August 3, 2009
The Florida Marlins are right in the middle of the playoff race after a six and two home stand.
The last game of that homestand was won in walk-off fashion against the Cubs.
Cody Ross crushed a homer in the bottom of the 9th off of the Marlins closer from last year, Kevin Gregg.
Most of the game was a pitching duel between Ricky Nolasco and yet another former Marlin Ryan Dempster. In fact, watching a Marlins game is almost a guarantee of seeing a superstar who used to wear black and teal.
Besides Gregg and Dempster in this past series with the Cubs, the fish have also witnessed Derek Lee hit a late game home run on Saturday.
Why do these players leave Miami? Money of course, the root of all evil and seemingly not so good baseball future.
Take AJ Burnett, now pitching for the New York Yankees. He pitched a no-hitter in 2001 and won a world series ring in 03', and then excelled winning 12 games twice in a season. Then Toronto offers him 55 million dollars and he wins 10 games in each of his first two seasons and a surprising 18 in year three.
Still yet to win a Cy-Young or 20 games in a year, Burnett takes even more money to play in New York, over 80 million. He has 10 wins and an ERA higher than his 10 win campaigns with the Blue Jays.
Well Burnett can't be put to blame because the Marlins seem to do it to themselves.
Sure they have a microscopic payroll, but they also have two world championships. But when they win the rings, they clear the benches, literally.
In 1997, Al Leiter, Kevin Brown, Rob Nen, Jeff Conine, Moises Alou and Gary Sheffield headlined a scrappy team who went from the wildcard to the top.
All of them were either traded or sought out bigger deals on their way out and only one of them won a world series after leaving. That guy was Conine who actually came back to the marlins to win it all again in 2003.
It was like a remake of a classic film, wildcard team, world series champs...everyone leaves.
This time the names might have been bigger!
Josh Beckett, Brad Penny, Carl Pavano, Pudge Rodriguez, Mike Lowell, Dontrelle Willis, Miguel Cabrera, Juan Pierre, and Luis Castillo.
Some left for cash, others were traded. Only Beckett and Lowell won a world series again!
But the marlins can't be mad at that one because they traded the two of them to the Boston RedSox for a young Dominican prospect named Hanley Ramirez.
Ramirez leads the NL in batting this year and the marlins actually gave him a long term deal, and he accepted! Maybe the Fish have learned their lesson, but probably not.
Hear this script:
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