Dodger Sale Heads for Home

The Dodgers announced Thursday that they had reached an agreement in principle to sell the team and its properties to Rupert Murdoch and the Fox Group.

The development had been expected. Dodger owner Peter O’Malley and the Fox Group have been in serious negotiations since receiving permission from baseball on July 30. However, Thursday’s development was significant because it was the first official announcement that a deal was in place.

The agreement must be approved by major league owners before it becomes official.

No terms were announced, but sources continued to put the price at more than $350 million, which would eclipse the $175 million that a group headed by Peter Angelos paid for the Baltimore Orioles in 1993.

Besides the team, the agreement calls for Fox to buy Dodger Stadium, the Dodgertown spring training and convention facility in Vero Beach, Fla., and the club’s training academy in the Dominican Republic.

O’Malley reiterated Thursday that he is “committed to a smooth transition” and is expected to agree to Fox’s request that he remain as club president for an unspecified period.

“I believe the Fox Group will be an outstanding owner of the Dodgers,” O’Malley said in a statement. “Their support of major league baseball and their commitment to the community is extraordinary.

” . . . It has been my goal from the start to ensure that the transition is smooth, and I look forward to helping the Fox Group during the process.”

Vacationing in Europe, Mayor Richard Riordan hailed the announcement.

“Peter O’Malley and the O’Malley family have established a high standard, which the Fox Group will soon continue,” he said in a statement released by his office.

“Through Peter O’Malley’s solid leadership, millions of Dodger fans have enjoyed countless innings of baseball at its best. I look forward to many more seasons of winning baseball in the spirit of Dodger blue.”

The Dodgers and Fox were required to receive baseball’s permission before making Thursday’s announcement, but the full ownership must ultimately approve the sale.

O’Malley’s ongoing presence may help facilitate that approval and ease the concern of some owners that Murdoch, who has aggressively built a global media and communications empire, will rock baseball’s salary structure--such as it is--by spending wildly to develop a winner.

Only majority approval is required in the American League, but three-fourths approval is needed in the National League, meaning four votes could overturn the agreement.

However, baseball sources believe the owners are not about to reject the $350-million benchmark price, or risk losing Fox as the game’s leading TV investor, nationally and regionally.

“I’m very sorry to see Peter O’Malley leave [as owner],” New York Yankee owner George Steinbrenner said in a phone interview.

“Walter O’Malley was one of the smartest owners I’ve ever met, and the acorn never drops far from the tree. However, corporate ownership is the way it is now, in almost every sport, because of the economics. Disney has proven to have a class operation [with the Angels] and I think Murdoch will do the same. We need his brains and his ability to get things done.”

Details of the agreement will now go to baseball’s ownership committee, which is also considering the sale of the Toronto Blue Jays.

The committee ultimately will make a recommendation to the executive council, which passes it on to the full ownership.

The committee is scheduled to meet during the owners’ meetings in Atlanta Sept. 16-18, but acting Commissioner Bud Selig said it seemed unlikely that a vote on the sale would be taken there, considering that realignment is already on the agenda and that it will take time to distribute details of the Dodger-Fox agreement to the owners, who will want more than a week to study it.

The vote could ultimately be done by phone, or at a special meeting sometime between the Atlanta meetings and the next regularly scheduled meeting in January, Selig said.

He added that Fox has been a “great partner” for baseball, suggesting he would be surprised if the sale was rejected.

Said Peter Chernin, chairman and chief executive officer of the Fox Group, “The O’Malleys have set a gold standard for franchise ownership and, if we are approved, we will do all in our power to live up to that standard.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

What Comes Next

Details of the agreement will go to baseball’s ownership committee. The committee ultimately will make a recommendation to the executive council, which passes it on to the full ownership for a vote.

The Final Step

The sale first must be approved by baseball’s owners. It takes three-fourths of National League owners and only a majority of American League.