Just a year after receiving an enormous amount of public funding to build a new stadium in Little Cuba, and spending lavishly on MLB free agents such as Jose Reyes, the Marlins completed a trade with the Blue Jays yesterday that sent any remaining members of the team making big salaries away to Toronto, in exchange for mediocre players and cheap deals. Needless to say, their fans aren’t so pleased.
Phil Latzman, a senior anchor and host with our affiliate station WLRN in South Florida, explains.
“We can’t get voting or baseball right here in South Florida apparently,” Latzman jokes. The new, state of the art stadium was mostly paid for by tax payer funds. “So a lot of people are miffed – they did not have good attendance in their first year in that new ballpark, and now it looks like they’re having another fire sale.”
And there couldn’t be worse timing, Latzman says. This is the time of year when fans are meant to renew their season tickets, and many people will not be interested in seeing the team without these key players. “It’s just appalling, I think, to any fan down here, to have to go through this again.”