Jack Luskin was "The Cheapest Guy in Town." Daughter Jamie McCourt might be the most expensive gal.
McCourt, who claims to co-own the Los Angeles Dodgers with estranged husband Frank McCourt, has demanded $487,634 a month in spousal support in their divorce case, the Los Angeles Times reports.
She's said she'd settle for $320,967 a month if she's reinstated as the ball club's chief executive.
This from a woman who told the JewishJournal.com last summer that her family's hard times in the 1930s instilled in her "a Depression mentality." Maybe she wants to save for a really rainy day.
A mix of professional sports and juicy personal scandal, the case is the talk of L.A., if not Jamie McCourt's hometown. (Two members of Baltimore's Jewish community said they knew all about it from news accounts but claimed they hadn't heard a peep from local gossips. Really.)
One highlight: Frank McCourt fired his wife for having an affair with her driver, a club employee. He claims Jamie and driver spent a romantic 2 1/2 weeks in France last summer and billed the team for the trip, the Times reports. Jamie McCourt has acknowledged the affair and trip but denies having the team pick up the tab, the newspaper reports.
It all seems far afield from the appliance empire Luskin and his brother, Joe, launched in 1948. Or does it?
The brothers, like the McCourts, eventually went their separate ways. And there was financial strife: The store went into bankruptcy in 1997 and re-emerged as the Big Screen Store chain, operated by Jack Luskin's sons.
There were honeymoon periods for store and couple alike.
L.A. sportswriters used to complain about the McCourts "smooching in public," the JewishJournal.com article said. And the store initially thrived feeding post-war demand for Kelvinators, The Baltimore Sun's Frederick Rasmussen recalled in a feature last year.
Back then, when Jack and Joe Luskin were still a team, they had a slogan: "Jack & Joe will save you dough." Jamie McCourt, not so much.
Man and monument
William Donald Schaefer has not had an in-person peek at the statue that will soon immortalize him in bronze on the west shore of the Inner Harbor. He'll get his first look - if you don't count the photo in today's paper - when the statue is unveiled Monday, his 88th birthday.
"I saw the model of it some time ago, but I deliberately stayed away," the former Baltimore mayor, Maryland governor and state comptroller told me. "I made a vow that I wasn't going to look at it until I saw it finished. I went to his studio one time and luckily he had it covered up."
Schaefer is nonetheless confident the sculpture will be "magnificent." He bases that partly on the reputation of artist Rod ney Carroll. ("He's supposed to be really good," Schaefer said.) And partly on what he knows of Willard Hackerman, the Baltimore businessman donating the statue. ("Hackerman wouldn't do anything that's not double-first class.")
Connecting the dots
Rumor making the rounds in Maryland political circles: Republican Mike Pappas is dropping out of the governor's race and will throw his support to Larry Hogan, who was appointments secretary under Gov. Bob Ehrlich. I ran that by Pappas. "As of today, that is not my plan," he said. As of today? What does that mean? "All I can say is, that is not my plan right now." Stay tuned. ... Yes, Jon Cardin, it is possible to stage a public marriage proposal without blowing public resources. Reservoir High School math teacher and cross-country coach Phil Rogers, 29, popped the question through a bullhorn at the Bobcat Invitational meet in Harford County earlier this month. Emily Obenski, 26, who works in physical therapy at Johns Hopkins, said yes. I'm told she was surprised but not, as was the case with Cardin's bride-to-be, scared senseless. ... Lots of nice Halloween decorations on display at the Anne Arundel County Criminal Courts clerk's office, including a ceramic orange pumpkin on the counter. It's a cookie or candy jar. But when you pick up the top, a spy tells me, there are no treats inside, just a yellow sticky note: "Due to furloughs no candy." ... Annapolis lobbyist Bruce Bereano marveled at the bumper sticker on the Jeep Wrangler in front of him in Silver Spring recently: "Stop the continental drift."
