Saturday, June 21, 2003

The Flagrant Fan is in sunny Florida. I don't know why I do everything the opposite of everyone else. I go to Florida in the summer and freeze to death in Maine in the winter. Strange. To top it off, I'm at my mom's place for a week and she's 76 with an old Gateway with Windows 95 and a dialup modem. I feel like I've gone back twenty years. It's funny how spoiled we get.

The big news in Florida is the debut of Miguel Cabrera, the Marlins' 20 year old phenom whose first hit was a walk off homerun against the Devil Rays last night. Granted, he was only 1 for 5 on the night, but still, what a way to start your career.

Cabrera is the Marlins' best prospect and was hitting .365 in the minors. He is also a third baseman which leads all the Florida papers down here to speculate that Cabrera will take over for Mike Lowell when Lowell is traded. Cabrera played left field last night and played it flawlessly.

I would hate to see Lowell traded. He is the franchise player and it would be similar to Kansas City trading Mike Sweeney. Both are fan favorites and in cities struggling to recover their fan base, it seems stupid to trade them away.

The Marlins have already done that once when they traded Jeff Conine to Baltimore. Conine was a fixture down here and a big fan favorite. He has proved to be the same in Baltimore. It hurts a franchise beyond repair when such moves are made for the money element. It says to the fans that the owners don't care about the fans and who they like to root for.

Lowell has been an inspirational story from the beginning with his testicular cancer and the battle he won just playing in the major leagues. Now he is a star with 21 homers and 60 RBI. The Marlins should keep him and continue to play Cabrera in Left.

The other big story down here is Dontrelle Willis, their rookie Vida Blue-like pitcher. Willis is now 6-1 with a 2.65 ERA along with 51 strikeouts in 51 plus innings.

The Vida Blue comparison comes from the fact that the throws from the left side and has the same high leg kick that Blue was famous for. In a nice story, Blue, who works for Giants, said he's like to meet Willis and Willis is very excited about that prospect.

Willis seems to be a great kid and also seems to have a great future ahead of him.

That's all from Florida. I have to...umm...go swim in a pool now. What a bummer huh?

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