Sox bid Before buying the Los Angeles Dodgers, McCourt made a bid to buy the Boston Red Sox planning to build a new stadium on the land he owned and used for parking lots on the South Boston waterfront. Instead, the Red Sox were sold in 2002 to John W. Henry, Tom Werner and Red Sox President Larry Lucchino. Los Angeles Dodgers Purchase of the L.A. Dodgers In 2004, McCourt bought the Los Angeles Dodgers for US$430 million from NewsCorp, Rupert Murdoch's flagship enterprise. McCourt's purchase of the Dodgers was financed mostly by debt. In 2004 McCourt's South Boston parking lot property was used as collateral for some of the financing to acquire the Dodgers from NewsCorp. Later the South Boston property was turned over to NewsCorp in exchange for canceling acquisition debt. NewsCorp received approximately $200 million when they re-sold the property to Morgan Stanley and Boston real estate investor John B. Hynes III in 2006. The Dodgers assets acquired by McCourt included significant real estate assets related to the stadium in Chavez Ravine, including stadium parking lot land. Plans were announced for new real estate developments at Dodger Stadium however those plans never came to fruition. One discussed plan was for an NFL stadium and adjacent retail complex. However after the Boston Herald reported the details of the plan, political pressure forced both the NFL and McCourt to deny that either party was aggressively pursuing the idea. To offset the purchase, McCourt raised ticket and concession prices every year. By April 2009 the team and its related assets, in which McCourt had invested heavily in improvements, had increased in value to $722 million according to Forbes. In 2010 the value of the team was estimated at $727 million according to Forbes. McCourt is not the first member of this family to own part or whole of a sports franchise. His grandfather was part-owner of the Boston Braves. Hiring and firing of Paul DePodesta In 2003 (under NewsCorp ownership) the Dodgers' record was 85 wins, 77 losses. Shortly after purchasing the team, McCourt fired then General Manager Dan Evans, replacing him with Paul DePodesta. DePodesta is featured (along with Billy Beane) in the book Moneyball as it discussed their sabermetric-based approach to using statistics to build the Oakland A's. In Los Angeles, DePodesta made a trade in the middle of the 2004 season that sent the Dodgers' starting catcher,