Miami Marlins Continue to Thrive in the 'Hate' Part of their Love/Hate Relationship With Fans

The Miami Marlins have what could be called a love/hate relationship with its fan base. For the most part the folks in South Beach love to hate their baseball team. They've shown that so far this season by not being too excited to by season tickets and then by simply not coming to games (Marlins are 26th with just under 19K a game).

Their feelings have become even more painfully clear thanks to a contest the team is running--an ultimate fan contest.

It is not an unusual move for a team to hold such a contest. Most of them do. Normally the chance to win a free trip to New York City would be enough for even non-baseball fans to becoeme interested.

Not in Miami.

The contest has illicited some rather interesting and unflattering responses.

"I would rather have root canal surgery than watch the Marlins."

"I'd rather go to an Astros game."

"I'll honestly be suprised if the Marlins win more games then the Heat."

"Please let me choose the game to watch. If I have to watch the Marlins I would feel like I had lost."

"you guys have no fans."

"do I get to hide in shame in this cave?"

"The Marlins are even trading their fans to New York?"

Oh boy.

I get what the team is trying to do. They want to conduct business as usual, but the problem is that the way they have done business over the last year has not been very smart.

You don't get the city to finance your stadium and then sell off all the talent for cheap. If anything, they should have tried to make a few other moves in order to get the team into the win column a little more often.

Instead the Marlins illustrious ownership is acting as if they believe that Major League was a documentary rather than fiction, and are trying to tank it in attendance so the team can move at the end of the year.

Then again, it would make the push to get the new stadium a pretty odd move. Or maybe that's the twist! Maybe there is bad blood between Jeffrey Loria and the City and this is his way of getting back at them!

There might be hope for this move just yet!

As long as the Marlins don't rally like the Indians did in Major League and get a cardboard cut out of Loria in a thong: