Wayne Huizenga expressed regrets about selling off the 1997 World Championship so early.
Outgoing Dolphins majority owner H. Wayne Huizenga bid an emotional farewell to his favorite franchise Tuesday, but for the first time admitted he might have broke up the Marlins a year too soon after they won the 1997 World Series.
"We lost 34 million dollars the year we won the World Series and I just said, 'You know what? I'm not going to do that,'" Huizenga said at Dolphins headquarters when asked if he had any regrets about dismantling the Marlins in the aftermath of their World Series triumph over the Indians.
"If I had to do it all over again I'd say, 'OK, we'll go one more year. I'm telling you right now at the end of this year I'm out of here.' That's what I would've done, but that's in hindsight. There's nothing you could do about it. The decision was made and we made it."
In other words, he would have waited until after the 1998 season to start the fire sale. Yeah, that would have been better.
The truth is Huizenga was looking to sell the team and he wanted to get the labor cost as low as possible to make it attractive to a buyer. While in the meantime keep getting ridiculous payments for the stadium from a simply horrible lease.
Maybe waiting until after the 1998 season would've made him more money, whether that would've been the case, I don't know, but the results would've been the same on the fan base -- just a year later.
I'm sorry if I find no contrition in his statements, maybe you do, but his ownership of the Marlins was always about how much money he could make. When teams are "losing" money, that really isn't a major concern as long as they are "losing" less than the franchise appreciates.
I'm not against an owner making money, I'm all for it, as I am the players sharing in the increase of income. I mean really, I have never gone to a game in hopes of the seeing the owner sitting in his luxury box.
But something about Huizenga's statement seems a bit disingenuous to me. Perhaps I'm being too harsh.