The Los Angeles Dodgers filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection Monday morning in a move owner Frank McCourt said, in a statement to the L.A. Times, would put the team on firmer financial footing. McCourt says he has secured $150 million of interim funding to keep the franchise afloat. McCourt said Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig forced the action. 

(Creative Commons)

From the Times:

In the statement, McCourt said Commissioner Bud Selig had refused to approve a proposed television contract with Fox — one McCourt said could have been worth $3 billion — and said Selig had forced the filing by jeopardizing the future of the Dodgers.

"He's turned his back on the Dodgers, treated us differently, and forced us to the point we find ourselves in today," McCourt said in the statement. "I simply cannot allow the Commissioner to knowingly and intentionally be in a position to expose the Dodgers to financial risk any longer. It is my hope that the Chapter 11 process will create a fair and constructive environment to get done what we couldn't achieve with the Commissioner directly."

The troubled team has been falling apart in the public eye since the beginning of Frank and Jamie McCourts’ divorce proceedings. Sports Illustrated blogger Dan Shaughnessy, however, argues that the team was doomed from the start of the couple’s ownership:

I was stunned when McCourt and his wife, Jamie, got the Dodgers in 2004 -- by a unanimous vote -- virtually without any of their own cash.

The deal was a house of cards from the jump. And for the next six years the McCourts made the Dodgers their personal ATM machine. They hired their sons. They set up multiple residences. They invested in a psychic to send out good vibes. They gleefully paid Manny Ramirez.

And it has unraveled like a ball of string tumbling down the San Gabriel Mountains.

The bankruptcy filing is a risky move for Frank McCourt, who could lose the entire franchise.

Chris Ward, a bankruptcy law expert, told the Wall Street Journal blog Deal Journal that the bankruptcy filing could give the Dodgers the "upper hand" in negotiating the Fox deal that Selig rejected:

Given that Major League Baseball didn’t approve the TV contract, without that revenue they’re not going to be able to operate. They may have some more leverage to get the Fox TV transaction approved in bankruptcy court over the objections of Major League Baseball. That’s what really precipitated the bankruptcy filing. They didn’t get what they wanted from Major League Baseball, so they’re going to go and see if a bankruptcy court will give them what Major League Baseball wouldn’t give them.

Reach Ryan Faughnder here.