The Dodgers are insane

And in related news, rape victims are partially to blame.



First things first, I am NOT a Dodgers fan. Nor am I a Giants fan. I grew up watching the Angels and have long loved the Cubs. This isn’t a story about baseball, but about ultra-wealthy greedy people who try to blame others when it comes time to shell out money.
I guess I started thinking about this because spring training is underway. And possibly because I saw a bunch of Angels billboards with Albert Pujols on them. The billboard somehow made me realize that the Angels will kick the crap out of the Dodgers this year and that reminded me that I don’t like the Dodgers.
Remember Bryan Stow? He was the San Francisco Giants fan who received a major beat-down from a couple of low-life thugs in the Dodger Stadium parking lot after the home opener of the 2011 season. How bad was his beating? Stow suffered a major brain injury and in fact nearly died from it . He spent more than seven months in the hospital before being moved to a rehab facility and his life is forever changed.
That ultra-wealthy, greedy douche (and current Dodgers owner) Frank McCourt is trying to get out of paying Stow any money and has asked the federal court judge overseeing his bankruptcy case to disallow the claim. The Dodgers had this to say in their 37-page motion.
“The Stow claim is, when stripped to its core, based on the faulty premise that a landowner is an insurer of the safety of persons on its property.”
I’m not a law geek. I leave that stuff to my Muse (who went to law school to understand things like this), but here is what I do know. People shouldn’t go to a baseball game and worry about whether or not they’ll get beaten while on the stadium property. There’s an expectation of safety when you go to a game. Depending on where you sit you may expect to get hit with a foul ball, but not a shoe to the head while on the way to your car.
As a kid I used to go to Angels games all the time but we rarely went to Dodger Stadium. Why? Because the parking blows and there are only a couple ways in and out and it takes forever to go to or from a game. I still go to games as an adult and I’ve been to seven major league ballparks plus I’ve seen several spring training games.
Never once in all those years did I think that I would get my ass kicked in the parking lot. Even when I wore my Cubs jersey at Dodger Stadium. Or even when I wore my Cubs jersey to a game at old Comiskey Park, the former home of the Chicago White Sox.
I didn’t think I would get a beat down because you’re supposed to feel safe coming out of a baseball game with your son, daughter, niece, nephew, chick, dude or friend. You know there’s security in the parking lot and you assume that the people in attendance are going to leave you alone. But not at Dodger Stadium.
I’m now seriously rethinking getting tickets to see the Dodgers and Cubs this year which is sad because I love to see my Cubbies in person. I guarantee I won’t even think about going until McCourt sells the team. I’m not giving that dude a freakin dime.
Do I expect there to be security in every row? No. But I do expect that if there are questionable looking individuals or people who appear to be perpetrating evil or possibly planning to perpetrate bad deeds, they should be watched closer. Safety is an expectation everyone should have when attending a professional baseball game or any sporting event.
What ticks me off the most is the fact that from day one McCourt was a huge ass. Stow and his family spent a lot of money going to that game for tickets, parking, food, drinks and eventually a hospital stay, rehab and probably extra care for the rest of Bryan’s life. That was one expensive family outing.
What’s McCourts’ reaction? I mean, after he got pissed at MLB for seeing through the “robbing Peter to pay Paul” scam he was trying to pull with some lucrative TV contract between the Dodgers and Fox. In case you didn’t know, McCourt owns Fox as well. McCourt’s reaction was to push the blame to the victim.
According to my Muse, the bottom line is that McCourt is saying “It takes two to tango,” with the tango apparently being the fight. Only it wasn’t a fight. It was a beating. In front of the dudes kids. McCourt implying that Stow somehow provoked the beating by wearing his Giants gear is absolutely insane.
I dig Stow’s lawyer, Tom Girardi, for quotes like these.
“The last thing anybody would expect from a statement from the current bankrupt owner would be something about integrity, something about fairness, something about how do I correct the problem I caused?”
and
“But steady as she goes with him, the same guy who siphoned off $189 million bucks of the Dodger organization and then put the team in bankruptcy, who got rid of security, who has more incidents of harm than any other team in baseball. Now this guy coming forward and saying forget about it.”
I know this isn’t all legal-ese, but in my mind it comes down to this. Bryan Stow and his family went to Frank McCourts house, then on the way out Stow got the shit kicked out of him by a couple of McCourt’s friends. I say “friends” because the assailants were Dodger fans.
If you apply the McCourt logic in other areas of law one could assume that rape victims are partially to blame. That, of course, is complete crap and it’s nothing more than sarcasm to make a point. I sincerely hope that Frank McCourt loses his ass in a big way, but even if he loses the case and has to shell out big bucks to Stow, the reality is that he will never live life in poverty. He may never be truly poor, but an average Joe like me can only wish that McCourt gets what’s coming to him. And then some.