Vin Scully, who was the young announcer under Red Barber—he sold baseball in Southern California pure and simple. His great style, his warm deliveries, his knowledge—that I think, was truly responsible for selling the Dodgers to Southern California.
Maybe it’s because the Dodgers were his [Frank McCourt’s] third choice. He lost a bid to buy his hometown Red Sox in 2001, in part because the community balked at his plans to move the team from Fenway Park to a proposed stadium on his lot. “No one wanted to work with him,” says a former Dodgers executive familiar with the negotiations. Frank next went after the Angels, but MLB commissioner Bud Selig was said to be keen on having Hispanic-American Arte Moreno join baseball’s lily-white owners’ club. And Disney, which was selling the team, was happy with Moreno’s ability to write a check. “Would you take a parking lot over cash?” the source says.
