Market Price for Fish: Not So High
Forbes ranks Marlins the least valuable team in baseball...don't they know about the Mermaids?
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About as valuable as a year plundering Micronesia: these are your Marlins.
Getting a big tax return this year?
Working it as a Dollar Menunaire?
...Want a baseball team?
The Marlins, worth $277 million, are the least valuable team in baseball, according to the annual rankings just released by Forbes.com.
In fact, the Marlins are so invaluable that even an 8% increase couldn't leapfrog them over Pittsburgh ($288 million) or Kansas City ($314 million) -- likely the only category in which Kansas City bests Miami that isn't "barbecue." Even the dinky upstart Tampa Bay Rays are worth over $320 million, a bigger sting than their mascot.
Oh, hold us! Doesn't Forbes know about the Marlins' Mermaids?
On the bright side, $277 million is the exact gross domestic product of the Federated States of Micronesia, which is likely a lot harder to oversee -- though one might get a new stadium approved much faster there by simply waving a machete and asking for it (hmmmm....perhaps not so different than South Florida after all).
But Marlins owner Jeffrey Loria probably isn't complaining - he ponied up the $23 million difference when baseball bought back his Montreal Expos and John Henry sold him the Marlins, and the franchise has since received more money from the league's revenue redistribution system than he paid for the team. Essentially, Loria got the team for free, and it's now worth almost twice what he paid for it seven years ago.
When their fancy new stadium is ready, the Marlins just might get a boost big enough to propel them out of the major league bargain bin. But they'll never catch the top dogs: the New York Yankees are the still the most valuable franchise, and with the addition of their new stadium, the Bronx Bombers are worth -- take a deep breath -- $1.5 billion dollars.
Guess our mothers were wrong: evil does pay.
Janie Campbell is a Florida sports fan who's sitting here imagining $277 million dollars' worth of ballpark hotdogs (and wanting to eat it). Her work has appeared in irreverent sports sites around the Internet.
