The McCourt Family Is Sending Mixed Financial Signals While a Journalism War Rages On

All is not well in Dodgerland right now. Sure, the McCourt family can be thankful that regardless of the country's economic turmoils, they will always and forever have millions of dollars -- a tough burden to bear for sure. And yes, T.J. Simers and Bill Plaschke should be thankful that they have jobs. Seriously, seriously thankful.

But a holiday doesn't give us a good reason to ignore the weird noise coming from Frank and Jamie re: how they want to use their money -- baseball or society. See, they recently came out and asked the good people of Los Angeles, "Do you want high priced, dreadlocked free agents ... or do you want youth baseball fields?"

"If you bring somebody in to play and pay them, pick a number, $30 million, does that seem a little weird to you?" Jamie McCourt asked in an interview at the Evergreen Recreation Center in East Los Angeles. "That's what we're trying to figure out. We're really trying to see it through the eyes of our fans. We're really trying to understand, would they rather have the 50 fields?"

Ahhh. The glorious nobility of , um, nobility. There's only one problem -- as the 'Courts discuss how to go about distributing what little baseball money they have, they're still, as Simers noted, easily lining their pockets with the hard earned cash of fans.

Ninety dollars a ticket sounds like a lot until you break it down. It's really only nine Anthony Davis autographs, or $410 less than what the Dodgers charged 250 fans each the other night to take batting practice at Dodger Stadium and pose for pictures with Russell Martin and Andre Ethier.

"The chance to step into the cage for many of these fans is a dream come true," says the Dentist, the Dodgers' PR guy.

Of course, the sad thing is that while all this arguing about money is happening, there's a terrible war of words going on between Plaschke and Simers (okay, not really, but there was a little mouthin' off from the latter) about how to handle the offseason.

See, Simers thinks Manny Ramirez is the key. Billy, on the other hand, likes to point out that it isn't necessary to go get Man-Ram, using the logic that Ned Colletti perfected:

"Our six or seven young players are still the key to this club," Colletti says.

"Manny was tremendous, but this is not tennis, one player does not make a difference."

Well, that's interesting, because in tennis, one player doesn't so much as "make a difference" as he/she is the whole freaking team. But Colletti's ill-fitting analogies aside, I think the real answer lies somewhere in the middle of what both writers want -- bringing Manny back is the answer if they can do it reasonably over a two year span, but overpaying/overextending him is a poor choice for the club, obviously. Of course, to even worry about something like this when the poor children are suffering and the writers are warring seems a little pedantic anyway, so let's just move on.