Jeffrey Loria Is Spectacularly Unlikable

Ben McGrath has a fun story about the Miami Marlins in this week's (subscription required), which, as its primary function, introduces uptown types to Ozzie (and Oney) Guillen. But Marlins owner Jeffrey Loria is present too. In fact, he condescends to you through print. He makes you feel like you will be underdressed at a Marlins game if you show up in an outfit that does not include opera gloves.

Listen to him describe the new stadium, which the taxpayers of Miami paid for (certainly against their best interest and perhaps against their wishes), as though it's his private yacht:

The stadium wasn't just any old luxury-box conduit he'd succeeded in building; it was a lasting work of architecture, a contribution to the skyline of a major American city, "in the spirit of Richard Meier," he said. "Lots of glass, lots of steel, beautiful white surfaces everywhere, curves, things that delight the eye."

Oh, but there's plenty of all-purpose snobbery, too:

In Jupiter, Loria stopped to lean against a chain-link fence near one of the practice fields. He greeted people coming and going, corrected their grammar ("You haven't 'run' that fast, not 'ran'"), and used a towel to swat at a persistent insect.

He was wearing a black cap with the team's new logo—a rainbow-colored "M," with a flourish resembling a marlin's dorsal fin and bill—and explained that the uniform redesign, in which he played an active role, had been two years in the making. "The colors did not just come arbitrarily," he said. "The red-orange is for those incredible sunsets. The yellow is the sunlight that you see during the day. The blue is the water that surrounds the community." Goodbye, teal. The colorscape at the new Marlins Park, meanwhile, was "sort of an homage to Miró's palette," Loria explained. "The outfield is all green—Miró's green."

And, yes, Loria talks about the outfield sculpture:

"You're going to walk into that ballpark and see it, you're going to say, 'Oh, my goodness'... There are two marlins that spin around. One dives into the water while the other's exiting the water—a great splash of water. Another marlin goes straight up to the top of the sculpture and spins. There are flamingos that flap their wings. There's an L.E.D. light show. There's music. There's a pair of doves that fly in opposite directions. There's—what's the word?—a cacophony of things going on."

Jeffrey Loria ruined baseball in one city to hijack it in another, and now he's remaking it there in his own image (or Joan Miro's), but with everyone else's money. All this after he ran Joe Girardi and Fredi Gonzalez, good managers both, out of town. He is—what's the word?—an asshole.

Can Ozzie Guillen Remake the Miami Marlins? [New Yorker]