Though I doubt the above headline will take much attention away from a Mets 9th inning comeback that fell short earlier this evening, you can’t blame me for trying. And assuming you have no conscience, you can hardly blame Marlins owner Jeffrey Loria (above) or team president / diminutive accu-jack enthusiast David Samson, the extent of whose violation of the public trust was revealed in gory detail earlier this week by Deadspin. While Commissioner Bud Selig is on the warpath searching for whoever was responsible for such information reaching Gawker Media’s sports blog, the Miami Herald’s Greg Cote correctly insists, “the issue and wrongdoing here isn’t that someone leaked private financial statements. The issue and wrongdoing is that the information in those financial statements clearly means the Marlins have been lying about the team’s profitability.”
Fans are entitled to their anger, and to mistrust this regime and think less than ever of Loria, and they do, based on my blog poll in the post directly below this that shows around 75% of fans call Loria a bad or terrible owner. (Voting continues). Local government also is entitled to be furious that the Marlins cried poor in 2008 during stadium negotiations even as they were making about $38 million profit that year. “They took us for a ride,” says Miami-Dade commissioner Carlos Giminez. There is no undoing what has been done. But an apology by the Marlins is needed. No matter the new stadium in 2012 and no matter the team on the field, plenty of fans cannot bring themselves to support Loria and Samson — now more than ever. Healing is needed. A public apology by this ownership would be a start. [Note: Samson appeared on 790 The Ticket this evening. I expected dodging and spinning, but no apology. Unfortunately, I was not disappointed].
Samson’s an alumnus of my New York based law school, and he was invited to speak there back in the Dontrelle halcyon days (2003, I believe). He basically got up in front of a room full of Mets fans spouting “you can be anything you want to be with hard work!” gibberish, oblivious to the fact that none of us were likely to marry the daughter of a baseball team owner at any point in our careers. Self-aware he is not.
I must be missing something. According to the docs that Deadspin got a hold of, the team netted $29 million in ’08 and just under $4 million in ’09. The wacky retracto-roof job that they tore down the Orange Bowl for is supposed to cost half a bil. What bank in their right mind is going to finance an enterprise with that kind of income uncertainty for $500+ million?
Whether they need the bloody thing in the first place is a whole other matter, and whether Loria is a creepy, out of touch liar is not even a matter for debate… but they weren’t going to get a new facility on love.
They lost my season tickets for the new ballpark, that’s for sure. I will never, ever listen to Samson or Loria. They are spineless idiots who are out for themselves. Samson would be cleaning my toilets if he didn’t marry a rich chic.