McCourts hired a psychic to root for Dodgers

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http://www.latimes.com/sports/la-sp-...,6975547.story
By Bill Shaikin, Los Angeles Times

Frank and Jamie McCourt quietly hired a Russian emigre who calls himself a scientist and healer to 'think blue' and channel his thoughts toward the team's success as he watched them play on TV.

Vladimir Shpunt, 71, lived most of his life in Russia. He has three degrees in physics and a letter of reference from a Nobel Prize winner.

He knows next to nothing about baseball.

Yet the Dodgers hired him to, well, think blue.

Frank and Jamie McCourt paid him to help the team win by sending positive energy over great distances.

Shpunt says he is a scientist and a healer, not a magician. His method could not guarantee the Dodgers would win, he says, but it could make a difference.

"Maybe it is just a little," he said. "Maybe it can help."

In the five years he worked for the Dodgers, he attended just one game. Instead, he watched them on television in his home more than 3,000 miles from Dodger Stadium, channeling his thoughts toward the team's success.

Shpunt's work was one of the best-kept secrets of the McCourt era. The couple kept it hidden even from the team's top executives. But from e-mails and interviews, a picture emerges of how the emigre physicist tried to use his long-distance energy to give the Dodgers an edge.

Cohen also wrote that Shpunt had "diagnosed the disconnects" among Manager Jim Tracy, General Manager Paul DePodesta and the team's pitchers and catchers.

"Your general manager destroyed last year's team," the e-mail read, "and put together a group of players that could not be a team and could not win."

Cohen further conveyed Shpunt's critical assessments of outfielders Milton Bradley and J.D. Drew and said Shpunt had identified Tracy as the "final reason for failure."
...
McCourt fired DePodesta after the season, three weeks after publicly backing him when Tracy and the Dodgers parted ways. Grossman said Shpunt's evaluations did not persuade McCourt to fire DePodesta or to cut ties with Tracy or any player.

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I guarantee no other owner is this ****ing idiotic. Just for that I'm going channel my thoughts for a suicide bomber to blow himself up in front of these assheads at divorce court.

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dylanohernandez
Shpunt associate on the Dodgers' 91-loss season in 2005: "V believes without his help this team would have lost about 15 more games."