Miami Marlins Need Their Own Dwyane Wade
Yesterday was a dark day for South Florida sports.
Basketball would be my third favorite sport, yet focusing on anything else but the loss of No. 3 is proving particularly difficult. Thirteen years is a long time, an eternity really in the free-agent-frenzy driven sports world most of us have grown up in. Staying in one place is a rarity, and given the decade of glory the Miami Heat built mostly upon the shoulders of free agent muscle, perhaps it was naive to believe that Dwyane Wade was going to follow the path of Kobe Bryant and Derek Jeter.
Or, if you prefer, and one friend has already commented on the irony of Wade’s thirteen year tenure, the path of South Florida and NFL legend Daniel Constantine Marino.
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Marino has been on my mind a lot since hearing the news late Wednesday night. For his forced retirement has to be the comparison, right? My mind was churning through the seasons, across all four franchises, looking for the last time sports made me feel this hollow. Zach Thomas, left unsigned and eligible to be signed by the Dallas Cowboys after twelve years of anchoring the middle for the Dolphins? Not quite- the skills were fading, and health had become such a concern that he honestly should have retired instead of playing out that final Dallas season. Jason Taylor? Yea, he became a Jet, and even moonlighted as a Redskin once, but he still played thirteen (there it is again) seasons in South Florida, and walked away from the game on his terms.
“The Dan thing”, as second worst coach in Dolphins history Dave Wannstedt referred to it, ended poorly though. Just the way this has. A star, the star, told there wasn’t a place for him essentially, and that if he wanted to keep playing, he’d have to come in and compete just to start. Or just play somewhere else. At 15 years old, I was ready to either blow my inconsequential savings on season tickets to watch his final campaign, or become the world’s biggest Minnesota Vikings fan if he did go ahead and sign their offer. And when they played Miami in Week 2, I’d be the one running around Miami all clad in purple.
Live Feed class=inline-text id=inline-text-8Yanks Go Yard
Which is where I’m at this time as well. If I learned nothing else yesterday, it’s that there will be eight games over the next two seasons where I won’t be rooting for the only basketball team I’ve ever cared about enough to cheer for.
But then, along with realizing that I clearly still have unresolved issues about something pointless that happened almost seventeen years ago, I was also struck by the fact that Miami Marlins fans have never come to close to feeling this kind of connection to one of their own.
And if this franchise is going to gain any kind of traction, any kind of real staying power, they need to.
Next: Will Big G Be A #FishLifer
Yes, after a page of lamenting the loss of Dwyane Wade, we’ve segued back to Marlins baseball.
Fans might have heard of one or two firesales that have tarnished the organization over the years, but many of the key pieces moved in those transactions barely had time to settle in to the community before departing. Kevin Brown played as many seasons as Moises Alou and Bobby Bonilla combined, not exactly #FishLifers. Jose Reyes didn’t even finish 2012, sticking around less than that one season of Ivan Rodriguez. Miguel Cabrera and Dontrelle Willis? Beloved yes, but doubling up either of their Marlins careers would still leave you three short of Wade territory.
Last year’s All-Star Game introduced the fan shtick of selecting a Franchise Four, and saw Gary Sheffield, Giancarlo Stanton, Jeff Conine, and Mike Lowell given the nod as the Marlins representatives. The fact that Sheffield, No. 17 all-time in games played for the club, made the list speaks volumes about the lack of real bonding allowed to take root between fans and the Fish. Conine and Lowell both are in the Top 3 in the games played department, with Niner being one of just two players to have logged 1000 games in teal/black/grey/orange.
Stanton, aka The Artist Formerly Known As Mike, has a real chance to be the first Marlins player to make that Wade/Marino level connection.
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Once 2016 comes to a close, he’ll have done something only a handful of Marlins have ever done: play a full seven seasons in Miami. Games played leader Luis Castillo, Conine, Lowell, Alex Gonzalez, and Ricky Nolasco. That’s it.
Talented players all, but never the guy who was going the win the game himself, Lowell’s first half of 2003 excluded. None of them Marino. None of them Wade.
Stanton though is a game-changing talent, the kind that a team can build upon and fans can rally around. By the time he can even opt out of his contract, he’ll be an eleven year vet, miles past Castillo if he stay’s even moderately healthy. Inarguably the face of the organization.
To etch his face in South Florida’s Mount Rushmore, Stanton needs a mixture of personal durability and team success. The slugger has missed a lot of time, with inopportune injuries costing him everything from MVP honors, to All-Star starts, to Home Run Derby appearances. Possibly even a playoff berth if you really believed in that 2014 club. The fans love him, but they don’t trust him to stay healthy. A few healthy seasons though, and he’s right back on track for all the gaudy projections that earned him his massive contract.
They’ve also, for all his talent, never really seen him succeed. We mentioned Pudge’s one season here earlier; that’s one more winning season than Stanton has. He’s never won, the high water mark coming in his rookie year with the 2010 club that won 80 games. You need only look to Marino to know that he doesn’t need to win a championship; only Pat Riley and Miami Hurricanes fans expect titles every year. But you do need to win some, be competitive, allow fans a chance to hope. There’s too much to do, and too little history, in this front-running town to support a perennial loser. This ain’t Chicago.
The Marlins need to start winning, and need Stanton to be the face of it. It needn’t be championships. Three consecutive winning seasons, and three years of Big G hitting 40 plus HRs would do more for this franchise than a single deep playoff run.
The Marlins desperately need that face to at least be in the ballpark of being as beloved as the other Miami eminences we’ve mentioned. One day, he could be the next D-Wade. But right now, he’s basically Rony Seikaly.