I find Frank McCourt (and his ex-wife, for that matter) as repellant as just about anyone. I’m confident of that.

And my initial reaction to a group “led” (“fronted” is a better word) by Magic Johnson buying the Dodgers was, “Our long baseball nightmare is over!”

But the more I read about it … the queasier I got. And by now … I feel like we are all a bunch of saps who got played by this vile little man. Albeit, second-hand, via “Magic’s group”, who paid too much and didn’t excise the malignancy that is Frank McCourt.

Let’s start with the money. Since Watergate, we’ve been told to “follow” it.

As Bill Shaikin of the Los Angeles Times notes here, Frank McCourt may clear $1 billion from this $2.15 billion deal.

I am pretty sure I have said/written in the past that “no amount of money is too much if it means the feckless McCourts go away” … but 1) this was, in fact, too much money and 2) he hasn’t completely gone away.

Other suitors are suggesting that the Dodgers should have been sold for perhaps $1.2 billion to $1.4 billion. Not $2 billion-plus.

Who gets the excess? Frank McCourt. Who will be paying that excess? Dodgers fans. For decades. In ticket prices, in the cost of goods and services. (Unless the new owners are philanthropists, which does not seem to be a description I’ve seen anywhere.)

In this espn.com piece, two academics who study the business side of sports, are beyond blunt in their assessment of the deal.

Mark Rosentraub, a sports management professor at the University of Michigan, can almost be heard spluttering.

“It’s the craziest deal ever; it makes no sense. That’s why you saw so many groups drop out,” he told ESPN. “I don’t get it. The numbers just don’t work. It doesn’t make business sense. Nobody came up with this number. Under the most favorable circumstance you broke $1.1 billion with $1.4 billion getting crazy. Now you’re up in the $2 billion range, which is over $800 million more than what pencils out for a profitable investment for a baseball team. If making money doesn’t count, this is a great move. But now we’re into buying art and I can’t value art. I can just run the model numbers and this doesn’t make sense.”

And Andrew Zimablist (also quoted in LAT), an economics professor at Smith College in Massachusetts, also did a “what the hell?” in his remarks.

“I rarely admit to not anticipating these things but I did not anticipate a $2 billion price,” he said. “Keep in mind, in addition to the price, the new ownership group will have to invest something in the neighborhood of $300 million to refurbishing Dodger Stadium and that price does not include $150 million for the surrounding real estate. At the end of the day, you have to question this deal.”

And here is Zimbalist, also venting to ESPN.com, about the buyers allowing Frank McCourt to remain involved in the team by being a partner in the land around the stadium:

“It’s problematic,” he said. “He was looking for some kind of ongoing income stream and he got it. Here’s a guy who borrowed practically all the money to buy the team for $430 million and now he’s selling it for $2.15 billion and he’s coming out with a healthy capital gain — it’s repulsive.

“This is someone who doesn’t deserve to walk away with a healthy profit after eight years of running the Dodgers in the most egregious, the most inefficient, the most self-interested, and the most vainglorious, idiotic way possible. It really is repulsive that he will still be making a profit in some way.”

All of this is what makes me queasy. I wanted McCourt gone … but to save baseball in Los Angeles we apparently have let McCourt destroy the Dodgers.

Can we get a do-over here? Sell for $1.5 billion and make sure McCourt is gone, gone, gone from Dodgers history?

Geez, Louise.