The Daily Jolt is a dose of baseball reality every weekday morning.Like it or not, Major League Baseball in Miami is here to stay. That is the ultimate consequence of the decision by the Miami-Dade County Commission to publicly finance a baseball-only facility, a decision sealed by a 9-4 vote Monday evening.
There is plenty that doesn't feel right about this. Marlins owner Jeffrey Loria has been demanding a new stadium almost since the day he purchased a 35 percent stake in the Montreal Expos in 1999. In the process, he has done plenty to kill fan interest in both Montreal and South Florida by way of relocation threats and a religious devotion to paring down payroll that comes with a complete refusal to hold onto star players (at least until Hanley Ramirez re-signed last year).
Of course, the nonplussed fans in the region should not get a free pass. Yes, Marlins fans have had a particularly tough (and bizarre) run of owners, enduring Wayne Huizenga's firesale in the aftermath of the 1997 World Series championship long before Loria fielded an entire major league team for a fraction of the price of one season of Alex Rodriguez.
But the Marlins have finished in the top five in the National League in attendance just twice in 16 seasons, finishing in the top half of the NL three times and ranking in the bottom three every year since 1999. Just who is Miami-Dade County building this stadium for, anyway?
Finally, it's impossible to ignore the state of the economy these days, especially when it comes to a nine-figure publicly financed construction project. The new stadium, to be built on the site of the Orange Bowl, will cost $515 million, with an additional $94 million needed for parking lots in the area. The hotel bed tax will be used to fund much of the project, but with tourism sagging because of the recession, there are concerns that it will not fully cover costs.
Either way, it's a questionable use of resources with so little to go around and such tepid interest in the team. Jobs will be created, sure, but enough to offset such a lavish expenditure? Well, I'm no economist, but that doesn't seem likely.
At this point, though, it's water under the bridge (or over the dam, depending on where you sit). The Marlins are going to be in Miami for the foreseeable future, with a 35-year lease at the new stadium set to take effect when it opens in 2012.
There aren't many folks to feel earnestly happy for in South Florida, but this is an unquestionably good thing for the future of baseball there.
Stadium plans call for a retractable roof, which should making watching a game in the middle of the summer, when the humidity is oppressive and showers are frequent, a much more tolerable experience. The players will get to call a modern facility suited specifically to baseball home and Loria should have the financial flexibility to at least prevent all of his stars from leaving in a parade the moment they approach free agency.
Even changing the name from the Florida Marlins to the Miami Marlins should help cement the franchise's place in the region.
It's hard to think of a stranger organization in professional sports than the Marlins. They have won two World Series in the last 12 seasons -- more than any other team save the Yankees and Red Sox -- and produced numerous stars via one of the best player development systems in the game
Yet the Marlins have also been the subject of contraction and relocation talk for the better part of a decade, always seemingly a heartbeat away from becoming the San Antonio or Portland or Las Vegas Marlins or folding altogether.
It's been a long, strange trip, indeed, but the Marlins finally seem to have a home. That's progess, even if it comes at a price.
