Council Calls for Dodgers to Team Up With Public

Take me out to the ball game, take me out with the crowd.

Buy me a piece of the baseball club. . . .

Forget peanuts and Cracker Jack. If Peter O’Malley insists on selling the Dodgers, the Los Angeles City Council wants him to consider the adoring fans as potential buyers.

“This is about fans saying . . . we want to take back the team, we want to keep it ours, rather than giving in to the almighty dollar,” said Councilwoman Laura Chick, who sponsored a council resolution--approved 10 to 0 on Wednesday--praising O’Malley for his ownership and asking him to explore selling the franchise to the public.

“I know this is a business,” she said. “But it’s also a sport and an American tradition.”

Sure. And public ownership is prohibited by Major League Baseball.

“Rules can be changed,” Chick said.

In the 10 days since O’Malley’s shocking announcement that he would sell his fabled franchise, Los Angeles has been abuzz with rumors about potential buyers, from Time Warner’s Robert Daly to former baseball Commissioner Peter Ueberroth, and from Los Angeles Lakers owner Jerry Buss to celebrity lawyer Robert Shapiro. But at City Hall, council staffers with ideas bigger than their wallets--who just happen to be die-hard fans--have put together a more grass-roots proposal:

Put the club on the market. Sell shares for $50 or $100 each to anyone who wants them. Stockholders would get a shiny blue certificate to frame and display on the wall, but no dividends. O’Malley would pocket the cash, and the Dodgers would become a nonprofit corporation owned--at least in part--by John Q. Public Stockholder, who gets to vote for a board of directors, which hires someone to run the team. (Some have even suggested that O’Malley stay on as CEO.)

Most important, the boys in blue would stay where they are. A team owned by the fans can hardly leave its home.

“The Dodgers have become part of Los Angeles,” said Councilman Mike Hernandez, who represents the neighborhood around the ballpark. “We want to make sure baseball remains a part of our city.”

Chick and Hernandez envision something modeled after the Green Bay Packers, the only professional sports franchise that is owned by the public and run as a nonprofit operation. Back in 1922, 4,627 shares of the Packers went up for sale for $25 each. Today, those shares are owned by 1,862 people, and are still worth $25 each. They can’t be sold, only passed among relatives.

“The Green Bay Packers, who are organized this way, are doing fine--they’re favored to win the Super Bowl,” noted James Merlino, president of Mercer Investment Group, who offered Wednesday to help Chick with the financial particulars of public ownership and is at work on a Web site (https://www.buydodgers.com) to build support for the idea.

“It’s doable,” Merlino said. “If the shares are $35, it’s less than the cost of taking four people to a game, and you’re keeping the team in L.A., you’re preventing yourself from being held hostage by an owner who threatens to leave if they don’t like the stadium.”

O’Malley could not be reached for comment Wednesday, but Dodger spokesman Derrick Hall said it is way too early to discuss potential buyers. Besides, he said, if the league won’t allow it, what’s to discuss?

“It’s not up to us, it’s out of our hands,” Hall said. “I’m not trying to skate around it, but it is a question for Major League Baseball. At this point, right now, public ownership is not allowed.”

League officials could not be reached late Wednesday. But sources in Mayor Richard Riordan’s office said that acting baseball Commissioner Bud Selig had told them last week that he would not consider public ownership under any circumstances. Even if such a scheme would work in a major city such as Los Angeles, Selig told the mayoral officials, the league could not risk setting the precedent, because publicly owned teams could tie franchises to smaller cities where they are doomed to fail.

Senior Riordan advisor Steven Soboroff said in a recent interview that he is nonetheless confident that baseball will not let the Dodgers abandon their adopted home of 39 years.

“I have personally spoken with Bud Selig, and he has said plainly that L.A. is the greatest baseball market in the world, and the Dodgers will never be allowed to leave it,” Soboroff said.

Times staff writer Tim Rutten contributed to this story.