NEW YORK -- They gathered in the final dogpile of the baseball season and passed the World Series trophy around a champagne-soaked clubhouse much like six years earlier, but this wasn't 1997 all over again for the Florida Marlins.
Better yet for Marlins fans, this doesn't look like it will be 1998 all over again.
In '97, the Marlins went out and acquired several big-time players for one specific purpose: to win the World Series. But once they did, the Wayne Huizenga ownership went and cast the veteran core of talent to all points of the baseball globe -- Kevin Brown to San Diego, Gary Sheffield to the Dodgers, Moises Alou to Houston, Al Leiter to the Mets, and the list goes on.
It was a freefall from the World Series to a 108-loss season in 1998, a devastating blow from which South Florida baseball is only now recovering, thanks to the surprising uprising of the Marlins this October.
While still soaking in the champagne of '03, current owner Jeffrey Loria made it sound like 2004 will be much different than 1998.
"We're going to sit down and do all the things we have to do to address all that after the season, but right now I just want to enjoy this," Loria said. "I'll say this: The fans of South Florida have a lot of great baseball to look forward to."
Exactly how the Marlins get there is what's up in the air at this point.
Keeping this team together would be a monumental task, considering there are 15 arbitration-eligible players -- including corner infielders Mike Lowell and Derrek Lee -- and nine free agents -- including Pudge Rodriguez and Luis Castillo -- among the players who spent time in Marlins uniforms this season. Only Jeff Conine and Juan Pierre are under contract for '04, but youngsters like Josh Beckett, Dontrelle Willis and Miguel Cabrera are under the team's control, still shy of their arbitration years.
"We have very good young players, and we have some challenges ahead with some arbitration-eligible players and some free agents," said GM Larry Beinfest, the toast of his profession after crafting this team into a World Series winner. "We're going to get to that. This year, we did not have multi-year deals, but we studied the players and that isn't a hard-and-fast philosophy.
"We'll look at everything in the next few days as things calm down and figure out how we'll get ready for '04."
It's going to be a serious juggling act for Loria, Beinfest and the rest of the Marlins' braintrust -- which should include manager Jack McKeon, who wants to come back but also wouldn't mind being paid something along the lines of what World Series-winning managers are paid.
Keeping it all together isn't a guarantee of success (see: 2002-2003 Angels). It's apparent there will be turnover in Florida, just not of the caliber of the fire sale following '97.
Right now, there are just too many moving parts to even guess how it'll turn out. Will they be able to sign Rodriguez back after he proved himself a highly marketable player with his one-year, $10 million deal with Florida? Can they keep the brilliant double-play combination of Castillo and shortstop Alex Gonzalez intact? How big a hit can they take on Lowell and Lee, and can they even risk going to arbitration with either one?
As for the youngsters, is this the time to pull the trick Oakland has done and Cleveland before the A's by signing young players like Series MVP Beckett through their arbitration years, so at least they can control their budget in coming years?
Keeping everybody just isn't going to happen. For the moment, just keeping the philosophy that got them here and building on it is the goal.
"The way you do it is with pitching," Beinfest said in the victorious clubhouse Saturday night. "That's the solid philosophy we have. It was on display tonight (with Beckett's shutout) and in the whole run to the postseason. This team took off in June when we started to pitch."
With that strong base of pitching -- in particular, a young and deep rotation that's the envy of everyone outside of Oakland -- combined with a strong defense and a twist of speed, such a rare commodity these days, the Marlins turned the baseball world on its ear this October.
And for eight glorious postseason games and a run of regular-season battles with the Wild Card berth on the line, the fans in South Florida came out in droves again, pushing Pro Player Stadium's huge capacity time and time again. But let's not forget that they drew only 37,137 for Opening Day and only 10,534 for the second home game. The fever only caught on down the stretch of what would be a successful playoff run.
Keeping the fans coming will have to mean keeping the team competitive and exciting. The Marlins have the foundation to do that, but it'll take a busy winter of maneuvering to put all the pieces together.
Marlins fans were fooled once before, and even if it was a different regime the sting remained for years.
At least now it looks like the Marlins are in a spot where their fans won't have to be fooled again.
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Now will you all finally shut the fuck up? I told you to wait and see!
