Lowlife Loria and Scumbag Samson show their true colors

**DirtyKash** · 06-16-2011 10:32 PM

Marlins ownership shows its true colors again - MLB - Yahoo! Sports

An excellent article by Jeff Passan. Some highlights:

The truth does not hurt the Florida Marlins. It turns them inside out, salt to a group of slugs. It reveals what festers inside a franchise operated by thieves. And as Logan Morrison(notes) learned this week, it is strictly forbidden if in any way it exposes Marlins ownership for who they are: tiny little men.

Owner Jeffrey Loria is Henry VIII of his fiefdom, and his latest uncalled-for beheading left popular hitting coach John Mallee out of a job. Morrison, the talented 23-year-old left fielder whose candor has won him a devoted Twitter following, said Loria personally called for the firing. Loria called him into his office and essentially told him to shut up.

“I was asked a question, I told the truth,” Morrison told the Palm Beach Post. “But I guess I don’t do that anymore.”

For the second time in two weeks, the Marlins were playing censor on Morrison.

Loria’s baseball compass always has lived in the gutter with his moral one, and trying to play censor with Morrison is only the latest example in an ignominious tenure of ownership. Loria committed homicide on the Montreal Expos, took copious profits from the Marlins and fleeced Miami-Dade County politicians into building the Marlins a new $600 million stadium set to open next year. Along with David Samson, his stepson-turned-team president, Loria has run managers, players and personnel out of town with incessant meddling. There is a truism about people who try to suppress the truth: They’re always hiding something.

And from the leak of the Marlins’ financial documents last year to Deadspin, it was information that would have prevented the county from floating hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer money to cover the ballpark that will funnel nearly all of its revenue to the Marlins. For years, as the Marlins threatened to move in the absence of a new stadium, politicians asked for proof the team was as dire financially as Samson often wheezed. The team refused. With good reason, it turns out: Between 2008 and 2009, the Marlins booked $48.9 million in profit – or nearly one-third of the $155 million they’re set to pay on the $634 million stadium.

The county commissioners who approved the sweetheart deal cried foul. By the time the loans come due, the county will have paid $2.4 billion. They were swindled, taken, robbed.

“A contract is a contract,” Samson retorted.

Morrison has seen the corrosive effect of Marlins ownership. One source relayed the story of how Samson would approach struggling young players and threaten a trip to the minor leagues if they didn’t start playing better. Another source said Bobby Valentine was set to manage the Marlins until he met with Samson and left saying he’d rather work in the Gulag.

Valentine, it turns out, was too honest for the Marlins. So was Joe Girardi, who Loria canned. And Fredi Gonzalez, who had the temerity to criticize Loria’s pet, franchise shortstop Hanley Ramirez(notes), whose arrogance has infected the Marlins’ clubhouse for years. Unless Morrison falls in line, he’ll go, too, because the truth is a liability in South Florida, and no amount of home runs or RBIs will remedy that.

**realmofotalk** · 06-16-2011 10:54 PM

I'm convinced MLB would allow Jeffrey Skilling into the owner's club before they ever let Mark Cuban in.

**realmofotalk** · 07-09-2011 04:28 PM

I wonder if there are Marlins fans out there who would still argue that Loria has been a better owner than John Henry was for the Marlins because the franchise won their second World Series under Loria and that Henry jumped ship when he couldn't land a new ballpark himself.