July 13, 200322 yr Yesterday, the day after the trade, the main focus of the sports section was Zo, with 3 full pages about him and the Heat. The Marlins were the main focus of the sports section today with a bigger article about Urbina and a great column by Cote on the top of the front page: Marlins have lowered the white flag Craig Counsell running-hopping-dancing down the third-base line with a World Series championship in his back pocket on Oct. 26, 1997. Not since that indelible snapshot, that shining moment, have Marlins fans had more cause to feel good than right now. The steadfastly estranged among us -- those disenfranchised ex-fans still religiously sticking pins in their Wayne Huizenga voodoo dolls -- might be too busy being sour to feel it. If so, they are officially unrecoverable. We must leave them behind, unlamented, and move on. The rest of us, we baseball fans desiring the sport's long-term success here, suddenly are experiencing the most unusual sensations, and, hopefully, allowing ourselves the pleasure of enjoying them. Can that be optimism? Hard to remember, but is that what that felt like? Can this be a gradually growing belief -- growing in the hardscrabble ground of South Florida sports, where skepticism is the bumper crop -- that maybe management is sincere, actually serious, about winning back our collective trust? We go by what we see. Look around. Friday's trade with Texas to bolster the bullpen was the latest move indicative of owner Jeffrey Loria's administration making an effort. Trying. Ugueth Urbina looks like more than a winning hand in Scrabble. He looks like a message, a symbol of how things have changed. A year ago, the Marlins also were slightly above .500 entering the All-Star break, just like now, but were in familiar salary-dump mode, trading their best hitter, Cliff Floyd, and opening-day starter, Ryan Dempster. Now, with a wild-card playoff spot in reasonable sight, the team is adding, not subtracting. Spending, not surrendering. Instead of having the midseason yard sale, Florida is shopping, in this case capitalizing on the fact the Rangers are selling whatever isn't bolted down, dealing Urbina, trading Carl Everett, all but offering Juan Gonz?lez on eBay. Urbina led the American League in saves at the time of the trade and will be the setup man here for closer Braden Looper. That's a huge, immediate, essential upgrade. (Urbina, by the way, is the only athlete in North American major professional sports history with the initials U.U. He becomes the first Marlin, and only the sixth player in any of the four major pro sports' history, with a surname starting with U. Our only other active U-man is Panthers defenseman Igor Ulanov. Where else you gonna get info like that?) You could argue the Marlins gave up too much to get Urbina, parting with a top prospect in first baseman Adri?n Gonz?lez and two other minor-leaguers. But in and of itself, that is a positive change of philosophy. Suddenly, the Marlins are playing for today, for this season, not stockpiling ''prospects'' in some dubious effort to maybe be good someday while being lousy now. (As an occasionally wise man once said, prudence and patience are fine as management style, but sometimes urgency is nice, too.) So the Marlins traded a big-time prospect to get a couple of months of veteran bullpen help from a guy who might not be back next season. Maybe the trade wasn't entirely smart. But it was right. It was good. Just like maybe spending $10 million for a season of Iv?n Rodr?guez might not have been smart, but was right and good. An effort. A franchise trying to make an impact now and win back fans now. Likewise, trading Mike Lowell this month might have made fiscal sense, but the club knew better. So the Marlins kept their best and most popular hitter. Look at what else has happened lately. The managerial change seemed dubious. Jack McKeon, hauled out of involuntary retirement at 72, was a move easy to lampoon. But something about it has worked. McKeon brought a spark that caught. And the winning has been his fountain of youth. The guy feels 70 again! Attendance is up 33 percent over last season, biggest goose in the majors, including 30,634 for the last home game. Local TV ratings on Fox Sports Net are up 15 percent, countering a national trend of decreased numbers for sports on the tube. High-kicking rookie pitcher Dontrelle Willis is fashioning So Fla's most exciting pro debut since Dan Marino in 1983, selected after all (as he should have been) for Tuesday's All-Star Game. Enthusiasm in the clubhouse is real, too. Before Saturday's game at Montreal, players avidly watched on TVs and cheered for the Mets over the Phillies, the team they are chasing for the wild card. Overriding it all -- separate, yet intertwined -- is the news the Marlins and city of Miami might agree on shared funding for a new domed stadium downtown, bolstering the club's long-term future as surely as Urbina bolsters the short-term relief. Feeling good about the Marlins is pretty easy right now. If you don't . . . consider the possibility you might be trying too hard not to.
July 13, 200322 yr I just read that myself, I personally like Greg Cote even though he has bashed the Marlins sometimes. But then again, which media person hasn't?
July 13, 200322 yr Cote is just pouring on the good stuff here. He speaks the truth, the moves aren't fiscally smart, but it will let you win.
July 13, 200322 yr People in Detroit are baseball drones, even though they hate the Comerica Theme Park as they call it, they love baseball and the tigers so much they go anyway.
July 13, 200322 yr Cote has been a breath of fresh air lately in the South Florida media, IMO. Agreed. All I ask is for objectivity. He may rag on the team when they deserve it, but he also praises them when they deserve it.
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