About the McCourts

The flimsy stories this morning about the separation (and divorce, depending on which account you're reading) merely confirm what many of us have realized for years: That the Dodger owner and his wife have had a way of evading radar detection. Until now. They're obviously fodder in certain baseball circles, especially for their horrendous management style, but there's not that much we really know about Frank's finances - specifically, how he's managed to leverage his money for such a major business operation, what kind of debt levels he's facing, etc. Understand, it's not for lack of trying. Many reporters have tried to untangle the kingdom, but since most everything McCourt does is privately held there's not much opportunity to grab onto specific numbers. With a pending divorce, there's finally a chance to get inside the castle, though that will depend on how much the court is willing to keep unsealed.

By the way, Frank and Jamie are each represented by two of L.A. most powerful attorneys. Frank has Marshall Grossman, who is known as a corporate pit bull. Divorce isn't his specialty, but he's already acting as Frank's point man in insisting that the team will not be sold (kind of a bold statement to say at such an early stage, no?). Over the years, he has represented Guess, Arthur Andersen, Tommy Hilfiger, Mariah Carey, and other big names.

Jamie has Dennis Wasser, who is among L.A.'s top two or three divorce attorneys. Here's a snippet from a profile I found some years back in W:

In a land where the coupling of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, who scratched and clawed their way through two marriages and two divorces, is revered as a great love story, it's no wonder that Dennis Wasser's phone number is on the speed dial of the richest and most powerful people in Hollywood. Tom Cruise, Steven Spielberg, Kirk Kerkorian, Clint Eastwood, Jennifer Lopez and legions of their ilk have called upon Wasser to disentangle them from stale marriages or messy romantic liaisons with as little damage to their public images--and to their bank accounts--as possible.