LOS ANGELES – Frank McCourt agreed on Tuesday night to sell the Los Angeles Dodgers, an irrevocable commitment that means the legal battles might really be over.

No more lawyers, other than those empowered to usher the ballclub from McCourt to auction and into the hands of the next guy. The Dodgers and Major League Baseball will ask for U.S. Bankruptcy Court approval to auction the team.

No more Frank, other than some cardboard boxes and a few memories of a man who never quite fit in, never quite got it.

No more Jamie, whose past two years appeared spent resolved to destroy her ex-husband or the Dodgers, whichever came apart first.

Turned out, it was a tie. Good for her.

So, no more family ownership of the Dodgers – at least not this family. It was little more than a story the McCourts hoped would soothe the locals anyway, trading on the name and spirit of the O'Malleys, peddling that for a while.

Few ever did buy it. Not when the financial commitment seemed low to every outlet but the

ST. LOUIS – Downtown was a mass of red as the clock cleared midnight and it became early Saturday.

Some of the red danced.

Some wobbled.

Some high-fived other red and shouted stuff about red.

At an intersection, beneath a stop light, amid blaring horns and intermittent loitering, two cars stood, their hoods up and their front bumpers nearly touching.

A red Good Samaritan was giving a jump start to a stranded red while traffic darted in angles around them.

Not a blue in sight.

Closing time had filled the streets with one of the great baseball parties in years. The folks here shuffled their feet through various plastic and aluminum cans, most of those red, too.

In the city’s time of need it seemed the taxicabs fled, leaving the corners crowded with red. So everyone walked and wondered where the taxis were and hugged strangers whose sole objective was to paint the town in the color of their beloved St. Louis Cardinals.

Maybe the love affair is overdone. A guy wearing a red cap in Texas,

ST. LOUIS – Above the tumult of the losing clubhouse – duffel bags being loaded onto hand trucks, cameramen jostling for position, thumping bass from the public address system intruding from the outside – a freakish sound arose. And another.

Every 30 seconds, it jarred the room, scraped across the neck hairs of two dozen ballplayers, and tore at their silent, dignified farewell. Over and over, Velcro being ripped from its mooring.

The Texas Rangers, losers of the 107th World Series, along with the 106th before it, stood at their lockers. The night before, twice they'd come a pitch away from putting down the St. Louis Cardinals, and 24 hours later they'd still not executed that pitch.

Their bullpen had gone sideways again. Their bats had gone quiet. They'd lost consecutive games for the first time in two months. And the answers caught in their throats somewhere between pride in being here and disgust with the result and their proximity to another party of the year.

They'd gone down

Seeking a replacement for Tony Reagins strong in both scouting and analytics – and mindful a similar search could bring the Baltimore Orioles to the same candidate – the Los Angeles Angels hired Jerry Dipoto to be their general manager, Yahoo! Sports confirmed Friday.

The club will announce the decision Saturday.

Dipoto was senior vice president for scouting and player development for the Arizona Diamondbacks. He had been the club's interim general manager – between the tenures of Josh Byrnes and current GM Kevin Towers – in the summer of 2010, during which time he traded starting pitcher Dan Haren(notes) to the Angels.

Following a decade in which they mostly ruled the American League West then finished out of the playoffs in consecutive seasons, the Angels reassigned Reagins – the team insisted he stepped down – and cleared out a handful of others in baseball operations.

Those left behind spoke of recapturing the philosophies and energy that had made them contenders, beginning with a

ST. LOUIS – The first one followed a ball and two strikes, and it was a fastball, outer edge.

The second chased two balls and two foul balls, and it was a cut fastball, inside.

Neither made it to Mike Napoli's(notes) mitt.

David Freese's(notes) home run in the 11th inning cut the Texas Rangers deep on Thursday night in Game 6 of the World Series. It ended four hours and 33 minutes of agony and euphoria, of towel-waving, Budweiser theme-song rockin', forehead-slapping agony and euphoria, beat the Rangers, 10-9, and obliged a Game 7 on Friday night.

But for all the pitches they threw and fed on – 393 in all – the Rangers could only muster emotion – let's say regret – for two.

Either could have ended the game, the season, the World Series, and a half-century's exertion.

"We were one strike away, twice," Napoli said. "We had it there, right in front of us."

Two pitches. Two two-strike pitches. Napoli reached for them both, blinked at the flash of the bat, begged for them to have arrived

ST. LOUIS – A hand-shy Major League Baseball postponed Wednesday night's Game 6 because of the threat of rain, which wasn't a terrible idea, because there's nothing more fun than dozens of baseball writers chewing on the effects of another 24 hours on a pitching staff.

That said, pushing the Texas Rangers' potential clincher back to Thursday might have served to draw St. Louis Cardinals ace Chris Carpenter back into the series, either in relief or, on three days' rest, as a starter in a potential Game 7 on Friday.

Carpenter pitched seven innings and threw 101 pitches in Game 5. In the only other start of his career on three days' rest, he was ineffective against the Philadelphia Phillies in Game 2 of this year's division series.

Still, it's something for the Cardinals to shoot for, getting the series to Game 7 and, maybe, the ball to Carpenter, if indeed manager Tony La Russa and pitching coach Dave Duncan have that in mind. The turn technically belongs to Kyle Lohse(notes), except he

ST. LOUIS – If you have to know the truth, if it makes any difference to you now, St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa said yes, it was “embarrassing” when the eighth inning of Game 5 went all bat-stuff crazy on him.

“That’s not fun,” he said, “geez.”

La Russa would hate this, and so too will those who enjoy watching La Russa cannibalize his own smugness, but there was something sad in watching him Tuesday afternoon.

He looked to me like a man stepping gamely in front of a bullet. Hell, a hail of ‘em.

Thing is, what if he were covering for someone he adores? His best friend, Dave Duncan? What if the guy on the line from the dugout wasn’t La Russa, but, say, a loyal and enduring pitching coach? The guy whose wife is ill, whose season was creased by trips home to nurse her, whose head is in the game but also must be in a bedside chair, reading her to sleep?

I don’t know. Presumably, only a few do. And La Russa, half-a-day later, would only repeat, “I don’t throw family under the

ARLINGTON, Texas – The Texas Rangers shut down their ballpark Monday night, and still there is season left for them.

They'd never done that before.

The World Series will go to six games, maybe seven, and include them.

They'd never played that deep into a season.

They hold a lead in the World Series for the first time in franchise history, and can win the thing by taking a Game 6 or a Game 7 on the road against the establishment St. Louis Cardinals, this for a Texas team that hasn't lost consecutive games since August.

Fresh from answering questions about becoming their generation's Buffalo Bills – "Ouch," their pitcher, C.J. Wilson(notes), had responded, hurt – they are just a taut game, or a blowout, or a lucky win, or a fouled phone line, anything, from the first championship in franchise history.

"One more," second baseman Ian Kinsler(notes) confirmed, perhaps as much to himself as anyone.

Never before has a Texas Ranger – or a Washington Senator, for that matter – uttered those