November 26, 2003
Fish, Interrupted
I don't think that any of us serious baseball fans will ever forget the 1997 World Champion Florida Marlins, but we'll remember them for all the wrong reasons. Their ridiculous spending preceding that season followed by their immediate dismantling of their roster following their World Series win makes them perhaps the most dubious champs in all of modern sports history. Well, the Marlins have just won the World Series again, and with the first of their crucial players having already been shipped out (first baseman Derrek Lee traded to the Cubs), you can't help but get that same awful feeling of "Did the Marlins really just win the World Series last year?" In their defense, the 2003 edition of the Marlins was truly a great baseball team, and one they built in large part from their own organization. You've got to respect that. But even though they were the most exciting team to watch in the postseason, throughout their amazing run, you got the feeling that absolutely no one was taking them seriously. "Yeah, but they're the Marlins," people would say, as if there is some horrible stigma attached to that word. Now the first of their crucial players is gone, with rumors that others are on the way out the door (Pudge Rodriguez and Luis Castillo, to name a few). All this does is give the doubters and the haters more reason to say that the Marlins are a bogus team, and it's tough to argue with them at this point. In the Marlins' defense, they did get a guy with big upside (Hee Seop Choi) in exchange for Derrek Lee, but it just leaves a rotten taste in everyone's mouth when you see the World Champs beginning to slowly fall apart in front of your eyes. Meanwhile, the Cubbies are clearly trying to vault their payroll and talent level into Yankees/Red Sox territory. You could rightfully call them the Evil Empire of the Midwest if they ever actually won something. It will be interesting to see how they manage not to win it all in '04. Call it The Curse of Hee Seop Choi...
-Matt Stroup
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