For those keeping score at home, St. Louis will at least have a little representation in the sweepstakes for purchase of the Los Angeles Dodgers.
But it won’t just be Rams owner Stan Kroenke offering a local connection. A fellow St. Louis sports mogul—Cardinals owner Bill DeWitt Jr.—will be on the scene as well.
DeWitt is one of seven members of Major League Baseball’s ownership committee, which will be meeting early next month with the remaining bidders for the Dodgers, and Kroenke is reported to be among the top contenders. The current timetable is for a winning bid to be selected by April 1 and a deal to be finalized a month later.
St. Louis ought to be especially interested in the process, because if Kroenke wins the bidding for the Dodgers, he might find himself in the crosshairs of NFL cross-ownership rules if another NFL team moved into Los Angeles.
Those rules only prohibit an NFL owner from owning professional franchises in other sports if those franchises are located in a market occupied by an NFL team. So while the rules wouldn’t apply to the Dodgers’ sale—as there is no NFL team in Los Angeles—the only way for Kroenke to be certain to avoid a cross-ownership problem would be to move the Rams there.
Is there a guarantee that a winning bid for the Dodgers would assure a return of the Rams to Los Angeles? No. But it is widely viewed as a logical step for Kroenke, whose good friend and business partner Philip Anschutz has been the frontrunner in the effort to bring the NFL back to Los Angeles.
It’s certainly a question that’s top of mind in Los Angeles, including a theory that disgraced Dodger Frank McCourt could redeem himself by becoming the guy who returned the Rams to their original home.
It’s unknown whether DeWitt would be saddened to lose the Rams as a competitor for the local sports dollar in St. Louis. But one can imagine that his interest will be perked when Kroenke enters the room to meet with a committee charged with investigating “very deep” into the backgrounds of the applicants, according to the Atlanta Braves’ Bill Bartholomay, committee chairman.
Stay tuned. Or, if you’re one of the local reality deniers who thinks Kroenke’s apparent desire to move to Los Angeles can somehow be tempered by “negotiations” over his existing lease in St. Louis, go back to sleep.
SLM co-owner Ray Hartmann is a panelist on KETC Channel 9’s Donnybrook, which airs Thursdays at 7 p.m.
Commentary by Ray Hartmann
