By Adam Cancryn
The Marlins aspire to be their city's cultural icon, but must first concentrate on winning a few games.
This is not the start that they had in mind.
The Miami Marlins' inaugural season was supposed to be a season-long Carnivale, the start of a new era not just for the Marlins, but for the city as a whole. The downtown stadium would be Miami's new hotspot: a pulsating mashup of Pitbull and pelota, a place where thousands come to party, swaying in step with a new brand of baseball build on speed, flash and flamboyance.
From the fluorescent logo to the garish green stadium walls and the monstrosity in center, the message was clear. This wasn't your traditional American baseball, with its pre-packaged reverence for tradition and forefathers, sponsored by Chevy and backed by a stirring Toby Keith anthem. This was beisbol, a celebration of Latin culture played nine innings at a time for a city that identifies with the Hanleys and Joses far more than the Marks and Johns. "The Miami Marlins are the team of the people. Of our people," is the image that the franchise created for itself.
The problem with any image, though, is that it shatters without substance to support it. And for all its attempts at establishing its Latin identity, it took little time for the Marlins' carefully crafted campaign to fall apart.
The team's Opening Night ceremonies involved trotting out women wearing what seemed like traditional Carnivale garb to escort the players onto the field. Unfortunately, the skimpy costumes skewed a bit too far toward the escort side of things, making the Marlins' first attempt at celebrating Miami's culture look like a hamfisted stereotyping dreamt up by a group of old white men.The encore proved even more cringeworthy. In a decision that surely sounded far better in theory than execution (a theme that developed throughout the team's first weeks), the Marlins wheeled out Muhammad Ali for the first pitch. Rather than serving as a tribute to one of his great boxing victories, Ali's appearance only managed to remind those watching of their own mortality.
Ravaged by Parkinson's Disease and barely in control of his movements, the former world champion trudged across the outfield on the back of a golf cart as initial cheers gave way to an awkward murmur. Marlins owner Jeffrey Loria sat beside Ali, giving him patronizing pats on the knee and looking for all the world like the worst person in Miami.
The Marlins had envisioned Opening Night as a vibrant beginning. Before the first pitch, it was an exploitative failure.
***
Still, there was baseball to play. All was not lost, the party could be saved. If only Jose Reyes made a slick play in the hole, or Hanley Ramirez hit his first big fly, the place would crank right back up again.
But those plays never came. The oppressive Miami heat swallowed up the Marlins' offense. The opposing Cardinals, playing as if they were the ones this expansive park was made for, dinked and dunked their way to a 4-1 win.
For the Marlins, the night's enduring, and perhaps most appropriate image: Young star Giancarlo Stanton after smashing a pitch to left center, all his might and effort put into one big swing, following the ball's arc until it landed with a thud in the outfielder's glove, well short of the wall.
***
Since that first night, little has gone right and nothing has gone as perfectly as the Marlins envisioned. On the field, the team has struggled. Ace Josh Johnson has been ineffective in two starts. Reyes, the $100 million spark plug, is hitting just .238. Stanton and first basemen Gaby Sanchez have yet to leave the yard.
Or at least it was, until Ozzie Guillen did what he does worst. The unfiltered manager made comments that were interpreted by some as favorable toward Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, a major no-no in an area dominated by the country's refugees. The firestorm, stoked first by the media and then by politicians eager to score points, escalated to levels of outrage (both real and fake) previously reserved for the daytime cable news shows. A week into the season, Guillen was on the hot seat. CBS Sports' Jon Heyman, normally as reserved a reporter as they come, predicted the fury would cost Guillen his job. For this news cycle at least, the Marlins had become more a political puppet than a sports franchise.
Guillen wasn't ousted. In a practice that has become necessary to win America's forgiveness, the manager called a press conference to formally apologize. He delivered a tearful mea culpa, the crowd administered the requisite public shaming, and the Marlins suspended Guillen five games. Everyone went home unhappy but feeling better about their respective positions on the matter.
***
Guillen returns to the bench this Tuesday, to a 4-6 team sitting last in what has become one of the league's best divisions. It's not the start that the Marlins had in mind, but it's the one they must live with. Dream teams can take time to hit their stride, just ask that basketball team across the way. And after weathering a season's worth of bad news within the just first two weeks, odds are that things are looking up. Infielder Omar Infante has been a bright spot. Josh Johnson identified and fixed a flaw in his mechanics. There are still 152 more games to go.
Plus, when Hanley Ramirez crushed his first home run over the lime green walls and into the seats, you had to admit that that center field monstrosity — that symbol of Marlins beisbol — looked pretty cool in action.
Adam Cancryn is an editor and co-founder of Began in '96.
0 comments:
Post a Comment