May 08, 2005
Fish gotta swim
It took all of 24 hours after the end of the Florida legislative session for the Marlins-to-Vegas rumors to start up again. As you'll recall, last winter Las Vegas mayor Oscar Goodman was busily plying Marlins and MLB officials with showgirls in an attempt to talk up his town as a potential relocation site, despite a stadium-finance plan probably best described as imaginary.
Both Marlins execs and MLB officials were appropriately coy about any move threats: MLB COO Bob DuPuy proclaimed that "we will continue to work with the Marlins to try to keep major-league baseball in South Florida," while Marlins owner Jeffrey Loria would say only: "We will now review our options and will not comment further until this review is completed." This promptly made headlines, even though it's the exact same thing the Marlins and the league said last fall.
Vegas' dim stadium prospects notwithstanding, MLB seems eager to talk up Sin City as the destination-du-jour for the Marlins, and likely for any teams eager to scare their home towns into coughing up cash for new stadiums. This is the role that Tampa Bay filled for MLB in the 1980s and early '90s, when at least five different teams threatened to move to Florida's Gulf Coast (if you're scoring at home: the White Sox, Indians, Rangers, Mariners, Giants and probably a couple of others I've forgotten) as part of stadium-blackmail deals. But ever since the Giants' move was blocked by MLB, prompting a lawsuit from the state of Florida and the subsequent creation of the Devil Rays to make the lawyers go away, MLB teams have lacked a prominent move-threat target, so they're no doubt thrilled to have a city happy to play that role - and this time with showgirls!
If nothing else, Marlins third baseman Mike Lowell is down with the program:
"If I'm in his shoes and Vegas calls me and says, 'We're going to build a $450 million stadium. You don't have to pay anything, keep all the money,' what are you going to do? Keep losing money here? That's tough. There are other cities that are going to put [in] major dollars to build a stadium for someone ... I know Mr. Loria wants it to work here, but he's a businessman. He's a private jet away from going anywhere."
The way Lowell's hitting this year, maybe he's angling for a second career as Jay Cross.
