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office then whittled it down to three finalists, who would be allowed to bid on the Dodgers at an auction held by McCourt. The first was Stan Kroenke, a real estate entrepreneur out of St. Louis worth an estimated $5 billion who owned the Rams, the Denver Nuggets, the Colorado Avalanche, and the English soccer club Arsenal. Observers joked that all Kroenke needed was a baseball team to complete the set. His interest in owning a ball club made sense for another reason, too: he had been named for Cardinals legend Stan Musial. Kroenke also held the distinction of being the only billionaire in the world married to another billionaire. His wife, Ann Walton Kroenke, was the daughter of one of the founders of Wal-Mart, Sam Walton’s brother James. Forbes estimated she was worth even more money than her husband. The second finalist was Steve Cohen, a hedge fund deity from New York City worth an estimated $11 billion, much of it liquid. Cohen owned a small stake in the Mets, which he promised to sell if he won the auction for the Dodgers. The third finalist was Walter’s secretive Guggenheim group.
    The smart money was on Cohen. He seemed to have the deepest pockets, and the feeling was that Major League Baseball preferred him as the choice since they were already familiar with him as a minority owner of the Mets. So when McCourt issued a press release telling the world that Guggenheim Partners had bought the Dodgers for$2.15 billion the night before the auction was supposed to take place, the industry gasped. No baseball team had ever sold for a billion dollars, let alone two. When John Henry purchased the Red Sox in 2002, he forked over just $660 million. After McCourt paid off his creditors and the IRS, it was estimated that he would walk away with close to a billion dollars in profit—not bad for someone who had put none of his own money into the purchase of the team eight years earlier. Underscoring just how wrong everyone was in their estimate of the Dodgers’ worth, Jamie McCourt had struck an agreement with her estranged husband before he sold the team that netted her $131 million tax-free, plus ownership of the couple’s homes. That settlement turned out to be a raw deal for her. After paying off his ex-wife, McCourt wound up with close to seven times what she got, a result she handled by suing him for $770 million on the grounds that he misled her in court about the Dodgers’ real value. The judge denied her appeal to throw out the divorce settlement, saying that she chose the security of the $131 million and the homes over the risk of the Dodgers’ sale. But what happened eighteen months after McCourt sold the team probably still keeps them both up at night.
    After it was reported that the Guggenheim group outbid the next-highest bidder for the Dodgers by some $500 million, the gasps turned to snickering. But it wasn’t true. When Mark Walter sat down alone with Frank McCourt in a Manhattan hotel conference room the night before the auction,McCourt slid a piece of paper across the table toward Walter. It was a signed offer from Cohen to buy the Dodgers for $2 billion. Walter told McCourt he’d give him $2.15 billion, plus an interest in the land surrounding Dodger Stadium should he and his partners ever decide to develop it. There was one caveat, however:Walter told McCourt it was take-it-or-leave-it. If McCourt left the room, the deal was off. McCourt agreed to the terms, and the two men shook hands. But members ofthe Guggenheim group worried McCourt would violate the handshake agreement and return to Cohen with Walter’s bid to see if he could squeeze more money out of him.“Youknow Frank went back to Stevie Cohen and said beat this,” said one insider familiar with the deal. If McCourt did in fact return to Cohen to give him a chance to best the Guggenheim offer, Cohen didn’t bite. “It was unbelievable,” said the insider. “The guy’s got nine billion liquid and he wouldn’t cough up another three