Meet Jeffrey Loria, the owner of the Florida/Miami Marlins AAAA "major league" baseball team.
Meet one of the biggest assholes in baseball.
The guy just oozes "asshole", and he's already been responsible for the literal death of baseball in one of the two Canadian markets Major League Baseball has penetrated, Montreal.
He was the owner that basically fire-saled a team which could've been relevant in the beginnings of the Steroid Era (it had the best record in the majors before the strike in 1994! -- 3 1/2 games better than the mighty Yankees), leading to the eventual farce that was the Puerto Rico Expos for a period of time (leading to an absurd, though beautiful for the park, traditional doubleheader for the Giants that was necessitated because they could not reschedule one of the Expos' Puerto Rico games which was rained out!) and, eventually, the team fleeing to Washington.
It is clear that Jeffrey Loria has no regard for the fans, other players, or anyone but his smarmy fuck of an art collector self.
And this shithead got a World Series ring with the Marlins, and then promptly firesaled that!
Then he screams for a new stadium, extorts it out of the taxpayers, and says he'll make the team competitive again if and only if he gets the new stadium.
That lasted... about a third of a season.
The final straw has apparently fallen on the relevance of the Miami Marlins. This "trade" with the Toronto Blue Jays: Basically all their remaining star players (and most of the salary) for a cup of coffee, a malcontent, and some prospects.
A friend of mine who's a baseball historian has actually heard estimates that Jeffrey Loria is actually going to try to trot out a team with a payroll of about $35 million next year, if Loria can unload any salaries he finds too expensive and too constrictive to the creation of the new Jeffrey Loria Art Museum or somesuch folly.
I mean, it's so bad, and anyone watching ESPN that first home game could've seen it. His idea of a "first pitch" was to bring out Muhammad Ali.
Now, God bless Ali and he's still The Motherfucking Greatest and will be For All Time.
But the Parkinson's and the like is advancing at a frightening rate, and what was supposed to be a wonderful feel-good moment (and Ali certainly deserves that, and none of what I say is to be taken one iota of fault of his!) turned into a pathetic display of a physical shadow of a man. The fans were so saddened to see how he was doing that they couldn't even rouse a cheer, and the PA announcer was left to try to force an "Ali! Ali! Ali!" chant out of the crowd.
On the Opening Night of the stadium...
On ESPN...
And this motherfucker basically extorts what could be hundreds of millions out of the taxpayers to pay for a minor-league baseball stadium, because this shithead is going to pocket the revenue-sharing and profit from this sham of a team.
Speaking of "credible sanctioning bodies" as I have before, where the fuck is Bud $elig on this one? This is in the Best Interests of Baseball to literally watch a man repeatedly gut a team to the point that no one wants to come and watch, even when they ARE good?
If I were $elig, he either fields a competitive team, or, since he has no interest in doing so, either must sell the team or it dies, under BIoB.
Fuck Jeffrey Loria. Fuck his smarmy ass. And if that's not good enough for him, he can basically take his minor-league traveling show elsewhere, as far as I am concerned.
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