Fleeing Fish
Where will the Florida Marlins go? If they leave South Florida, they will go to a minor league market. While the major league media spouts off about Vegas and Portland, MLN takes you on a real-deal tour of the towns that could make the list...

Brian Ross
Sr. Editor
Minor League News

Miami, FL - 12.28.05 - Last month, Florida Marlins owner Jeffrey Loria broke the news that the expansion team, with a checkered existence in Miami since 1993, was given permission by the Commissioner of Baseball, Bud Selig, to explore the option of moving out of South Florida.

To put out the unwelcome mat further, the Marlins have conducted a fire-sale of high dollar player contracts in December that rivals the big sell-off that former fish owner H. Wayne Huizenga engineered after the club’s first World Series win in 1998. That infamous plug-pulling sent the team into a community relations tailspin with fans in the Marlins’ school that has affected the club’s following to this day.

Low regular season attendance predates the 1998 World Series run, though. It has been the perpetual lament of the club since 1994, when Huizenga began militating for a separate baseball park in the Dolphin-dominated South Florida sports market.

Las Vegas, Portland (OR), and San Antonio have been floated through the major league press, which remains fairly ignorant of the minor league business landscape.  More likely contenders like Indianapolis, Sacramento, Memphis and a few others have not been given mention, nor has the least sexy option: Staying in South Florida.

To know where the Marlins are going, you have to first stand in amazement at the mess of where they’ve been.

Rocky Road on America’s Riviera

The club began life as an expansion team of Major league baseball in 1993. The very expensive toy of Blockbuster Video magnate H. Wayne Huizenga launched to much fan-fare, but by 1994 was struggling with exceptionally poor attendance. Huizenga began a campaign to get a baseball-only stadium built in Miami-Dade or Broward counties.  He came to the table with substantial land offers but the mood for public financing of a sports stadium in fiscally stingy South Florida was not there.

By 1998 the club was able to build itself up to take a run at the World Series. The improbable cast of characters and turn of events that led to the first expansion franchise win of a championship highlighted the fickle nature of baseball in Miami: Fans showed up for the run up to the National League wild-card berth and beyond, but had stayed away throughout the regular season.

Huizenga, citing the lackluster numbers of the regular season and seasons prior sold off the championship team into pieces that winter, sending fish fans into a tailspin.

John Henry picked up what was left of the club from Huizenga in 1999, but by 2001 engineered purchase of the Boston Red Sox and left the Marlins adrift in the middle of MLB’s fight to

contract the leagues.  Jeffrey Loria bought the Marlins in a deal that sold the Montreal Expos, also facing attendance problems and the ire of the MLB Players Association for the Canada double-tax whammy, to Major League Baseball.

In spite of a slow start in 2002, and serious mistrust of the community in Loria’s intentions, the owner’s history with the club has generally been good.

The Marlins picked up Jack McKeon as skipper of the Fish. He produced a second World Championship in May of 2003.  Prior to their NLCS run, the Marlins attendance numbers were lagging behind the Isotopes, their AAA club in Albuquerque, New Mexico.  Loria again warned that the team could not generate survivable regular season numbers without a publicly-financed stadium.

In 2003 the Marlins began talks with Miami-Dade county to build a new baseball-only facility. In 2004 the City of Miami floated a proposal to build the stadium adjacent to the existing Orange Bowl.  In May of 2004 the county agreed to fund its portion of the stadium.  Another door pushing the Marlins forward to this deal closed as the Dolphins announced that the Marlins would not be able to play at Pro Player beyond 2010. In February 2005, Miami-Dade commissioners announced a financing plan for a $420-$435 million ballpark which included approximately $45 million in financing from the State of Florida. In May of that year maneuvering by legislators scuttled the bill for the stadium’s state component.  By November talks with the City of Miami fell apart.

With great fanfare, the Marlins announced that they had received permission from the Commissioner to look around for another place to play.  The local press, which seizes on bad Marlins news like a donut addict locked in a Krispy Kreme, said good riddance and began screaming all of the usual rumors about towns where the Marlins might go.
 
People who have little knowledge of those markets touted Las Vegas, Portland, and San Antonio.

Continued...

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