Frank McCourt’s piece of Dodgers parking? Fuggedaboutit

David Kipen had a modest proposal on the Op-Ed page Wednesday: Take public transportation to the next Dodgers home game, deprive the ball club (and especially the once and still somewhat invested Frank McCourt) of your parking dollars and send a message: We’re Dodger fans and we’re not going to take it anymore. And by “it” he meant any more misrule of the boys in blue. Oh and by the way, it would be so much greener.

“How dense are people these days,” asked “uncgirl37” at about 5 p.m., along with a few other commenters who had tuned in to the new owners’ 10 a.m. televised news conference. “Magic Johnson and the other owners answered the parking question NUMEROUS times this morning, to the point where it got really annoying that the reporters were still asking. Frank McCourt gets 0% of parking. For those keeping track at home, that’s zero, zilch, nil, NOTHING; No money to McCourt from the parking.... Stop trying to find reasons to boycott the Dodgers. If you don’t want to go, don’t go....”

We asked David Kipen to respond:

Me, boycott the Dodgers, “uncgirl37”? Who do you think was using my cousin Jimmy’s tickets all last year while he was boycotting the Dodgers?

Let me clarify something. My Op-Ed went to bed Tuesday night. It ran in the morning paper but because of a technical glitch it didn’t go up online until 11:30ish, after the televised denials that McCourt would ever see a penny of the parking fees. Regardless of whether we take the new owners at their word (a lack of transparency on the details of the deal is creating some skepticism), this had the unfortunate effect of making me look like I was calling Magic Johnson -- a man as justly popular in Los Angeles as Frank McCourt is unpopular -- a liar.

The moral of the story is, I guess, get the print edition of The Times, like I do. Save the online edition for comments, emailing and “liking” Op-Eds on Facebook. (Hint, hint.)

I don’t mean to belittle my second-guessers. I may have missed a quieter pre-Wednesday denial somewhere. Then again, maybe the new owners got up on Wednesday and read my Op-Ed and realized they needed to do a little damage control. Not only did they swear up and down that McCourt would benefit from the stadium parking lots only indirectly, as a landlord, they lowered the basic parking fee from $15 to $10!

Or, as another cousin, the long-lost Leo, wrote me about the article: “New owners must have read it, as they said they were reducing parking fees and that McCourt would ‘not get a dime.’ ”

Nothing like freelance writing to bring the family together.

And while I’m getting Dodgers business off my chest -- and to prove my Dodgers bona fides to “uncgirl37” -- can we please get a movement started to keep Vin Scully on the radio for all nine innings? If the new owners really want to put the fan experience ahead of profit, they’ll forgo the added cable revenue from the Scully faithful who now have to watch TV to hear him after the third inning; they’ll let the ball yard again resound, all game long, with his dulcet Brooklyn tones.

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