Outstanding Marlins-bashing from Slate [View All]

[KamaAina]

SoFla residents, click back now -- you've been warned...

http://slate.msn.com/id/2089661/entry/2090085/

There's no question—at least to me—about for whom to pull in the actual Series. The Florida Marlins—a toy franchise founded 11 minutes ago—are the perfect example of everything that's gone wrong with baseball under that bratwurst Machiavelli, Bud Selig, and the kabuki "fiscal crisis" that has been the presiding dynamic of his tenure at the head of the game. Consider: The Marlins actually won the World Series in 1997, whereupon owner Wayne Huizenga opened a chop shop. He sold off a championship team piecemeal, and Selig let him do it because Huizenga made all the right noises about how he couldn't make any money in a "small market" unless Miami ponied up and gave him a new ballpark. Of course, Huizenga owned both the team and the stadium, and he simply assigned revenue from Marlins games to the latter. Which meant that anything Huizenga said about the financial health of the Marlins possessed all the credibility of Kenny Lay's expense accounts.

Yes! One of the best single paragraphs I've read all year! Couldn't have put it any better myself. But wait! There's more...

Based on his track record in Montreal, Loria wouldn't have gotten past the vetting process to run a Gas 'n' Sip in Dothan, Ala. Nevertheless, this grifter somehow managed to remain in such good standing with Commissioner Bud that, in 2001, as part of the three-rail shot by which Selig's office rigged the sale of the Red Sox (see?), Loria sold the Expos to Major League Baseball itself for $120 million, plus a $38.5 million loan so he could buy the Marlins from their presiding dilettante, John Henry. Henry then used that money to buy his piece of the Red Sox.

Yes, those Red Sox. Now if we could just get Loria to break up his toy franchise to put on a revival of "No, No, Nanette"...