The image was indelible: Los Angeles Dodgersowner Mark Walter draping a No. 17 jersey around Shohei Ohtani's shoulders, welcoming the biggest baseball star on the globe to blue heaven with a $700 million contract that stipulated Ohtani will stay so long as Walter, the CEO of Guggenheim Partners, controlled the team.
The future seemed limitless.
And it absolutely was: Ohtani led the Dodgers to consecutive World Series titles, generated hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue for the ballclub and made L.A. a destination for every major free agent, international or otherwise. Walter, meanwhile, parlayed his riches into a 2025 purchase of the Lakers, making him the bona fide king of Southland sports.
The Los Angeles Angels? On the day Ohtani joined forces with Walter, Ohtani's old team was merely an afterthought. They had little interest, Ohtani confirmed, in retaining him on the same deal he presented the Dodgers. The teams' stations in life seemed to only grow further apart, the distance on I-5 hardly symbolizing the gulf between Arte Moreno's flailing franchise and Walter's jewel.
Yet part of the beauty of sports is its impermanence.
Nothing lasts forever, an unfortunate concept when pondering an aging superstar or a championship core deteriorating. It can also work the other way, and stunned, giddy, relieved Angels fans found this out Tuesday, Sept. 1 when Moreno agreed to sell the club for $4 billion.
To the most successful and prosperous and solidly entrenched owner in Los Angeles. And that's no longer Mark Walter.
No, that guy, now, is Stan Kroenke, who brought football back to L.A., engineered a world-class stadium and then delivered a Lombardi Trophy to the Los Angeles Rams for the first time in their bifurcated history. It is no longer Walter, whose hurried sale of the Lakers 11 months after he bought them was a Tiger Woods-crashes-into-the-fire-hydrant moment that portended more trouble.
It has come in the form of a federal investigation into over $21 billion in loans not disclosed to state insurance regulators that were made by two Delaware insurers Walter owns. Don't fret for him too much: Walter made $2.5 billion on his $10 billion purchase of the Lakers in less than a year.
But suddenly, the man whose reserves seemed bottomless, his reach limitless, faced major questions about liquidity, legality and the very future of his sports holdings. No, club president Stan Kasten has insisted, the Dodgers are not for sale.
Yet that bright blue sky no longer seems a shade of Dodger blue, does it?
Meanwhile, Moreno moved in the stealth fashion that defined his surprise takeover of the Angels for a mere $184 million 23 years ago. Sure, he had the team on the market four years ago but pulled it off in 2023. The prices weren't right.
But with the San Diego Padres having sold down the freeway for $3.9 billion, a bar was set. A lockout was looming - and perhaps Moreno's selling now is a tell that owners aren't totally bullish on getting a salary cap from the rubble of baseball's looming nuclear winter.
Enter Kroenke, whose franchises have won championships in the NFL, NHL (the Colorado Avalanche, twice) and NBA (the Nuggets' first title in their 60-year history, in 2023.). And he's never had to liquidate.
As if to twist the knife, Kroenke's Arsenal won its first Premier League championship in 22 years. Meanwhile, Walter and Dodgers partner Todd Boehly are reportedly looking to sell their shares in Chelsea - to investment firm Clearlake Capital, whose managing partner, Jose E. Feliciano, just bought the Padres.
(If you subscribe to the theory that sports are just proxy wars for the obscenely wealthy, the previous paragraph could be your mission statement).
One former Angels player, told of the sale, did not hesitate to note how positive this will be for the club. Athletes win, but it's also about systemic structures, and executive function, all of which lacked badly under Moreno.
That's never been a problem for Walter, either, as baseball ops chief Andrew Friedman has built a monster with his money. They're both the betting and pragmatic choice to win a third consecutive World Series this autumn.
Around that time, the Rams - behind their Myles Garret-Aaron Donald-backed defensive line - could be taking control of the NFC West. The Angels should be hiring a new general manager. Kroenke's blueprint will be taking shape in Anaheim.
That still makes them light years away from another parade down Disneyland's Main Street. But such a notion seemed impossible a day earlier.
The same could be said for Walter standing on shaky ground, until the day he sold the Lakers. Now, there is doubt where once there was invincibility. There are no such worries with Kroenke, who for now, looks like the angel of SoCal sports.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Stan Kroenke will run Rams and Angels. And Mark Walter no longer runs LA | Opinion
