavez Ravine.
“The Dodgers are a terrible sports team in a town of winners,” McCourt said. “People in L.A. expect you to win all the time. That’s unbearable pressure for a franchise. In New York, there’s a much greater tolerance for brutally awful teams. The Mets, the Jets and the Nets? The Rangers? Even the Yankees haven’t won this century. It’s a perfect city for sports underachievers.”
McCourt told reporters that when O’Malley moved the Dodgers out of Brooklyn in 1958, “the sports landscape in L.A. was almost empty. You had college football, and the Rams, but it wasn’t a big deal. You didn’t have the Internet following your every move. The Dodgers are losers, and L.A. has no tolerance for losers.”
McCourt said that he intended to level Dodger Stadium and turn the area back into lower and middle income housing, as it was prior to the team’s arrival. “To tell you the truth,” he said, “buying the Dodgers was strictly a real estate play. The team loses everywhere but in the real estate market. You’ll love the new Chavez Ravine Estates—we’ve been planning it since I bought the team.”
Asked whether loyal West Coast Dodger fans would be heartbroken by the team’s return to Brooklyn, McCourt shook his head. “Anyone dumb enough to be a Dodgers fan these days can watch us on the Internet. Or they can go root for the Clippers. They’re just like our team, only taller.”
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