Mark Walter would have risen from his seat and roared Monday night, joining other season-ticket holders in swallowing the Pete Crow-Armstrong experience. The man who might torch the threads of baseball after dominating the sport — an owner who might have to sell the Dodgers the way he sold the Lakers, an owner who might have to betray a deferred contract for Shohei Ohtani, an owner who might be worse than the Houston trash-can bangers — once was known as a Wrigley Field maven.
He would adore the romping sensation who might be the leading MVP candidate in the National League, even as Shohei Ohtani continues to slug and is about to resume pitching. He’d be amazed after watching Crow-Armstrong hit a leadoff home run on his team’s first pitch, then a two-run walkoff home run to end an emotional growler for the Cubs. The last player to do that: Vic Power in 1957. What’s fascinating about PCA is that he reminds us of joy when Walter is bringing us down.
And better, as if he knew about a scandal arriving months later, PCA took apart Dodgers and Lakers fans. He told Chicago magazine: “I love Chicago more and more. It’s an incredible city. The people are great. They aren’t just baseball fans who go to the game like Dodgers fans to take pictures and whatever. They are paying attention. They care. … (Los Angeles) is a see-me city. It’s a Lakers city where people show up to sit courtside and look good.”
We will remember Walter at his best when he ran Guggenheim Properties off West Monroe Street, before he bought two cardinal franchises and was accused of federal loan fraud. He was a fan and a businessman who didn’t try to take over the sports kingdom with nonsensical spending. Last week, he sold the Lakers for $12.5 billion to Josh Kushner and Bob Iger. This week, he and his partner, Todd Boehly, are selling shares of their Premier League team, Chelsea, to Clearlake Capital. What happens next? Walter might have to avoid jail by fixing his balance sheets with his insurance companies, which is why he might dump his baseball team after jamming Dodger Stadium with record crowds and winning three World Series this decade.
His situation has reached the point where his lawyers are mentioning a stroke he had during the 2024 Series. Did the disabling attack impact his business mind? If so, why is Walter running the Dodgers? Will he step down as primary owner? And who would buy them and inherit an ungodly payroll as Major League Baseball enters a frantic period in its history, with players threatening to sit out the 2027 season as owners demand a salary cap. The owners want the cap because of his expenditures.
If he departs, who will support the monster payouts? As it is, Walter never said he is point-blank opposed to a cap. In March, he told the Los Angeles Times, “Here’s what the problem is: Money helps us win. We can’t win all the time. We’ve got to have some parity. So we’ve got to come up with something that will give us some parity.”
Parity is not one of his abominable deals, allowing Walter’s insurers to make loans to his businesses. Who is the whistleblower who alerted the feds last year? When he made his money in Chicago, why were agents at Midway International Airport demanding his phone and laptop in September? The Dodgers went on to win back-to-back titles. Less than a year later, players might be wondering who will pay them in the future.
“I haven’t heard anything,” manager Dave Roberts said. “So for me, it’s business as usual.”
The team is under enormous pressure to win another championship. This story could bury the Dodgers, who haven’t played well. “It really has nothing to do with the Dodgers. It’s a Laker story. They’re completely separate,” Dodgers president and CEO Stan Kasten said. “There are no changes here or contemplated here, and I think that pretty much is the whole story.”
No, it is not.
If you want a real baseball story, without the crisis, it’s PCA. We would like Walter to go away. We only want to embrace Crow-Armstrong, who has reached the 30-30 category in homers and stolen bases for the second straight season. Is 40-40 on the horizon this season? Don’t put anything past him. When the fans chant “PCA!” — as Walter would have done in the day — he finds tranquility at the plate.
“With conviction maybe comes some peace and calm,” Crow-Armstrong told the media afterward. “When you’re playing offense in the batter’s box, I think that is pretty calming. I was really just trying to go out there and play offense today, not worry about punching, not worry about swinging and missing. I was gonna go out there and put good swings on the baseball today, no matter what, ball or strike.”
He loved the matchup with the White Sox, even after spilling nasty language at a South Side fan earlier this season at Rate Field. He grew up in Sherman Oaks, not far from Chavez Ravine. He is an Angeleno who became a Chicagoan. “It’s really frickin’ cool that we get to put that product out on the field together and go compete,” Crow-Armstrong said. “It’s really good for the city having both of us playing the kind of baseball we are and putting games out there like we did tonight.”
His manager and teammates are watching the MVP. Just ask them.
“This might be his best game in the big leagues right here. It was an amazing game,” Craig Counsell said. “This is what great players do. We’ve got a number of these moments during the season from Pete. It’s a Great Player moment. They step up in situations like this.”
“Pete’s my MVP,” reliever Jacob Webb said.
Voters might use Walter’s woe against Ohtani. Aren’t people sick of the Dodgers, especially when the owner might be crooked? If this is the last period of baseball we’ll see for a long time, don’t we want it to be cheerful? Remember Jack Armstrong, the All-American Boy, a radio series aired on WBBM in Chicago?
He returns decades later as Pete Crow-Armstrong. Wouldn’t Mark Walter, in his darkest days, prefer to be in the Wrigley box seats right now?
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host.
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