It was nice of Florida Marlins owner Jeffrey Loria to arrive to spring training this morning. (He figured how how to TiVo that America's Next Top Model this morning.) And he sure has some big, I mean BIG, plans for this Marlins team in the next few years.
His four-point plan, which sounds lame but not if you accentuate each item and explanation with exclamation points:
• Payroll! (Get rid of it!)
• Stadium design! (Turn those empty, useless seats into CANDY!)
• Hosting an All-Star or World Baseball Classic! (Play baseball in South Florida once every four years!)
• New uniforms! (Less work than washing the old ones!)
That sounds like a pretty air-tight plan to make the team successful, even though nowhere in that plan does it include, you know, using the increased payroll on good players or anything. Nope. It's just going to increase. Bigger numbers are good!
Miami and its county commissioners have approved the money for a new park to be located at the Orange Bowl in 2011, but not until then will Loria be focused on making this team perhaps successful. Any World Series between now and 2011 will be purely incidental.
Until then? New uniforms! Ooh, make them glow in the dark.
Loria Arrives at Spring Training [MLB.com]