If They Don't Win It's a Shame: The Year the Marlins Bought the World Series [Hardcover]

Dave Rosenbaum (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1998

Not since the publication of "Ball Four" has a book captured the reality of baseball like this one. "If They Don't Win It's a Shame" takes readers behind the scenes, into the clubhouse, onto the field, and into the grandstands to explore the attitudes and behaviors, trials and tribulations, of the players, fans, managers, and front office personnel caught in the heat of a pennant race. Photos .

Editorial Reviews

From Kirkus Reviews

Freelance sportswriter Rosenbaum offers a breezy look at possibly the least successful champions in team sports history. Despite being in a large media market with a baseball-mad fan base, the refuse-hauling and video-rental tyro Wayne Huizenga's Miami-based Florida Marlins had trouble drawing and sustaining interest. Prior to the '97 season, Huizenga bet the farm, spending $89 million in contracts to get the best team money could buy. Huizenga signed a manager, Jim Leyland, who led teams to three division titles in the early '90s; some hefty bats, problem child Bobby Bonilla, and the quiet superstar, Moises Alou; and a couple of good arms, including Livn Hernndez and Alex Fernndez, to round out an already strong pitching staff. Standing in the way of the Marlins success were a few obstacles: first, the Atlanta Braves, National League champions for four of the five previous years. The second, and to Huizenga the most formidable, was Pro Player stadium, a venue woefully ill-suited to the realities of baseball in the late '90s. Simply put, the stadium was pitifully short of amenities such as deluxe concessionaires and luxury boxes that were deemed essential to garnering corporate support. Perhaps most damning of all, however, was the lack of a roofa must for keeping southern Florida's summer rains out. By building his team, he hoped to bring in fans, and in turn obtain financing for the new baseball stadium that could make the Marlins profitable (writes the author, ``If they come, maybe they'll build it''). During the season, the Marlins battled to a wildcard playoff spot, getting leadership from the unlikeliest places, notably from Bonilla. Despite finally vanquishing the Braves, winning the World Series, and being embraced by Miami's diverse communities, the Marlins still finished millions of dollars in the red (and no closer to a new stadium), thus necessitating a fire sale to dump star player salaries. An unflinching primer of sports economics and its new definitions of success. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 314 pages
• Publisher: Mcgregor Hill Pub; 1st ed edition (March 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0965384683
• ISBN-13: 978-0965384681
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #423,075 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Lighten Up, October 24, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: If They Don't Win It's a Shame: The Year the Marlins Bought the World Series (Hardcover)

At first, I read the comments that the Marlin fans had written and I hesitated to buy this book. But it was funny, I'm not going to lie about it. I mean, they don't say this stuff in the morning paper. This is not a suck-up view. This is uncensored, the real stuff. The Moises Alou and the Gregg Zaun bits made me laugh like crazy. Most of the guys aren't nice guys. They don't care about you fans. I just feel sorry that this team broke up. It was a classic World Series, and this book is as in-depth as you're going to get. I reccomend it.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Those Feisty Marlins, What a Baseball Team!, January 26, 2006

By 

Roger D. Launius "Historian" (Washington, D.C., United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: If They Don't Win It's a Shame: The Year the Marlins Bought the World Series (Hardcover)

In 1997 the Florida Marlins major league baseball (MLB) team came out of nowhere to win 92 games, losing 70, and finish second in the National League East. But they made the playoffs as a wildcard team, beat the San Francisco Giants and Atlanta Braves in the playoffs, and then took the World Series from the Cleveland Indians in seven exciting games. The last of those World Series games went twelve innings before Marlins shortstop Edgar Renteria hit an RBI single to score second baseman Craig Counsell. The Marlins' success in 1997 stunned me, and until Renteria's hit I thought the Indians would probably win the series (the Indians were a sentimental favorite since they had not won a World Series since the days of Bill Veeck in 1948). That Marlins victory signaled several important firsts. The Marlins were an expansion team, playing their first season in 1993 and only four years later winning the World Series. No team in MLB history had risen to championship status so quickly. They were the first Wild Card team in MLB history to win the Series. They were also a "so-called" small market team, which MLB leaders had been complaining for years could not compete successfully in the post-free agent world because of a lack of revenue. Also, unlike the Indians, they did not have a new state-of-the-art stadium, and therefore no increased revenue coming from a new venue. The Miami area, where the Marlins played, could not be considered a baseball haven, and the football Dolphins were always the darlings of the city.

But the Marlin's beat the odds in 1997 and won it all. Dave Rosenbaum's day-by-day account of this remarkable season is fun to read but too often not insightful. The subtitle says pretty much what the conventional wisdom is about the Marlins' success. As Rosenbaum demonstrates, the Marlins owner, Wayne Huizinga, invested heavily in the team to stock it with both established stars such as Bobby Bonilla, Gary Sheffield, Kevin Brown, Al Leiter, and Moises Alou, and young and talented players such as Edgar Renteria, Livon Hernandez, and Luis Castillo. He also brought in Jim Leyland to manage the team, a successful field leader who had taken the Pittsburgh Pirates to the playoffs in 1990, 1991, and 1992.

Huizinga spent a reported $89 million in player salaries that year. It was a lot of money for 1997, although it doesn't seem so high compared to current MLB franchise payrolls. Accordingly, Huizinga was criticized for "buying the World Series," a characterization that was no more appropriate in this case than in the New York Yankees dynasties of any time when their payrolls were much larger than most other teams. Certainly, no one said the Boston Red Sox bought the World Series in 2004 when they finally won it with a $127 million payroll, $57 million shy of the New York Yankees but still $15 million higher than any other MLB franchise. What made Huizinga different, perhaps, was his crass approach to that championship season. He announced that it was his intention to win it all, bringing in a lot of fans and building support for a new baseball-only stadium that he hoped would make the Marlins profitable in the long term. When this did not prove out, no sooner did the team succeed than Huizinga began a fire sale of stars, shedding payroll and allowing the Marlins' 1998 edition to finish last in the National League East with a 54-108 record. By 2000 only three players remained from the World Championship team and by 2002 the Marlins were rumored as one of the MLB teams being considered for "contraction," which would have been too bad, because in 2003 the team won its second World Series.

Dave Rosenbaum, a reporter who covered the Marlins in 1997, tells in excruciating detail the story of the 1998 "Cinderella" season and how it unfolded. He gives an insider account, in many respects from the level of the clubhouse. It is a good read--long on narrative but short on analysis--but worth the time.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Who steals this book steals trash, to paraphrase Othello., May 21, 1998

By 

A Customer - See all my reviews

This review is from: If They Don't Win It's a Shame: The Year the Marlins Bought the World Series (Hardcover)

The Marlins made a mistake when they gave Rosenbaum more or less complete access into their lives and locker room. He quickly took a dislike to this team (he doesn't seem to like baseball much either), and set about gathering everything he could to put the players, coaches, managers and owners in the worst possible light. Field manager Jim Leyland comes up for the most cheap shots, but everyone gets his share sooner or later. The "bite me" statement Kevin Brown foolishly made to newsmen gets repeated countless times, for instance. Anyone with a shadow companion could be made to look bad in similar fashion; all that shadow has to do is take the negative out of context and offer it as evidence of incompetence. I am not arguing with the factual information in the book, and anyone who truly cared about the Marlins of '97 is likely to find the book interesting because no other book will offer the wealth of detail it does. But we will have to look elsewhere to discover how and why this team took the World Series, because the team portrayed in this book would have been incapable of it. Very disappointing overall, and Rosenbaum's constant sarcasm is particularly unwelcome.