As commissioner with a salary of $22 million a year, maybe $25 million, Bud Selig is in a better position than I or any Miami Marlins fan to judge the word of the Marlins’ owner, Jeffrey Loria. Why, then, does Selig buy Loria’s malarkey?
When Bowie Kuhn was the commissioner in the 1970s, he didn’t buy Charlie Finley’s word. He thought it was malarkey.
Finley, owner of the Oakland Athletics, sold Vida Blue to the Yankee for $1.5 million and Joe Rudi and Rollie Fingers to the Red Sox for $1 million each. It was the first year of free agency, and Finley knew he would lose the players at the end of the season.
Rather than have that happen, Finley later explained in his pursuit of a lawsuit against Kuhn, who blocked the deals, he figured he would sell the players for a lot of money and use the proceeds to obtain new players.
Kuhn won the legal fight, the judge ruling that Major League Baseball rules, adopted by the owners, basically gave the commissioner the authority to do whatever he pleased.
Selig alluded to that case when, in approving the 12-player trade between the Marlins and the Toronto Blue Jays, he said, it “does not violate any express rule of Major League Baseball and does not otherwise warrant the exercise of any of my powers to prevent its completion.”
But Selig also said:
“Going forward, I will continue to monitor this situation with the expectation that the Marlins will take into account the sentiments of their fans, who deserve the best efforts and considered judgment of their club. I have received assurances from the ownership of the Marlins that they share these beliefs and are fully committed to build a long-term winning team that their fans can be proud of.”
Why should anyone believe anything the Marlins’ owner says? Loria’s assurances aren’t worth the air he uses in uttering them.
Three years ago he assured the commissioner’s office and the union that he would make proper use of the Marlins’ revenue-sharing receipts. He did briefly, signing Josh Johnson and following up that step last winter by signing, Jose Reyes and Mark Buehrle.
Those signings, however, were ephemeral. Those three players, those three highly paid players, were among the five players the Marlins sent to the Blue Jays in exchange for seven young players, mostly minor leaguers.
After careful, exhaustive scrutiny, after consultation with all sorts of officials and baseball operations executives, Selig gave the trade his blessing. I’ll bet he didn’t ask Buehrle or his agent, Jeff Berry, what they thought of the trade.
“Throughout the recruiting process,” Berry said in a statement, “the Marlins made repeated assurances about their long-term commitment to Mark and his family and their long-term commitment to building a winning tradition of Marlins baseball in the new stadium.”
Notice, Mr. Commissioner, that word “assurances.” Loria gave you assurances, too. Will they be worth any more than his assurances to Buehrle?
The agent conceded that Buehrle got a lot of money – $58 million – in his contract, but that’s not the point, Berry added. Baseball, he acknowledged, had already made the pitcher wealthy.
He didn’t mention the tax implications for the free agents who signed to play in Florida, which has no income tax on state residents.
“It seems clear that the free agents who signed with the Marlins have been defrauded economically,” wrote a reader who is a tax expert. “Florida has no state income tax, a feature that makes it attractive to so many professional athletes, e.g., touring golf pros. The free agents (and their agents) who signed with the Marlins undoubtedly factored that feature into their calculations of the Marlins’ offer. They’re in for a shock when they have to start paying Canadian taxes.”
Obviously, Loria is not a man of his word. His word is worthless. Yet Selig bought his word, fell for his assurances. From his statement, Selig appears to have based his approval of the trade on the fairness of it. That was the wrong basis.
It matters not how promising the prospects are that the Marlins received. If all of the experts Selig consulted told him they thought the prospects would someday be the equivalent of the established players the Marlins shipped to the Blue Jays, that’s not good enough.
Considering that they play in Florida, the country’s old-age home, the Marlins most likely have fans who will no longer be around to see those prospects play.
When the Marlins’ fans, old and young, buy tickets for the 2013 season, they need to have some assurance that the players they see on the field will be major league caliber. If they are not, the fans should be able to pay minor league prices for their tickets.
On the other hand, why should they buy tickets at all? Loria sent a message to Marlins fans with his trade. Next season they need to send a message to him by staying home. An empty Marlins Park can do wonders.
The most effective fan message I have seen delivered to a club owner was in 1979. The Mets had won 64 and 66 games the previous two seasons, drawing barely a million fans each season.
If those meager attendances weren’t enough to put the DeRoulet family on notice, the fans applied the coup de grace in 1979. That season’s attendance was 788,905, a record low that remains the record low for a full season. The DeRoulet family sold the Mets that winter.
Marlins fans should have no trouble staying away. Mets fans stayed away because the Mets were just a bad team. The Marlins – and their owner – are beyond bad. They are con men, promising something they don’t deliver. They are better at the bait-and-switch game than their players are with hits and runs.