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| Magic Johnson’s The Los Angeles Dodgers |
Magic Johnson Has Bought The Los Angeles Dodgers For $2 Billion!! Keeping it in the family! –
Former LA Laker Buyer the Dodgers!!! There’s Magic in the Air –
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| Magic Johnson’s The Los Angeles Dodgers |
Magic’s group will spend $2 billion for the team and $150 million for a joint venture with the beleaguered seller, Frank McCourt, on the land surrounding Dodger Stadium (imagine the revenues from the parking lots). McCourt had until recently resisted selling the lots, preferring instead to lease them to the new owner. McCourt bought the team in 2004….. Doh!
Earlier Monday, Major League Baseball owners had approved three bidders for McCourt to choose from: the Johnson group; a group consisting of two billionaires,Steven A. Cohen and Patrick Soon-Shiong; and Stan Kroenke, the billionaire owner of the St. Louis Rams, the Colorado Avalanche and the Denver Nuggets.
Team
Brooklyn Dodgers
The Dodgers were originally founded in 1883 as the Brooklyn Atlantics, taking the name of a defunct team that had played in Brooklyn prior to them. The team joined the American Association in 1884 and won the AA championship in 1889 before joining the National League in 1890. They promptly won the NL Championship their first year in the League. The team was known alternatively as the Bridegrooms, Grooms, Superbas, Robins, and Trolley Dodgers before officially becoming the Dodgers in the 1930s.
In Brooklyn, the Dodgers won the NL pennant several times (1890, 1899, 1900, 1916, 1920, 1941, 1947, 1949, 1952, 1953, 1955, 1956) and the World Series in 1955. After moving to Los Angeles, the team won World Series championships in 1959, 1963, 1965, 1981, 1988. Altogether, the Dodgers have appeared in 18 World Series.
Jackie Robinson
Main article: Jackie Robinson
For most of the first half of the 20th century, no Major League Baseball team employed an African American player. Jackie Robinson became the first African American to play for a Major League Baseball team when he played his first major league game on April 15, 1947, as a member of the Brooklyn Dodgers. It happened mainly due to General Manager Branch Rickey’s efforts. The deeply religious Rickey’s motivation appears to have been primarily moral, although business considerations were also present. Rickey was a member of The Methodist Church, the antecedent denomination to The United Methodist Church of today, which was a strong advocate for social justice and active later in the Civil Rights movement.
This event was the harbinger of the integration of professional sports in the United States, the concomitant demise of the Negro Leagues, and is regarded as a key moment in the history of the American Civil Rights movement. Robinson was an exceptional player, a speedy runner who sparked the team with his intensity. He was the inaugural recipient of the Rookie of the Year award, which is now named the Jackie Robinson award in his honor. The Dodgers’ willingness to integrate, when most other teams refused to, was a key factor in their 1947–1956 success. They won six pennants in those 10 years with the help of Robinson, three-time MVP Roy Campanella, Cy Young Award winner Don Newcombe, Jim Gilliam and Joe Black. Robinson would eventually go on to become the first African-American elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1962.
Move to Los Angeles
Real estate businessman Walter O’Malley had acquired majority ownership of the Dodgers in 1950, when he bought the shares of his co-owners, Branch Rickey and the John L. Smith. Before long he was working to buy new land in Brooklyn to build a more accessible and better arrayed ballpark than Ebbets Field. Beloved as it was, Ebbets Field had grown old and was not well served by infrastructure, to the point where the Dodgers could not sell the park out even in the heat of a pennant race (despite largely dominating the league from 1946 to 1957).
O’Malley wanted to build a new, state of the art stadium in Brooklyn. But City Planner Robert Moses and other New York politicians refused to let him build the Brooklyn stadium he wanted. During the 1955 season he announced that the team would play seven regular season games and one exhibition game at Jersey City’s Roosevelt Stadium in 1956. He expected that this move would put pressure on the city’s politicians to build the Dodgers the park he wanted in Brooklyn.[5] Yet Moses and the others considered this an empty threat, and did not believe O’Malley would go through with moving the team from New York City. That is when Los Angeles came into the picture.
After teams began to travel to and from games by air instead of train, it became possible to include locations in the far west. When Los Angeles officials attended the 1956 World Series looking to entice a team to move to the City of Angels, they were not even considering the Dodgers. Their original target had been the Washington Senators (who would in fact move to Bloomington, suburban Minneapolis, to become the Minnesota Twins in 1961). When O’Malley heard that LA was looking for a club, he sent word to the Los Angeles officials that he was interested in talking. Los Angeles offered him what New York would not: a chance to buy land suitable for building a ballpark, and own that ballpark, giving him complete control over all its revenue streams. When the news came out, Mayor Robert F. Wagner, Jr. and Moses made a feeble effort to save the Dodgers, offering to build a ballpark on the World’s Fair Grounds in Queens. Wagner was already on shaky ground, as the Giants were getting ready to move out of the crumbling Polo Grounds. However, O’Malley was interested in his park only under his conditions, and the plans for a new stadium in Brooklyn seemed like a pipe dream. Walter O’Malley was left with the difficult decision to move the Dodgers to California, convincing Giants owner Horace Stoneham to move to San Francisco instead of Minneapolis to keep the Giants-Dodgers rivalry alive on the West Coast. There was no turning back: the Dodgers were heading for Hollywood.
The Dodgers played their final game at Ebbets Field on September 24, 1957, which the Dodgers lost 2–0 to the Pittsburgh Pirates.
Los Angeles Dodgers
Main article: History of the Los Angeles Dodgers
On April 18, 1958, the Los Angeles Dodgers played their first game in LA, defeating the former New York and now new San Francisco Giants, 6–5, before 78,672 fans at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. Catcher Roy Campanella, left partially paralyzed in an off-season accident, was never able to play for Los Angeles.
Former Dodger greats adorn the exterior of Dodger Stadium
Construction on Dodger Stadium was completed in time for Opening Day 1962. With its clean, simple lines and its picturesque setting amid hills and palm trees, the ballpark quickly became an icon of the Dodgers and their new California lifestyle, and it remains one of the most highly-regarded stadiums in baseball even today[by whom?]. Despite the fact that the Dodgers have played in Dodger Stadium longer than they had played in Ebbets Field, the stadium remains surprisingly fresh[citation needed]. O’Malley was determined that there would not be a bad seat in the house, achieving this by cantilevered grandstands that have since been widely imitated. More importantly for the team, the stadium’s spacious dimensions, along with other factors, gave defense an advantage over offense, and the Dodgers moved to take advantage of this by assembling a team that would excel with its pitching.
The Dodgers in Los Angeles won nine more National League Championships and five World Series rings.
2011 Dodgers ownership dispute
Main article: 2011 Los Angeles Dodgers ownership dispute
On April 20, 2011 Major League Baseball commissioner Bud Selig announced that MLB would be appointing a representative to oversee the day-to-day operations of the Dodgers. His statement said that he took that action because of his “deep concerns for the finances and operations” of the Dodgers.
On June 27, one week after the commissioner refused to approve a proposed television contract that would have pumped much needed funding into the club, the Dodgers filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
On November 1, Frank McCourt agreed for the Los Angeles Dodgers, Dodger Stadium, and the surrounding area to MLB to be sold at auction.
On March 27, 2012, the Dodgers were sold to Guggenheim Baseball Management LLC, a group that included NBA legend Magic Johnson[9] for $2.1 billion. The new management team, to include baseball executive Stan Kasten, will take over operations following approval by the bankruptcy court.
Other historical notes
Historical statistics
First MLB team to employ and start an African-American in the 20th century (Jackie Robinson in 1947)
First baseball team to win championships in different leagues in consecutive years (1889–1890)
First TV broadcast (1939)
First use of batting helmets (1941)
First West Coast team (1958) – along with the San Francisco Giants
First MLB team to open an office in Asia (1998)
Largest home-opener crowd (78,762 in 1958)
Largest attendance: 93,103 (1959) and 115,300 (2008) *World Record
MLB record for home start going 13–0 (2009)
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