Jeffrey Loria is a SCUMBAG
(this was written exclusively for Zisk #12, which hit the newstands in
time for opening day, let me know if you want a hard copy)
Jeffrey Loria is a greedy scumbag, a lying rat and a cancer to all of
baseball. I know many baseball fans hate George Steinbrenner, and
consider the money he spent on the Yankees to be unfair,
uncompetitive, etc. At least King George was loyal to the Yankees and
did all that he could to put the best product on the field for the
fans. You may argue with his tactics, which were all within the rules,
but the results speak for themselves.
Loria has demonstrated his selfishness repeatedly and has driven two
franchises into the ground in just over a half a decade. He obviously
has no value for the fans of his teams, the franchise itself or the
local taxpayers. He also has no clear understanding of the term
loyalty. He holds teams and communities hostages to his whim and makes
the entire baseball community worse off because of his actions. If any
of these constituents are unable to meet his demands to make more
money for him then he simply picks up his marbles and moves somewhere
else, leaving behind a trail of destruction that takes years to clean
up.
First a little history lesson to refresh our memory about Loria
courtesy of the Baseball Library.
"Loria was outbid for the Baltimore Orioles by Peter Angelos in 1993
but spent $75 million for a controlling interest in the cash-strapped
Montreal Expos in 1999. Although he allowed the club's purse strings
to open slightly in order to sign free-agent reliever Graeme Lloyd and
trade for starter Hideki Irabu, the decisions were not wise ones and
the Expos continued to struggle.
At the time Loria purchased the Expos, he promised that he was going
to make every effort to keep the Expos in Montreal, and build them
into a contender. The NY Times article, New Montreal Owner Is Swinging
With His Checkbook by Murray Chass on December 26, 1999. Loria is
quoted as saying:
''I want to strengthen this team in as many areas as I can,'' Loria
said. ''As the new owner here, I feel I have an obligation to move
things forward. No more business as usual.''
''First of all, I think they have a terrific organization,'' he said.
''Player development there has always been first rate. The city's a
beautiful city. They've had a history of strong fan support for
baseball. One of the problems in recent years was the team wasn't a
winning team. They weren't a strong club, and players were in
flight.''
''By establishing stability, commencing a new marketing program and
bringing in a winning attitude and winning players,'' Loria said, ''we
can build this franchise to where it was in the 80's and the early
90's. In '94 they were on track to win the pennant when the strike
came.''
Besides giving (new GM Jim) Beattie more money to work with and
Manager Felipe Alou better players to work with, Loria is intent on
selling Montreal and Quebec on a new ballpark. ''We're working on it
right now with the government,'' he said. ''I'm always optimistic.''
It seems he is only optimistic when he gets what he wants; my four
year old is the same way. The Baseball Library continues its history.
Cynics suggested that Loria had no intention of keeping the Expos in
Montreal; speculation that was fueled in June 2000 by his tactless
response to an Air Canada flight attendant who asked him to turn off
his cell phone before takeoff. "No wonder everybody wants to leave
Canada," Loria grumbled.
Loria made waves on the field, as well. He invited Maury Wills and
Jeff Torborg to spring training as instructors in 2000 without
consulting manager Felipe Alou, and a year later he hired Torborg to
replace the popular skipper."
May 30, 2001: The Expos fire manager Felipe Alou, their skipper since
May 1992. Owner Jeffrey Loria says the team has been under performing
and needs a change. The new manager is his long-time friend Jeff
Torborg, who is also an old friend of Alou's. The 66-year-old Alou,
with the Expos organization for 27 years, turned down the job of
managing the Dodgers after the 1997 season to stay in Montreal. A year
later he called that a big mistake.
December 6, 2001: Major league baseball reportedly gives John Henry
permission to sell the Florida Marlins to Montreal Expos owner,
Jeffrey Loria. The Expos are expected to be either contracted or taken
over by Major League Baseball, which would buy the team from Loria in
case contraction is aborted, leaving him an opportunity to own the
Marlins.
February 11, 2002: Major league baseball owners approve the sales of
the Florida Marlins and Montreal Expos. Florida owner John Henry is
selling the Marlins to Jeffrey Loria for $158.5 million, while Loria
is selling the Expos to Baseball Expos LP, a limited partnership owned
by the other 29 teams, for $120 million. The sales won't officially
close until later this week.
February 16, 2002: The sale of the Florida Marlins to a group headed
by Jeffrey Loria becomes official.
The whole Expos-Marlins-Red Sox ownership fiasco looked awfully fishy
at the time, and it still remains a bit putrid, except for the AL
Boston franchise. Loria failed to build a decent franchise in Montreal
as he promised to do. Then, Bud Selig and the 29 other MLB teams
bought the Expos. Loria, was then given the keys to another franchise,
the Florida Marlins, in spite of the fact that in 3 short years he had
driven the Expos from a team on the brink of relevance, with a grand
history, to the brink of near destruction and contraction. Let us not
forget that the minority owners of the Expos also sued Loria as
Wikipedia says:
This transaction prompted a RICO lawsuit by minority shareholders of
the Expos. The suit accused Loria and his staff of conduct "that
effectively destroyed the economic viability of baseball in Montreal
(that) included removing the Expos from local television, subverting
well-developed plans for a new baseball stadium in downtown Montreal,
purposefully alienating Expos' sponsors and investors, abandoning
agreed-upon financial plans for the franchise, and undermining a
planned recapitalization of the franchise that would have added new
Canadian partners.
In December 2001, Selig said the Expos and the Minnesota Twins, (whose
owner Carl Pohland is another greedy scumbag) were no longer worthy of
existence in MLB and decided that the best thing to do was to get rid
of these two franchises through contraction. After the contraction
experiment failed, the Expos ultimately became nomads for the next
three years (we all remember a Canadian team playing home games in San
Juan PR) as they wandered North America and the Caribbean looking for
home, trying to determine if they were going to be contracted, without
a real owner and unable to make personnel moves without the explicit
written approval of its 29 other competitors. Talk about a shitty
legacy that is exactly what Loria left in Montreal. Finally, the Expos
moved last year (2005) to Washington DC and became the Washington
Nationals, though they are still owned by MLB and are still looking
for a permanent stadium in the DC area. There future is beginning to
brighten, and hopefully better times are ahead for this franchise.
Meanwhile, Marlins owner John Henry takes his $150 million-plus chunk
of change to buy a piece of the Red Sox. Which coincidently enough,
was not even the high bid for the Red Sox, but was the "winning" bid
because Henry was a friend of Bud, and the commissioner influenced the
Yawkey family to sell to insiders rather than the highest bidder. This
obviously turned out well for Red Sox Nation as the finally broke "The
Curse of the Bambino" by winning the World Series in 2004.
How about the other franchise involved in this transaction? The
Florida Marlins were now Jeffrey Loria's team. They were born in 1992
and began play in 1993. They were newer than the Expos and played in
south Florida, what should be a hot bed of baseball fans. He was no
longer in cold, hockey happy French speaking Montreal. The National
League franchise from Florida already had a winning history, having
won the World Series in 1997. Though owner H. Wayne Huizenga quickly
dismantled the World Series champ in a shameless fire sale and sold
the franchise to John Henry in 1998.
So what does the new owner think about his new team? Here is a quote
from the Baseball Prospectus from the weeks of Jan 28 - Feb 17, 2002:
"I don't see any reason why this club can't compete for the division
and win It." - Jeff Loria, Marlins owner, on his new team
This certainly seemed to be true a year later in 2003. The Marlins
made the playoffs as a wildcard then beat the Giants, the Cubs
(Bartman!!!) and the Yankees to win their 2nd World Series
Championships in 6 years. Was this the beginning of a new dynasty?
Were the Marlins going to be a lasting force in major league baseball,
and make Miami, a great and true-blue (teal) baseball town? No, of
course not. Loria was unwilling to rest on his team's success to build
up the franchise's brand and develop a long-term fan base within the
community who would help fight for a new stadium and revenue sharing
and everything else associated with a well run professional sports
organization.
From the time he bought the team in 2002, he almost immediately began
demanding South Florida residents to build and pay for a new stadium
(sounds amazingly familiar to the Montreal experience, minus the World
Series victory). Now once again, Loria is saying if he cannot get a
new stadium his way (by the taxpayers building and paying for it) he
is going to take this franchise and move to another community.
During this off-season, Loria received permission from MLB to begin
seeking out other communities to which to relocate the Marlins. I am
sure he will hold an auction and those communities that are willing to
line Loria's pockets and are considered the closest friends of Bud
(sorry Las Vegas) will wind up with the hopefully renamed Marlins
franchise (Utah Jazz?) Meanwhile, what has the off-season wrought for
the few fans of the Fish that are left? Another Fire sale!!
Joe Girardi was hired away from the Yankees to be their manager,
replacing the aged Jack McKeon. On October 19, 2005, the day Girardi
was hired, I hope he had no idea what lay ahead. After the season Todd
Jones (CL), AJ Burnett (SP), Jeff Conine (U), Alex Gonzalez (SS),
Lenny Harris (PH), Ismael Valdez (SP) and Juan Encarnacion (OF) all
file for free agency are not retained by the Marlins for the upcoming
2006 season.
On November 21, the Marlins traded World Series MVP Josh Beckett (SP),
Mike Lowell (3B) and Guillermo Mota (RP) to the aforementioned Red Sox
for prospects. On November 23, they sent Carlos DelGado (1B) to the
Mets for prospects. On December 2, they trade Luis Castillo (2B) to
the Twins for prospects. On December 5, they trade Paul Lo Doca (C) to
the Mets, for prospects. On December 7, they trade Juan Pierre (OF) to
the Cubs for prospects. On December 16 they trade Ron Villone (RP) to
the Yankees for prospects.
So the starting Catcher (LoDuca), First Baseman (DelGado), Second
Baseman (Castillo), Shortstop (Gonzalez), Third Baseman (Lowell), 2
outfielders (Pierre, Encarnacion), 3 starting pitchers (Beckett,
Burnett, Valdez), 3 Relief Pithers (Jones, Mota, Villone) and 2
premier bench players (Conine, Harris) are all gone. This essentially
leaves CY Young runner up Dontrelle Willis, and Miguel Cabrera as the
only remaining stars on this franchise. This essentially makes the
2006 version of the Marlins a AAA franchise playing against major
league talent, very similar to the Kansas City Royals of the past few
years.
It is sadly ironic that for as bad as the Royals or the Pirates have
been recently, that these teams have not seriously discussed or
entertained the notion of moving the franchises to another location. I
think this is because both KC and Pittsburgh have long healthy
relationships with their communities. The owners are local, and the
fan base is strong. That seems like a winning combination. Once these
teams get back on track, the fans will return to the stadium. It is a
fact that fans will never pack a stadium if the team is lousy and not
worth watching but whenever a team that has established a solid
relationship with its fans and its community, they will return when
the product on the field is worth watching and spending hard earned
income on this entertainment venue.
The fans in Miami have been both lucky and unlucky. They have won as
many World Series Championships as the cities of Boston and Chicago
since World War One ended in 1919. They have also had to witness the
destruction of these teams almost as fast as they won. I realize the
first example was not Jeffrey Loria's fault, but when you look at the
Expos and the resurrected Nationals, you see his fingerprints all over
that debacle. Baseball is a great sport. It transcends time and true
fans become attached to a team for a variety of reason. But it is
impossible for a fan to build this attraction if the owner keeps
standing you up, and demanding more from the fan. It is a too two-way
street, and the fans will only respond positively when the owner
treats them with respect. Jeffrey Loria is unable or unwilling to do
this, since he is only interested in his own wallet, and that is a
black mark on the world of baseball
Sources:
Baseball Library
Baseball Prospectus
ESPN Greediest owners in sports
Gainsville Sun: Girardi's reaction:
Miami Herald - Marlins can't win in South Florida
Miami Herald - D�j� vu
Miami Herald- Marlins Get Approval to leave South Florida
Miami Herald - Keeping Marlins Baseball
Wikipedia
Yahoo- Marlins future a big question
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