![]() "The idea was to put together the best team we could, get the manager we could get, win as many games as we can, and see if we can get the fans involved. "It's a very big year for us," said then-team president Don Smiley as spring training began. ![]() It doesn't sound like much now, when Clayton Kershaw personally has $215 million flowing into the bank account, but it was a lot then. Throw in manager Jim Leyland, lured away from the Pittsburgh Pirates at $1.2 million a year, and the Fish had committed over $90 million in a single winter. Having already added free-agent starting pitchers Kevin Brown and Al Leiter in December 1995, the Marlins went on a shopping spree during the 1996-1997 offseason, signing free agents Moises Alou, Bobby Bonilla, John Cangelosi, Dennis Cook, Jim Eisenreich, and Alex Fernandez. He'd get them there by out-Steinbrenner-ing George Steinbrenner. Huizenga had an odd plan to stoke The Want: he'd win a World Series and then hit fans up for the ballpark money while they were enjoying the afterglow. "Unless a new stadium is built, where luxury suite and all other revenue go directly to the team, which will enable the team to compete for the best players," Huizenga said later, the Marlins would not be successful. This would engender sympathy or a popular uprising …or something you know how it is with the sort of half thought-out plans that tend to trickle down from the owner's box. You wanted us to build it, with "it" in this case being a new, baseball-only stadium for his team.Īs a spectacularly rich guy who wanted a ballpark but didn't want to pay for it, it was very important for Huizenga to poor-mouth the Marlins. This was 15 years after Huizenga had served as just one example of what Obama might have meant: Not only did you not build that, you didn't want to build it. If we can take a step back for a moment, you might remember a 2012 campaign speech by President Obama around the theme of " You didn't build that" which sparked a momentary backlash. Huizenga, though, had very good reasons not to go fumbling awkwardly around in his pants. ![]() The Marlins might not have had big-market revenues despite playing in one of the country's larger metropolitan areas, but their bottom line would have improved significantly had Huizenga moved some revenues from one of his pockets to another. Of course, since Huizenga owned both team and ballpark and therefore could negotiate with himself, money that might have been applied to the Marlins' bottom line went to the separate corporation that owned the stadium. It was a terrible venue for baseball, but Huizenga disliked it for other reasons: Those sweet ballpark bucks weren't going to the team. The Marlins played at Joe Robbie (aka Pro Player) Stadium, which Huizenga also owned. Wayne Huizenga, who had made his fortune hauling garbage and then expanded into businesses from Blockbuster Video to the Miami Dolphins and Florida Panthers. The 1997 season would be the Marlins' fifth since joining the National League in the 1993 expansion. Read More: LaMarr Hoyt Falls In The War On Drugs Your faith in the discernment of the average Miamian might be restored somewhat by the fact that despite a few ownership changes and myriad managers-depending on how you count interims and repeats, Don Mattingly will be the 14th in 24 years-the Marlins have never regained that trust. This week in 1997, the Florida Marlins were in the process of destroying that belief as it pertains to their team.
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