Nothing that follows “Taiwanese Animation explained the ownership woes of the Los Angeles Dodgers by” should be surprising, but damn if after seeing Tim Tebow stab a dolphin, Yao Ming hatch from a basketball and Manny Ramirez kick dirt on his wife I wasn’t still surprised when Bud Selig showed out of nowhere on trapeze wires and lopped off Frank McCourt’s hand with butcher knife. He should start grappling down behind people and threatening them at knife-point like that in real life. Oh, you want a salary cap? /waggles machete

After the image of McCourt’s blood-gushing stump, the best (and possibly worst) moment in the video is the Los Angeles Dodgers being referred to as “damaged goods” and depicted as a transvestite hooker who may or may not be Hong-Chih Kuo in short-shorts. At some point you’d think embed-hoarding, expressed-written-consent Major League Baseball would find one of these and send Taiwan a “stop depicting our baseball teams as whores” letter.

"Only half of you will receive paychecks this week. The other half will fight to the death."

Embattled Los Angeles Dodgers owner Frank McCourt has not only been going through a nasty divorce, but he’s also been fighting with every last ounce of his being to maintain his ownership of the Los Angeles Dodgers. McCourt, who bought the team with his then-wife for $421 million in 2004, has been accused by Major League Baseball of “looting” $189 million of the Dodgers’ assets for his own personal use, and Bud Selig and league officials have acted accordingly and issued a punishment that will make all owners shake in their alligator-skinned, gold-tipped boots.

The league has finally crushed McCourt’s will to fight, and he has agreed to sell the team, the stadium and all related property for a pathetic $1 billion. WHAT A LOSER!

“The Los Angeles Dodgers and Major League Baseball announced that they have agreed today to a court-supervised process to sell the team and its attendant media rights in a manner designed to realize maximum value for the Dodgers and their owner, Frank McCourt. The Blackstone Group LP will manage the sale process.”

(Via the Los Angeles Times)

In reality, McCourt won’t make a profit off of this sale after he pays off his ex-wife, the family of Bryan Stow, and settles the rest of his debts, but in a fair world, failed ventures like this should be met with justice. McCourt should have to start over with nothing while an elementary school janitor hands him a mop and wishes him the best before a kid pukes all over his leg. Man, that would be glorious.

Instead, McCourt will fade into the sunset with a few hundred million dollars to his name, and whatever he’s hiding in the Caribbean and Switzerland, and a new owner will ride into town. And just as they were a few months ago, Dodgers fans are praying that new owner is Mark Cuban, who remains interested in purchasing the team, which is awesome for the sport, but terrible for my blood pressure and prayer of Albert Pujols staying in St. Louis.

Hey Dodgers fans, remember the good old days, back when Frank McCourt was a principled, passionate businessman who pulled himself up by the bootstraps and led L.A. to championship prosperity alongside his beautiful, fresh-faced wife Jamie? Are you able to recall how Baseball Camelot dissolved into a two-year long hodge podge of bankruptcy, behind-closed-doors usurping and “who owns which parking lot”-style tough guy back-and-forth? Well, 24 months and $20.6 million in legal bills later, the McCourts have reached a Dodgers-related divorce settlement, readying fans for a return to … well, one of those times.

From the LAT Sports page:

Frank and Jamie McCourt have reached a divorce settlement under which she would get about $130 million and relinquish any claim to a share of the Dodgers, multiple people familiar with the agreement told The Times.

The settlement would remove Jamie McCourt as an obstacle to Frank McCourt’s plan to retain ownership of the team by selling the Dodgers’ television rights in U.S. Bankruptcy Court. The agreement also would appear to set up a winner-take-all court showdown for the Dodgers between Frank McCourt and Commissioner Bud Selig.

As straight-forward as that reads, even that gets followed by a “the people familiar with the agreement spoke on condition of anonymity because the settlement has not been finalized”. That’s really the defining statement of the costliest divorce in California history; if the Los Angeles Times posted a story saying “Frank McCourt says sky is blue” they’d have to follow it with “however, due to outstanding legal claims, the McCourts would like to announce that the atmosphere and light scattering contribute to the sky’s purported blueness, though the science could neither be confirmed or denied at this time”.

The other key is the “winner-take-all court showdown” line, which hopefully leads to Frank McCourt and Bud Selig battling each other with pugil sticks on raised platforms above a room filled waist-high with Manny Ramirez dread-wigs.