True story. I made a dinner reservation at Joe’s Stone Crab in 1979. I am still waiting for my table, but Florida is already a game up in the World Series.
They try, these Floridians, to make misery out of a hiccup. They tell stories about the bad old days, way back there before the Pentium chip, before Tickle Me Elmo and Tea Leoni. You know, ages ago, in Bill Clinton’s first term.
They remember how Wayne Huizenga, the owner, saved the very first batting-practice ball thrown in the very first spring training intrasquad game, wrestled shortstop Walt Weiss for it. Croutons are older than that ball.
The poor, long-suffering Marlins fan had to wait all the way until the fourth inning of the World Series opener Saturday night to get back-to-back home runs from Moises Alou and Charles Johnson.
Couldn’t relax until Robb Nen had whiffed Cleveland’s Jim Thome and Sandy Alomar a little more than three hours after rookie Livan Hernandez had thrown the first World Series pitch ever in Florida.
Three hours? The last Cubs victory in a World Series was 52 years ago. The minute waltz doesn’t go around as fast as these Marlins.
“It seems a lot longer than five years,” said Jeff Conine, here from the start. Spice Girls have been around longer than Conine.
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Conine recalls the Marlins had to wear name tags that first spring, just to get to know each other. Listen, the White Sox clubhouse could use name tags, a mug book and a master of ceremonies and they still wouldn’t know one another.
The Marlins finished 40 games worse than the Atlanta Braves that first year. The Braves are the team the Marlins just whipped to reach the World Series faster than any franchise.
“We just beat the best pitching staff in baseball,” Gary Sheffield said. “How can Cleveland’s be better than that?”
Indeed. The proof is a 7-4 victory that used up four Indians pitchers, including once-upon-a-time World Series hero Orel Hershiser. The Marlins treated Hershiser like a relic, being, as he is, nearly eight times as old as the Marlins. Hershiser was the MVP of a Series half a decade before the Marlins were born.
“To hit a three-run homer in the first World Series, against a pitcher like Orel,” Alou said, “there is no better feeling than that.”
Rene Lachemann, the first manager, gave way to John Boles, the second manager, who was succeeded by Jim Leyland, the third manager. This is not turnover, it is evolution. The Cubs have had three managers in one game.
Here history is a turn of the head, a blink of an eye, a short shrug, no matter how long the gown is used to cover it.
“We weren’t moving fast enough, I thought,” said Sheffield, who joined the team in the middle of their first season. “But they pulled me aside and said to be patient. And then they went out and got Bobby (Bonilla), Moises (Alou) and Alex (Fernandez), and now we can look back on that long path we took not so long ago.”
The walk from the garage to the tool shed is longer. A house fly can look back further than the Marlins.
All it took was money, more than $100 million altogether, most of it in the last year, spent on strangers, just so the Marlins would be exactly where they are.
A hippo has less cheek than the Marlins.
Rome was not built in a day, but the Marlins were. Not even cafeteria salads are put together faster than the Marlins.
“I brought experience here, more than anything else,” Leyland said.
Kamikazes are more experienced than the Marlins.
This is a pennant winner without the pain, a champion without the sorrow, a winner without the ache and three wins away from rapture. Sunburn stings far longer than following the Marlins.
This team is so fresh it takes a third-inning stretch. The Marlins can fit destiny into a lunch break.
“I’m not a big believer in destiny stuff,” Leyland said. “It’s more a big hit at the right time.”
And here they are. We’re talkin’ baseball. . . .
As John McEnroe might say, you can’t be world serious.