For a team that’s won two World Series, the Marlins existence has been rather unspectacular. Other than those wins, all they’re known for is trading players away. First in 1998, then Marcell Ozuna, Giancarlo Stanton, and Christian Yelich. Whatever happened in between has been covered by the sands of time and indifference. Essentially, the Marlins have been known as a shipping center. They’re an outlet mall.
Derek Jeter apparently isn’t much interested in making them known for anything else.
The Marlins are going to remove the fish tank behind home plate Marlins Park. That’s after they changed the colors of the outfield walls to not be as garish. And worst of all, after they removed the Home Run Statue, a brilliant slice of absurdism and Miami flare that was probably the biggest reason that alien life has never tried to contact us.
A ballpark should reflect the city in which it’s in, or provide a view of the feel of the place. You can do that with strong panoramas of the area around, like Oracle in San Francisco or PNC in Pittsburgh. Or you can have the vacant bombasity of whatever airport hangar the Rangers are calling home now, much like the state they play in. It’s what helps make baseball baseball. You turn on a hockey or football game, all the stadiums look the same. But you know immediately when you turn on a game from Detroit or Denver.
Miami is a weird place. It has to be, because it’s at the bottom of Florida. It’s like the rest of Florida runs off into Miami. The ballpark should be weird too. This is a baseball team that had like eight official colors. They have two World Series banners but have never won a division. Hell, if you fucked over an entire city to build it and are still robbing them blind anyway, you could at least make it an interesting place to be. It’s Miami’s park, so it should be full of bad architecture and guys in linen suits saying, “This is what I do.”
But that won’t do for Jeter, who’s next interesting thought or quote will die cold and alone in a vast empty space. Jeter’s fame has screened for two decades now that he has the personality of an ironing board. Sure, he was rich and good-looking and dated other rich and good-looking people, but that doesn’t make him interesting. He was the perfect Yankee. Handsome enough to slap on every billboard and ad without ever being close to offensive enough to worry those corporate sponsors. That’s what the Yankees are, and their annoying and anachronistic policy of no beards, speaks to. Just a corporate assembly line where no one upsets the apple cart while serving the organization that tries to convince everyone its truly special when things were always rigged for them (and still kind of are). Derek Jeter was designed in a lab to glad-hand the sponsors and owner’s friends at a skybox reception/luncheon. And clearly he won’t rest until the Marlins are in the same mold.
If you thought the Flyers had it bad on Wednesday, losing 9-0 to a team that didn’t have its coaches, well Tottenham Hotspur is here to say you ain’t seen nothin’ yet, fucko! Spurs took a 2-0 lead from the first leg to Dinamo Zagreb yesterday. And Dinamo Zagreb was also without their coach, because he had resigned three days before the match as he had been sentenced to five years in prison!
That’s right. Zoran Mamic had earlier been convicted of siphoning off some $18 million in transfer fees from the club to his own wallet, and his sentence came down earlier this week. So that’s the team Tottenham took on Thursday, with a two-goal headstart. Should have been just north of a cakewalk. And then they met Mislav Orsic, and combined with an effort level from Tottenham that was on the same level as scratching your balls in the morning, were defeated when Orsic topped off his hat trick in extra time like this, running through the Spurs team as if they’d just seen Medusa:
Remember friends, no matter how down you are, there’s a Spurs supporter not too far from you who assuredly is worse off.
Not to harp on soccer, but FC Cincinnati has a new stadium opening this year, and well, it looks pretty damn cool:
Let’s hope Derek Jeter never buys the club and covers the outside in taupe and ads for double-mint gum.