Courtesy: Miami Herald
Newly acquired Miami Marlins' Jose Reyes right, and Heath Bell arrive at a media availability conference on Friday, Dec. 16, 2011, in Miami.
Rather famously, the reckless, renegade football champions at the University of Miami did an excellent job of representing the strange and wonderful city that surrounded them. Fun. Crazy. Out of control. Those teams, in the carnival of sports, even held the racial tension of the time up to a funhouse mirror. Miami, the city, and Miami, the program, were intertwined in a way that made those insane Hurricanes feel like an accurate symbol for this insane city. Years later, LeBron James came along and the Heat took our international city’s superficial evolution and framed it in flashbulbs. Florescent and famous. Big and bold. A little bit “too much” but wearing that “too much” proudly, like the guy buying bottles at the club soaked in all that jewelry and cologne. And now here come the new-look Marlins, swaggering and unlike anything we’ve ever seen around here. In terms of accuracy, there probably has never been a South Florida team that better represented its surrounding neighborhood — not how we’d like to think of ourselves as a city, on the days we look our best, but rather what we actually are, at our complicated core, when we wake up without the makeup. These Marlins are so very, very Miami, from the foul mouth and heavy accent with which Ozzie Guillen speaks to the federal investigation that surrounds the new stadium.
Even in this land of artificial enhancements, even in this odd place where a fake doctor gets arrested for trying to make a butt enhancement out of concrete and fix-a-flat, how the Marlins have transformed recently feels, well, unreal. Here’s a partial list of things the franchise has changed in just the past few months of plastic surgery: team name, home address, uniform, shortstop, closer, payroll, pitching staff, manager, reputation, entire bleeping blueprint and philosophy. Even for a team that had a reliever named Leo Nuñez who wasn’t really Leo Nuñez, even in a city where a lot of people are trying to pretend to be something they are not, that’s a pretty seismic transformation, the kind of facelift usually reserved for fugitives.
Did they buy your trust? With $191 million dollars? Their offseason was very Miami — gluttonous, big, reckless, loud, flashy, fast and loose — and especially jarring for a franchise that very recently suffered the unprecedented shame of being forced to spend more by edict of Major League Baseball and the players’ union. But we’re used to fast financial rises and falls around here, whether it be a downtown built upon drug money or leading all of America’s metro areas in rate of foreclosures. Sometimes, the rags-to-riches feels as authentic as Emilio Estefan’s. And sometimes it feels as counterfeit as Scott Rothstein’s. Regardless, the Marlins bought $191 million worth of buzz, something that this city traffics in like narcotics, and now asks for your trust after a history of betrayal from this franchise that predates even this management team. You giving it?
All those new contracts are heavily backloaded for a reason. The Marlins are giving this three years to work, to prove once and for all around here if baseball is indeed sustainable. Either we attend the new home, with no weather or payroll excuses, or the Marlins can throw up their hands and say, “Hey, we tried,” and then start pocketing some of that new-stadium revenue, public relations be damned. It is why the Marlins were willing to offer Albert Pujols $200 million but not a no-trade clause. The Marlins said it was against club policy to give a no-trade clause, but it had also been always against club policy to, you know, offer a 10-year, $200 million contract to a first baseman who may or may not have been 31. They wanted the promise Pujols would bring the first few years but didn’t want to promise him or anyone else anything beyond that. The Marlins will, for the next few years, prove themselves to you while waiting for you to prove yourself as fans to them. But there’s an expiration date on that, and it is going to hurt when it comes if there isn’t sustainable buzz and winning before it.
In the interim, though, all they’re doing is fielding the most interesting team in the sport, especially when you consider that sports are just a way for males to rationalize enjoying soap operas. The Marlins lead the league in crazy. Guillen, as a voice. Carlos Zambrano, as an arm. Logan Morrison, on Twitter when he isn’t being banished to the minor leagues for being too fun. And Hanley Ramirez, at third base, against his will. Half big-league team, half reality show. How good will they be? Who knows? Given the Phillies’ pitching, the Marlins could play four games against Philadelphia and be the underdog in every one.
The more prudent way to spend is how Tampa and Texas do it, exploiting market inefficiencies and developing homegrown, cheap talent. The Rays, for example, haven’t had a starting pitcher older than 30 years old throw an inning since 2007. The Marlins have always been closer to Tampa in philosophy than they were this offseason, when they suddenly became the Yankees. But this is a lot more fun. The baseball nerds can quibble over whether Jose Reyes can stay healthy or whether closers are overrated and the Marlins overspent on Heath Bell, and they’d have a point. They could point out, too, that this sudden spending splurge, throwing money at whomever happened to be available the offseason before the stadium opened, didn’t show much in the way of vision or the Marlins could have gotten in the Cliff Lee sweepstakes last offseason, keeping him from the Phillies, paying him with the money they offered Mark Buerhle and C.J. Wilson. But, hey, the music is loud, and everyone is dancing and drinking in the South Beach club, and who wants to discuss sabermetrics when we’re all having so much fun spilling money and drinks over the bar?
Club Marlin is rollicking, baby, everyone looking to get in, and this is all so very Miami.
Look around.
Mike Stanton and Josh Johnson, the most statuesque beauties in the room. Hanley Ramirez, spoiled rich kid. Jose Reyes, hot and young new girlfriend. Logan Morrison, South Beach rebel. Jeff Loria, art-collecting sugar daddy. Guillen, nightclub owner. And Zambrano, barefoot guy pushing shopping cart full of cans in front of the club and arguing with himself.
It’s still so early at Club Marlin. The bill? Don’t worry about the bill. It doesn’t come due for a while. And, besides, it isn’t very Miami to let the fun get diluted by how much this might hurt in the morning. Time to drink it up. It is going to feel intoxicating.
Even in this land of artificial enhancements, even in this odd place where a fake doctor gets arrested for trying to make a butt enhancement out of concrete and fix-a-flat, how the Marlins have transformed recently feels, well, unreal. Here’s a partial list of things the franchise has changed in just the past few months of plastic surgery: team name, home address, uniform, shortstop, closer, payroll, pitching staff, manager, reputation, entire bleeping blueprint and philosophy. Even for a team that had a reliever named Leo Nuñez who wasn’t really Leo Nuñez, even in a city where a lot of people are trying to pretend to be something they are not, that’s a pretty seismic transformation, the kind of facelift usually reserved for fugitives.
Did they buy your trust? With $191 million dollars? Their offseason was very Miami — gluttonous, big, reckless, loud, flashy, fast and loose — and especially jarring for a franchise that very recently suffered the unprecedented shame of being forced to spend more by edict of Major League Baseball and the players’ union. But we’re used to fast financial rises and falls around here, whether it be a downtown built upon drug money or leading all of America’s metro areas in rate of foreclosures. Sometimes, the rags-to-riches feels as authentic as Emilio Estefan’s. And sometimes it feels as counterfeit as Scott Rothstein’s. Regardless, the Marlins bought $191 million worth of buzz, something that this city traffics in like narcotics, and now asks for your trust after a history of betrayal from this franchise that predates even this management team. You giving it?
All those new contracts are heavily backloaded for a reason. The Marlins are giving this three years to work, to prove once and for all around here if baseball is indeed sustainable. Either we attend the new home, with no weather or payroll excuses, or the Marlins can throw up their hands and say, “Hey, we tried,” and then start pocketing some of that new-stadium revenue, public relations be damned. It is why the Marlins were willing to offer Albert Pujols $200 million but not a no-trade clause. The Marlins said it was against club policy to give a no-trade clause, but it had also been always against club policy to, you know, offer a 10-year, $200 million contract to a first baseman who may or may not have been 31. They wanted the promise Pujols would bring the first few years but didn’t want to promise him or anyone else anything beyond that. The Marlins will, for the next few years, prove themselves to you while waiting for you to prove yourself as fans to them. But there’s an expiration date on that, and it is going to hurt when it comes if there isn’t sustainable buzz and winning before it.
In the interim, though, all they’re doing is fielding the most interesting team in the sport, especially when you consider that sports are just a way for males to rationalize enjoying soap operas. The Marlins lead the league in crazy. Guillen, as a voice. Carlos Zambrano, as an arm. Logan Morrison, on Twitter when he isn’t being banished to the minor leagues for being too fun. And Hanley Ramirez, at third base, against his will. Half big-league team, half reality show. How good will they be? Who knows? Given the Phillies’ pitching, the Marlins could play four games against Philadelphia and be the underdog in every one.
The more prudent way to spend is how Tampa and Texas do it, exploiting market inefficiencies and developing homegrown, cheap talent. The Rays, for example, haven’t had a starting pitcher older than 30 years old throw an inning since 2007. The Marlins have always been closer to Tampa in philosophy than they were this offseason, when they suddenly became the Yankees. But this is a lot more fun. The baseball nerds can quibble over whether Jose Reyes can stay healthy or whether closers are overrated and the Marlins overspent on Heath Bell, and they’d have a point. They could point out, too, that this sudden spending splurge, throwing money at whomever happened to be available the offseason before the stadium opened, didn’t show much in the way of vision or the Marlins could have gotten in the Cliff Lee sweepstakes last offseason, keeping him from the Phillies, paying him with the money they offered Mark Buerhle and C.J. Wilson. But, hey, the music is loud, and everyone is dancing and drinking in the South Beach club, and who wants to discuss sabermetrics when we’re all having so much fun spilling money and drinks over the bar?
Club Marlin is rollicking, baby, everyone looking to get in, and this is all so very Miami.
Look around.
Mike Stanton and Josh Johnson, the most statuesque beauties in the room. Hanley Ramirez, spoiled rich kid. Jose Reyes, hot and young new girlfriend. Logan Morrison, South Beach rebel. Jeff Loria, art-collecting sugar daddy. Guillen, nightclub owner. And Zambrano, barefoot guy pushing shopping cart full of cans in front of the club and arguing with himself.
It’s still so early at Club Marlin. The bill? Don’t worry about the bill. It doesn’t come due for a while. And, besides, it isn’t very Miami to let the fun get diluted by how much this might hurt in the morning. Time to drink it up. It is going to feel intoxicating.
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