Friday December 2, 2005
What's up with a Marlins stadium?
[Contributed by Steve Klotz]
While Miami hosts Art Basel, playing host to arts aficionados from around the world, what’s happening in the entwined worlds of local sports and politics? Specifically, how’s that baseball stadium deal coming along?
According to news reports in the Miami Hurled, the deal is as dead as Ugueth Urbina’s pitching career. Referencing Marlin’s president David Samson, Miami city manager Joe Arriola commented, “As long as we have a little boy doing a man’s job, the stadium is not going to happen in this city.”
Eager to confirm the City Manager’s assessment, Samson reportedly replied, “It is very sad to me that an appointed city official finds it necessary to continue to comment on my physical attributes.’’
You can’t make up shit this good. The irony here is sweeter and thicker than stone crab mustard. Over on the Beach we have a zillion prancing poofsters flitting around from exhibition to exhibition, oohing and aahing with pinkies raised, conducting themselves like citizens of the world while an admiring world looks on. Meanwhile, downtown the great big hairy-chested sportsholes and cigar-chawing power pricks conduct a pissing contest in the headlines. Who’s your Daddy, little bitches?
In fact, the Marlins president does come off as the playground patsy, the spoiled little dork whom the big boys pick on (while giggling girls watch), whose lunch they eat and who limps on home all whiny and wedgisized. Listening to him on the radio does nothing to change this impression. And if it looks like dogshit, and it smells like dogshit??
But the City Manager is out of bounds. And both sides illustrate what a rube-filled backwater Miami can be. A civilized, sophisticated, and most of all competent coalition of private industry (including the Marlins) and government could take this opportunity to assemble a deal that yields a stadium, an enterprise zone, transportation, and a revitalized neighborhood, but this pack of hooting gibbons can’t even keep grunt in harmony.
Fortunately, with Art Basel dominating the news, Miami escapes the embarrassment of showcasing the willy-waving weenies that pass for civic leaders around here.
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Marlin ownership and upper management
are a pack of penny-pinching jackals.
They pulled this same shit in Montreal,
keeping the Expos out of serious contention for years
with their pint-sized payroll
(apparently to match the pint-sized President).
While it is possible baseball has no business
being in the Miami market,
it’s certain that they have no business being in baseball.
The episode also exposes the ongoing, underlying flaw in the fabric of “the South Florida community,” which is that there isn’t a genuinely strong sense of one. This is a place where people resist permanence. It attracts carpetbaggers and smash-and-grab investment schemes. People don’t think twice about raping the residents, trashing the environment, hurling stones at sacred sites, etc., because they’re always eyeing the exits. Marlins ownership has no commitment to the community, no love for the land. It’s Screw you people, we’re outta here. I’ll miss having a baseball team, but not the clods who own it. Good riddance.
We don’t need no steenking stadium.
I’ve barely been keeping up on the dealings concerning the financing of a possible new stadium between the city government, represented by city manager Joe Arriola and the Miami Marlins, represented by team president Dave Samson. What really caught my attention was fellow Miami blogger Critical Miami’s take on recent headlining events. It seems that the Miami city manager Arriola publically made insulting allusions to Mr. Samson’s diminutive stature and purportedly high pitched “whiny” voice. Steve Klotz at Critical Miami basically pointed out that there was more prick waiving in these exchanges than at a George Michael bathroom party. Most of you know that I am a fan of Critical Miami. When Mr. Klotz noted Samson’s role in his own bad PR, owing to his whiny voiced pronouncements and complaints on local talk radio, I think he may have missed something.
Check Miamista.blogspot.com for rest of comments.
Sorry but i just dont care,see
i dont even like baseball as i am sure alot of people dont. why should my tax moneys go to fund a stadium.
this is insane,you can barley find a cheap apartment in this city(sub 1,000)
take your team and go!
when was the last time they won?
right on aphex twin fanati—wait a second . . .
“when was the last time they won??”
If you don’t care about baseball, why the hell is their winning an issue? I call bullshit on you not caring – you sound more like a fan who feels let down!
JSS: Good take on your blog, lad. (Too bad we can’t post comments on it!) But are you even a wee bit concerned about your stereotyping? Not every latin and not all yanks are any one thing, are they. And wasn’t it the WASPs themselves who invented the “old school tie,” the very definition of what you say the latin businessmen are all about? Take each one on his own goods and evils, and truer to the world you’ll be.
That kindly noted, Samson’s a spoiled little prick. Between himself and his daddy-in-law the Marlins are in the grip of demons, and taking the city down with ‘em. Story’s out now that Wayne Huzienga had extended a hand, only to have it spit upon by these flatulent frauds.
Arriola might be wrong to say what he says, but he’s not wrong about what he’s sayin’ or who he’s sayin’ it about.
Hoo Ha! Here’s the story about owner Jeff Loria bawling his eyes out on the phone with the pitcher he just traded!! What big strong manly men these captains of industry and sports heroes turn out to be! Keep ‘em away from the Basel artists—we don’t want any blood on their shriveled little baseballs.
Right you are Sean! If generalizing, (hopefully short of stereotyping) is a sin I’m going to Hell. School ties today means that you can actually get into the right schools, implying some sort of merit, and that is so not what goes on in Latin America / Miami (ahem…there I go again). And Samson is a spoiled brat. “I can’t get a job with the NYDA’s office despite every advantage and connection, Paw-Paw, can I have a team?” I always try to defend the little man though, (geddit).
I say nix the stadium deal, use the money to partner with the MD School District to build 10 schools with academic after school programs. Use the effort to get Scripps here so we will actually have a non-development related private sector company come here rather than flee and screw the Marlins. Hopefully Broward will take them and we can have a move to regional integration.
PS, the posting thing will be fixed.
Ummm….actually, “old school tie” has nothing to do with getting into schools, good or bad. It’s a reference to the snotty way that British citizens reserved priviliges for themselves: “The upper-middle-class solidarity and system of mutual assistance attributed to alumni of British public schools.” (see Bartleby.com. Of course, only us Anglos know this: you Latins wouldn’t. Or am I stereotyping?
Well Thurston,
As a graduate of Phillips Exeter and Cornell I may not be as attuned to to these things as you. Perhaps I would should have consulted with my father, where is he, at the Williams Club or the Harvard Club?
It seems that you are not aware that these institutions and their characterizations were brought to America, let’s see, centuries ago.
Some Anglos may know about these things but PWT would seem not to. Or am I stereotyping the sort of person that would link to Bartleby.com as a reference on these things and use the name “Thurston Howell, Jr.?
(I’m so disappointed with myself for having responded to you post.)
JSS: I’m a trifle disappointed, too. There’s no such person, really, as Thurston Howell, Jr.
PS Who’s PWT?
Hey good buddies: It’s Thurston Howell III, not Junior.
How can you guys cry about not getting a new stadium. What for? So youse can drive by, point to it, and ask, “What’s that?”
Two World Series titles in 14 years, and not a single one of you pussy-blooded sun freaks gives a shit.
Get a team like that in Philly, or any town where the people don’t have to don parkas when the temps reach 60 degrees, and you couldn’t get a ticket.
New stadium. I got your new stadium right here.
Good point, Otis, and very poignant to use Philly as an example. That’s the town where fans in the stands strip naked in the snow during Eagles games. Which shows how smart you gotta be to approve spending tax dollars for billionaires to build playpens for their millionaire athletes.
Hey Otis: This “pussy blooded sun freak” invites you to Haulover Beach next summer at 10 am. Let’s see which one of us covers up and runs for the air conditioning first.