INSIDE BASEBALL
Not One of Smiley's People
by Mark Bechtel and Jeff Pearlman
Posted: Wed September 16, 1998
Marlins general manager Dave Dombrowski was scheduled to fly to
Los Angeles on Sept. 9, at which time, it was widely believed,
the Dodgers would offer him their general manager's job. But the
day before his trip Dombrowski instead re-upped with baseball's
worst team for another five years, at $1 million per season.
That the news came on the day Marlins president Don Smiley
dropped his ill-fated bid to buy the team from Wayne Huizenga was
no coincidence. After 14 months of trying to scrape together $165
million to meet Huizenga's original asking price, Smiley finally
resigned himself to the fact that he could not attract enough
investors. That left Boca Raton, Fla., commodities trader John
Henry—who had made a $150 million cash offer last month—to take
the team off Huizenga's hands, probably by the end of October.
Smiley had planned to keep the team's payroll at $14 million for
the next three years, slightly above its current level, but
Dombrowski had no desire to stick around such circumstances. But
Henry has said he will open his wallet to make the 1997 world
champions competitive again.
After getting assurances from Huizenga and Henry that a deal was
imminent, the decision was easy. "My wife and I love South
Florida," Dombrowski says. "We never wanted to leave. Now John is
committed to keeping the fans we have, to building a new stadium.
For me, there is hope again."
Issue date: September 21, 1998
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