If you’ve been with us a while, you’ve probably noticed that I hate the Marlins. As in, I really, really, really hate the Marlins. Every three months or so, I have a frothing-at-the-mouth tantrum about them. Since this will be the third of 2012, I’ll keep it fairly short.
To review, though: Back in April I anointed the Marlins the tackiest franchise in the history of sports [1], taking aim at everything from their horrible owners to their cynical fire sales to their nonexistent fans to their ghastly rodeo-clown uniforms.
Then, at the beginning of September, I’d once again had enough [2], ripping Jeffrey Loria and his little friend Bud Selig, who collaborated on the shameful destruction of the Montreal Expos and then held Miami at gunpoint for a new stadium, which might be the worst thing ever made by human hands. Amazingly, Loria couldn’t make it through the new park’s inaugural season before having a fire sale; more amazingly, he’s now doubled down, sending Jose Reyes and Josh Johnson and Mark Buehrle and Emilio Bonfiacio to Toronto for a bundle of kinda-sorta-maybe prospects. It doesn’t matter what the Marlins got, because anyone good will get sold before he matters.
Incredibly enough, the problem with my earlier freakouts about the Marlins weren’t that they were overly cynical and built from sentiments generally suitable for the interior of a blast furnace — it’s that I wasn’t nearly cynical or vicious enough.
So let’s make this plain.
Jeffrey Loria? I used to think Loria was a dead-eyed grave robber, a fit replacement for that scabrous garbageman Wayne Huizenga. But it’s much worse. Loria is a shambling colony of amoral excrescence disguising itself with the skin of a human being. It no longer eats, as it gains all the sustenance to perpetuate itself from the ruined dreams of children.
Bud Selig? He will inspire arguments for a generation about his tenure as a commissioner, with every pro being met with a con and vice versa, until you get to contraction and the shameful starving and execution of the Expos and how he rewarded Loria’s dirty work by giving him a new franchise to despoil. At which point it’s game, set, match to the Selig haters. If Selig had an iota of shame, he’d contract the Marlins on the spot; ban Loria, David Samson and the next five generations of their descendants from any major-league stadium; and forbid anyone from ever mentioning the Marlins again in any context. But ask anyone in Montreal if Selig has an iota of shame.
The Marlins? They are the worst collective entity ever. They are flesh-eating mosquitoes surrounding an orphanage in some ruined part of the world, bred by cannibals laying land mines. Not only that, they are the worst collective entity the world will ever see.
In fact, the Marlins are…
…worse than the New York Yankees.
Yes. It’s true. They are.
The Yankees have values, and a code built from those values that they live by. To be sure, they’re twisted and evil values, ones that teach their fans that the appropriate soundtrack for the death of decency and fair play is laughter echoing throughout the icy halls of an empty palace. But, well, they’re values. The Yankees stand for something, however reprehensible that something is to good-hearted people.
The Marlins? They stand for nothing. They embody the void — nihilism given terrible shape as a franchise, devouring everything touched. The Marlins are the entropic cackle that greets the death of everything.
In matters unrelated to ravening hate:
• Identify our Fifty Sheas of Krane [3] and win the greatest Mets DVD set ever [4].
• The Mets’ food drive to help victims of Sandy (the storm, not Alderson) takes place tomorrow at Citi Field; details here [5].
• David Cone lends his mixology talents to storm relief at Foley’s Thursday night; details here [6].