Dave Zirin | The Nation

Jeffrey Loria should consider himself put on notice. The Miami Marlins owner needs to be arrested, prosecuted and placed behind bars so he can no longer feed upon the good will, tax dollars and public infrastructure of South Florida. Loria is the Ebola virus of sports owners, settling in different locations and leaving nothing behind except legions of cynical former fans. His latest sin, described as a “disgrace” and an “embarrassment” by the most mainstream of baseball writers, was yesterday’s shocking trade of star shortstop Jose Reyes, all-star pitchers Josh Johnson and Mark Buehrle, and others to the Toronto Blue Jays for basically a Lloyd Moseby rookie card and Dave Steib’s mustache trimmer. According to ESPN’s Buster Olney, the Marlins payroll in one off-season could drop by over 80 percent.

Bad trades happen of course, and salary dumps have become as much a part of baseball as tobacco stains on the dugout steps. But there is a much more nefarious machination at work. Reyes and Buehrle were brought in during the 2011 off-season as a way to sell tickets for the Marlins brand-new $600 million eyesore of a stadium, described by the Miami New Times as “a festering, silver-plated pustule, a grotesquely huge can opener, or just an obscene ode to wasted cash.”

If this were Loria’s own ugly baby of a stadium, that would be between him and his architect. The problem is that it was built with taxpayer money: $2.4 billion over the next forty years to be exact. The elected officials of cash-strapped Miami-Dade County took Loria’s word the team was going bankrupt and would cease to exist without a new ballpark. These claims of bankruptcy we now know were lies after the website Deadspin posted leaked financial documents that told a very different story. The deal was so shady, the lack of oversight so egregious that the Security and Exchange Commission has an ongoing investigation into how taxpayer money could be so blithely squandered. Last December, Neil DeMause quoted a Yahoo! Sports story that said, “While the subpoenas issued by the SEC do not explicitly detail the purpose of the investigation, the feds’ motives are evident: They want to understand how, exactly, a group of county commissioners agreed to fund 80 percent of the Marlins new stadium, which cost more than $600 million, without ever seeing the team’s financial records—and whether bribes had anything to do with it.”

San Francisco Giants pitcher Sergio Romo rides in a car during the baseball team’s World Series victory parade, Wednesday, October 31, 2012, in San Francisco. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)
 

In a trade that shocked the most snark-encrusted NBA observers, the Oklahoma City Thunder shipped its hellaciously talented, hirsute guard James Harden to the Houston Rockets for an assemblage of spare parts. Harden, the reigning sixth-man of the year, made up along with teammates Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook, the core of the defending Western conference champions. The Oklahoma City Thunder was the only legitimate team standing between the restocked Los Angeles Lakers and the NBA Finals. Perhaps age and chemistry will knock the Lakers aside, but absent that, their greatest threat just waved the white flag before opening day. This electric young team with title hopes just unilaterally disarmed because it claimed to be a poor small-market club unable to meet the contract demands of the 23-year-old star.

Immediately the cry went out across all media, old and new: small-market teams like Oklahoma City just can’t compete. As USA Today wrote, “The deal cuts to the heart of the plight of small- and mid-market teams such as the Thunder. Can they return all of their top players? Are they willing to have a payroll that surpasses the luxury tax and are they willing to pay the tax when they go over?”

Thunder management played the part of damaged small market suitor, with General Manager Sam Presti saying, “We wanted to sign James to an extension, but at the end of the day, these situations have to work for all those involved. Our ownership group again showed their commitment to the organization with several significant offers.” He also spoke mournfully of their need to have a “sustainable” model for developing the team. As Howard Beck wrote in the New York Times, “A system that forces a small-market wonder to give up a star player—to a team in a much larger market, no less—seems cruel and counterproductive.”

Imagine if in 2004 during the darkest days of the Iraq war, George W. Bush had called a press conference and said, “Wow. I have really screwed the pooch on this one and sure as heck can’t fix it. Well, fool me once… won’t get fooled again. I have therefore decided to call upon my predecessor, Bill Clinton, to clean this up. Have a nice day.” This would have meant more than a loss of prestige. Even Bill Kristol would call such a move the beginning of the end of Bush’s time in the White House.

That’s what just occurred in the corridors of power of the National Football League. Commissioner Roger Goodell has “recused himself” from hearing the appeals of four suspended current and former members of the New Orleans Saints charged with leading a “pay to injure” bounty scheme. Instead he’s appointed former Commissioner Paul Tagliabue to do it for him. The evidence behind the suspensions has been unraveling for some time and now the authority of the once almighty current commissioner is unraveling with it.

There is no sugarcoating the defeat this represents for Roger Goodell. Over seventeen years, Paul Tagliabue oversaw labor peace and a spirit of cooperation with the NFL Players Association. Of course, most owners therefore couldn’t stand him. Goodell was selected as an anti-Tagliabue, a person the owners wanted to centralize authority, streamline the player-discipline process and, above all else, reclaim revenue from the players’ pockets. This was all justified by selling the necessity of a stern father cracking down on “conduct unbecoming” the NFL. Unlike every other sports league, when Goodell issues a suspension, players cannot appeal to an independent arbitrator but only to the NFL commissioner himself. The prosecutor is also judge and jury. No checks. No balances. Roger Goodell is the law.