Tuesday afternoon, the fight to get the Florida Marlins a baseball only stadium cleared a major hurdle. The Marlins have long been fighting to get their own place to call home and solidify their future in South Florida. The Marlins do have a $515 million, 37,000 seat, baseball only stadium plan all put together. This new stadium is planned to be placed on the sight of the old Orange Bowl in Little Havana. The Marlins have long sought this retractable roof stadium to help avoid the many humid days and rainy nights that Miami experiences.

The new ballpark is part of a greater project by the government to revitalize the Little Havana area, a fact that the government has pushed in its shared battle with the Marlins to get this stadium approved and under construction. Tuesday judge Jeri Beth Cohen ruled that the Marlins/Government plan meets the key “public purpose” test. This is a crucial step because the 7 lawsuits filed against the Marlins/Government claim that the use of this land for this purpose, and with taxpayer money, does not meet any public good.

While the majority of the Marlins ballpark is being paid for with taxpayer money, in this case it is not a bad thing. Normally we see owners hold cities hostage with threats of “buy me a new stadium or I’ll take my team somewhere that will”. However, with the University of Miami Hurricane football team now playing up at Dolphin Stadium, it was inevitbale that the site of the Orange Bowl would eventually have been transformed using public money in the interest of “revitalizing” the area. Is it really a bad thing that the Marlins should get to profit in the process? The government has a roughly $3 billion revitalization plan for the area, so in the grand scheme of things, the percentage of that being devoted to a new stadium is small.

Major League Baseball is full of examples where teams have requested new stadiums with the promise of signing new players and putting a winner on the field. Unfortunately those examples never work out. The Pittsburgh Pirates and Washington Nationals are the two most recent examples. Pittsburgh citizens forked over the cash for PNC Park, and the Pirates still stink. The Nationals just opened their new stadium this season, and we all know how “good” they are. The Marlins on the other hand have already showed they are willing, with the promise of this new park on the horizon, to spend some cash. Owner Jeffrey Loria (and by no means am I taking his side here, he’s an example of a terrible owner) gave Hanley Ramirez $60 million over the next 7 years to remain in Miami. Now that he has seen judgement fall in his favor for the new stadium, one can only hope he will step up and keep some other key players, and perhaps even ADD players this offseason instead of hosting another fire sale of Marlin talent.

Often in life we have to look to minor actions to find victory. With the Florida Marlins slumping horribly in August, finishing the month below .500 and not winning two games in a row at all during the month, you need to look to the small things for victory. On the next to last day of the month, New York Mets’ pitcher Mike Pelfrey provided the Marlins a victory with some puzzling, if not all together stupid remarks.

During a 4-3 loss to the Marlins on August 30th, Pelfrey plunked Marlins’ outfielder Cody Ross with 2 strikes against him. Normally one of two things happens, the benches clear as the plunked player charges the mound and the opposing teams clear the benches in a show of force, or the plunked player calmly takes his base. Pelfrey decided to stoke the flames a little and comment that he “did Ross a favor” by plunking him with 2 strikes against him.

Baseball is full of guys that run their mouth, but this event is quite unusual. Typically you see experienced and/or All Star caliber players run their mouths to the media about other teams and/or players. Pelfrey is none of these things. In his 3rd season in the majors, Pelfrey is in his first season in which he has started all the games he’s appeared in, and while he has a decent record at 13-8, his career record is 18-17 with a 4.34 ERA, far from All Star. To top it off, Pelfrey is 0-3 against the Marlins this season in 4 starts (his one no decision was still a loss for the Mets) and has an ERA of 7.91, so he really has no standing to talk smack about the Marlins in general. As for Ross, he is 3-9 with a double, triple, and 3 RBIs against Pelfrey. It would appear to me that Ross is in no need of “charity” bases from Pelfrey, he’s more than capable of taking them from him on his own.

Pelfrey should perhaps wait a few more years, make sure he is going to actually become something in the MLB before he goes running his mouth about a team and player that have his number this season. He does himself no favors either as the Marlins will no doubt eagerly anticipate their next meeting with Pelfrey.

Crushed.

Again.

Everywhere from the standings to the spirit.

For the second cruel night in a row, the Marlins walked off the field with heads hung as the jubilant Mets won in the final at-bat, all but extinguishing what was left of Florida’s season. If the Marlins win all 10 remaining games, a virtual impossibility given that this team hasn’t won a series since June, it would still need the surging Astros to go 6-4 to tie them.

Then Dan Le Batard, continues with:

That would mean starting over, which nobody in South Florida wants to hear, but you are going to care only enough to complain? It isn’t like there were swaying, paying thousands at the ballpark all season rewarding Marlins management for again doing all it could to give us a season’s worth of contending.

Frankly, we don’t deserve Delgado, A.J. Burnett nor this team that keeps giving us September and October thrills. Last in the league in attendance? There isn’t another baseball town in North America, not one, that would draw this poorly for pennant-race games.

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–When hes right, hes right.