Like it or not, but Loria has the last laugh

He may end up in the history books as one of the worst owners in Major League Baseball: Jeffrey Loria, soon, former owner of the Miami Marlins. An owner that hijacked and blackmailed a city into paying 80% of the costs of a ballpark. A former owner who hijacked a Canadian team and was responsible for the demise of it.

Jeffrey Loria. Art dealer who got into baseball as he bought the AAA Oklahoma City 89ers in 1989. After the team won the pennant of the American Association in 1992, he sold the team in 1993 and started looking for an MLB club to buy. Eventually he ended up owning the Montreal Expos after buying a 24% share in the club in 1999. Eventually, he got hold of 93% of e team shares.

Right from the start, Loria started to ask for a new ballpark since he claimed he was losing money while the team was playing in Olympic Stadium. But the city of Montreal was not willing to pay for a new ballpark. In their eyes, there were more important things to spend money on. And that is where the blackmail started. He threatened to leave the city. He traded his best players because they were “too expensive”.  As the teams that he fielded became crappier, the fans stayed away. And of course Loria blamed Olympic Stadium for it.

To make a long story short, we all know how that ended. Loria sold the team to Major League Baseball, with the money he got, he bought the Miami Marlins for “only” $153.8 million and the Expos were moved to Washington DC to become the Nationals.

As soon as Loria became the owner of the Florida Marlins, he started to use the same tactics like he did before in Montreal. He claimed that Dolphin Stadium wasn’t fit for baseball and fans stayed away because of that. He threatened to move the team and traded his best players to slash the payroll. At one point the Marlins’ payroll was only $20 million when the average payroll was $80.  You may guess it, thanks to shipping the best players away, the fans stayed away. There were games when only 400 paying fans were in the stands. And once again he blamed the ballpark for it.

Loria kept claiming he had no money to buy high priced players. But eventually, after he got what he asked for, a new state of the art ballpark, he had the money to buy big name players all of a sudden. One of the high prices players he signed was Mark Buehrle. He signed him to a long term deal and assured Buehrle that he was committed to keep him in Miami. Once again Loria proved he was not trustworthy at all as he traded Buehrle to the Toronto Blue Jays after just one season….

If that would have been his only sin, one could have turned a blind eye easily. But he pocketed the money he received from the revenue sharing instead of spending it on the team. He lured Miami Dade County into a stadium deal in which the county had to pay 80% of the construction cost and in which he would get ALL the money the amneties and parking fees brought in. In a mind boggling move, he appointed his general manager as the manager and fired him after the season because of the bad results.

So how can someone buy a team for $1.2 billion, when the team is outright crappy? Well, despite the fact the Marlins were one of the worst drawing teams in MLB, the team still managed to make a profit thanks to the revenue sharing. So even when the club fielded some shitty teams, it still managed to make money even when the owner did not care about winning. Even when the owner was alienating the few fans the club has.

How much I loathe Loria for all he has done in the past three decades, I must admit he is a shrewd business man. Could anyone else buy a team for $153.8 million and sell it for an amount about an eightfold of the amount he bought it for and which is twice as much as the $675 million Forbes Magazine is valuing the club for? Likely not.

As I wrote a couple of years ago: Loria is a disgrace for the game of baseball. He may be the most hated man in baseball, but by selling the Marlins at such a big profit, he will have the last laugh.