The founding owner of the Florida Marlins honored Carl Barger, and the current owner has dishonored him.
Barger was the first president of the Marlins, recruited by their first owner, H. Wayne Huizenga, from Pittsburgh, where he had the same position with the Pirates. He died before the team played its first game, suffering a ruptured abdominal aortic aneurysm at baseball’s winter meetings in Louisville in December 1992.
Before the Marlins’ opening game the following April, they retired No. 5 in Barger’s honor. They chose that number because Joe DiMaggio was Barger’s favorite player.
But now Jeffrey Loria, the present owner of the team newly known as the Miami Marlins, unretired the number, stripping Barger of the honor that Huizenga bestowed on him so that the team’s left fielder, Logan Morrison, can wear the number.
Morrison, who previously had worn No. 20, asked the Marlins for No. 5 to honor his late father, whose favorite player, George Brett, wore No. 5.
I often think too much is made of uniform numbers, but I can understand fans’ fascination with them. I also think if teams are going to make a big deal out of retiring numbers, which they do, they should treat the matter seriously. Before the Marlins demonstrated an utter lack of respect for Barger and his family, no team had permanently removed a number from retirement and restored it to active status.
I had hoped to explore Loria’s view on numbers, but he did not return repeated telephone calls to him this week.
It was left to David Samson, the Marlins’ president, to dispute my view that while Huizenga honored Barger, the current administration has dishonored him.
“We don’t consider it to be a dishonor,” Samson said in a brief telephone interview. “He is going to be honored with a plaque at the new park. He is a very important part of our history. It was a non-uniformed number retired. We felt going into the new park we wanted to honor him with a plaque.”
I can’t even give Samson credit for clever spin. His rationale was too transparent. It sounds as if the Marlins’ brain trust decided a plaque hanging on a wall at Marlins Park would do more to honor Barger than a uniform shirt with No. 5 hanging in a prominent location in the park. The Marlins have no other retired numbers.
“We wouldn’t do it except for a compelling story,” Samson continued, “and we felt Logan’s story was very compelling.”
I don’t think I would want Samson and Loria choosing compelling fiction for me to read. Morrison’s father liked George Brett, his father died and now Morrison wants to honor his father by wearing his favorite player’s number. I wonder if Morrison thought of his father when he behaved so stupidly last season that the Marlins sent him to the minors for a refresher course on proper behavior.
“That’s not the reason,” Samson said. But, I responded, it was widely reported that the demotion was punishment. “Well,” Samson said, “they were wrong. They don’t know what they’re talking about. We know why we did it. He needed work.”
Morrison’s batting average had slipped to .249 from .330, but it was very likely that the Marlins demoted him for other reasons, his use of Twitter, for example. Morrison was an enthusiastic and unabashed user of Twitter.
“I’ve told Logan,” Samson said earlier in the season, “no one will care about his tweets if they’re coming from New Orleans.”
After Morrison was sent to the Marlins’ AAA farm team, Larry Beinfest, the Marlins’ president of baseball operations, told reporters, “He needs to concentrate on all aspects of being a major leaguer and work his way back.”
And Jack McKeon, the Marlins’ very veteran manager, remarked, “Too many young guys think they have it made, are darlings of the media, run their mouth. Tend to your business, get better at your craft. The record books are full of one- and two-year phenoms. Don’t believe me? Look it up.’’
An example of Morrison’s tweets:
“Jack McKeon asked me what I had going on tonite. Told him I was going home 2 play w/ Twitter. He replied ‘oh, what kind of dog is it?'”
And this one, accompanied by a photo of an unknown man:
“Is this David Samson? Yes or no? Vote now” The weird-looking man was not Samson.
I suppose Twitter encourages sophomoric behavior, and Morrison’s comments make the 24-year-old player seem to be sophomoric.
The Marlins can explain Morrison’s demotion any way they want, but they recalled him after he had missed only nine games and after he returned he hit .240 so whatever remedial work he did in New Orleans didn’t justify the stated reason for the demotion.
Morrison certainly hasn’t done anything to warrant the Marlins’ decision to insult the memory of Barger and his family. Samson has been quoted as saying he understood that the family “had signed off on the plan.”
I tried to reach Barger’s two daughters to confirm Samson’s claim but was not successful. However, the Palm Beach Post quoted Betzi Barger as saying that neither she nor her sister or mother had heard from the Marlins.
“Nobody has contacted us,” Betzi Barger told the Post. “It’s just a disappointment but there’s nothing we can do. We’re sorry we didn’t find out about it except from you.”
She told the Miami Herald, “My family and I are disappointed that that is the decision. We weren’t informed of it. We were not contacted by anyone in the Marlins’ organization. I would have liked to discuss it with the family. He was certainly dedicated to that organization.”
Loria has always been among the most disliked owners in baseball. Other club executives have said that Samson is the most disliked front-office executive in baseball. Now they give people even more reason to dislike them.
Perhaps too much is made of retiring numbers, but the subsidiary of sports has gained a lot of interest and respect from fans. According to records kept by the Hall of Fame and Major League Baseball, M.L.B. and its teams have retired 163 numbers.
Included in that group, besides Barger, are five non-uniformed retirements: Gene Autry, the Angels’ original owner; August Busch Jr., Cardinals’ owner; Walter Haas Jr., Athletics’ owner; Jack Buck, Cardinals’ broadcaster, and Cleveland Indians’ fans with the number 455 for the number of consecutive sellouts 1995-2001.
Barger’s No. 5 is the first number to be unretired on what would appear to be a permanent basis. Jim Gates, the librarian at the Hall of Fame, noted that the Chicago White Sox have had two exceptions.
They retired Harold Baines’ No. 3 in 1989 but allowed him to wear it when he returned to the team in 1996 and again in 2000. They also temporarily unretired Luis Aparicio’s No. 11 for Omar Vizquel, a fellow Venezuelan shortstop, to wear in 2010 and ’11 to honor Aparicio.
“There are no hard and fast rules,” Gates said. “Each team is allowed to interpret a number retirement as it sees fit.”
The Marlins, then, can do what they want with No. 5, but their decision to give No. 5 to Morrison is unpopular in Miami.
These were some of the comments made by Marlins’ fans on one of the Herald’s Web sites. Some comments supported the Marlins’ decision, but the fans were overwhelmingly critical:
“Morrison should be ashamed of himself for requesting the number.”
“The fact that they don’t show ANY respect to the complete history of the club is reflective….If it wasn’t for Barger, there would not be a big league baseball team in Miami, PERIOD. I think the number ‘5’ should stay retired, to show respect to the Marlins traditions.
LoMo is a classless, mediocre, self-promoter. Loria is just as classless for disrespecting Marlins’ history yet again.”
“He never took the field, and never wore the number. Retiring it was a silly decision in the first place.”
“By breaking tradition, giving a mediocre clown the #5 to wear grossly disrespecting Carl Barger and his family, along with the Great DiMaggio. The new Miami Marlins will be cursed.”
“What a disgrace to the entire franchise. Loria and Samson need to be run out of town in shame.”
“It’s not LoMo it’s Loria and Samson making us forget about the Florida Marlins….This is disrespect to a man who had a major hand in bringing in a Major League Baseball team. It doesn’t matter if he didn’t take the field. We honored and gave him a number to honor him. That shouldn’t be taken down.”
“There are more fans on this blog then in Pro Player stadium.”