Los Angeles Dodgers owner Frank McCourt is perhaps the most-loathed owner in professional sports right now, what with his acrimonious divorce with ex-wife Jamie, their use of the franchise as their personal piggy back, his approval of bonehead personnel decisions, the gouging of fans at Dodgers Stadium from parking to concessions, and an overall clueless attitude that makes the late Cincinnati Reds owner Marge Schott seem as loveable as those damn St. Bernards she'd always let shit on the field at the old Riverfront Stadium.
But now, a completely-out-of-left-field supporter has emerged for McCourt: washed-out Latino rights activists Larry “Nativo” Lopez.
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Lopez, of course, has spent the last couple of years fighting charges of voter fraud (his own, not of others) and comparing himself to Gandhi. He remains the head of the Mexican American Political Association, a shell of its former rabble-rousing self and one reduced to sending out “Justice for Nativo” email blasts that are almost as entertaining as the Internet missives of Barbara Coe. Yesterday, Larry sent one out titled “Latinos Fan for LA Dodgers,” which already tells you of the coming sharpness of the piece.
“Notwithstanding some issues that have chafed the Latino community since the arrival of the team to Los Angeles, such as the displacement of the Chavez Ravine Barrio with the construction of the stadium, which left lingering bitterness for decades, Dodger blue flys high in barrios throughout the region,” Lopez asserts apropos of nada. He then attacked against an old nemesis, the Los Angeles Times, for what he says is an anti-McCourt bias and the rest of the world calls “reporting.”
“Latino leaders decided that we could not sit back and let the chips fall where they may, and agreed to step up to the plate and intervene in the matter,” Larry went on to say, before including a letter to the Congressional Hispanic Caucus signed by Antonio González, head of the William C. Velasquez Institute, an otherwise-fine group that unfortunately will lose more than a bit of credibility for joining Lopez in going to bat for McCourt.
Gonzalez starts off strong by noting how dumb Major League Baseball commissioner Bud Selig is in not moving this year's All-Star game from Arizona in light of the state's anti-Mexican insanity. But then Gonzalez begins attacking Selig for putting the Dodgers under receivership given the team's near-insolvency due to the McCourt's fleecing of the team.
“Now, Commissioner Selig has ignored pleas from leaders of Los Angeles' Latino community to end his intervention in the financial affairs of the Los Angeles Dodgers by approving the capital infusion plan presented to MLB by Dodger owner Frank McCourt,” Gonzalez wrote. He asserted McCourt “favored publicly criticizing” Arizona's S.B. 1070, even though the McCourt's only publicizing dip into political waters was Jamie believing she could get into an elected office. Gonzalez then went into a litany of supposed good things McCourt brought to Los Angeles, never mentioning that he also trademarked “Los Doyers,” which enraged Latinos across California.
“We request the CHC put Commissioner Selig on notice that his disrespectful attitude to Latinos, and in the case of the Los Angeles Dodgers–hostile intervention is unacceptable to our community's federal legislative leadership,” Gonzalez concludes, and he and Larry just show how tone-deaf so-called on-the-ground activists can be to the street. EVERY Dodgers fan who's Latino that I know–and, given most of my cousins from my dad's side live from the San Gabriel Valley to the San Fernando Valley, that's a good 100 just there–loathe McCourt, and when they read this blog post, they'll laugh loudly. Save McCourt, seriously? What these pendejos should be doing is convincing Oscar de la Hoya to buy the franchise and end this nightmare once and for all…
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