Baseball season's almost over, so we've got precious few chances left to make fun of the Miami Marlins organization before it disappears from our consciousness for the winter. What are the Marlins up to today? Oh nothing, just getting countersued by NFL linebacker Jonathan Vilma for allegedly fucking up his barbecue stand.
Vilma, who co-owns a Miami barbecue franchise called Brother Jimmy's with his brother, agreed to open a Brother Jimmy's concession stand in the Marlins' new stadium. The business relationship quickly soured, though, and now both Vilma and the Marlins are suing each other. The Marlins are claiming that Vilma and his brother failed to pay a $75,000 sponsorship fee to the team in 2012 (Yes, a multi-million-dollar sports franchise is suing for a measly $75,000. Good job, Marlins.) and failed to give 60 days notice before terminating their agreement with the Marlins in 2013.
Vilma's suit claims that no such sponsorship deal was ever agreed to, and that the concession stand had to be shut down this year because the food that the Marlins were serving out of it was so godawful.
From NBC Miami:
"We did voice our concerns and we actually personally went there, we went to the games and we wouldn't let them know who we were, we'd go and taste our own food and we'd tell them look, 'this food is not to our standards,'" Vilma said during an appearance Wednesday on the Kup & Crowder Show on 560 WQAM. "It hurts us as a business because if for the first time a fan goes to Marlins stadium, they taste Brother Jimmy's, they say 'this food is terrible,' and all they're gonna remember is the bad food and or service that they got at the Marlins stadium and we expected better than that."
Vilma also claims that the Marlins assured him that business would be booming at the Brother Jimmy's concession stand due to high attendance at the Marlins' new stadium. We all know how that turned out.
The lesson here, as always, is that the Marlins should never be trusted with anything of value.