I am in South Florida tearing up the golf courses this week, and though I have not watched a lot of television while I have been down here I did catch one interview on Marlins Baseball.
Jeffrey Luria; So many Montrealers hate this man for what he did to baseball in Montreal. If you don't know, he and his partner-in-crime David Samson bought the Montreal Expos, then systematically destroyed them. Many (myself included) honestly believe that they wanted to either move or destroy the Expos, and then abandoned them when the opportunity to buy the Florida Marlins arose.
Anyhow he was on TV before the Marlins' home opener the other day from Dolphin Stadium, yapping about needing a new ballpark. He insisted that the land near the Orange Bowl (University of Miami, formerly home to the Dolphins') was not good enough, that they needed a new downtown ballpark, and if they couldn't get one then they might have to consider moving the franchise out of Miami.
Sound familiar?
A downtown ballpark. The words make me cringe. They evoke memories of the CN yards on St-Jacques towards which hundreds if not thousands of Montreal baseball fans bought bricks (bloody expensive ones!) in vain hopes of restoring the glory to the once great Expos. They remind me of the threats and promises and then systematic destruction of my favorite team by two men who were originally the saviours in the wake of the ownership consortium that made firesales fashionable again.
And now they are doing it again. Luria and Samson are following exactly the same pattern in Miami as they did in Montreal.
Well... almost. At least Florida fans got a World Series title out of those two before the threats began. All we got were hopes and dreams, shattered like every promise they made. The sad part is Florida will probably end up giving them their new stadium because they have already delivered one championship, and everyone loves a winner.
No wonder I took up golf.