Miami Marlins owner Jeffrey Loria sold a painting that cost more than any one player on the team's roster.
In fact, it cost slightly less than the entire Marlins roster combined.
Loria sold the painting for a cool $32 million.
The 2013 Marlins roster comes in at a combined $39 million.
¡LO VISTE!
Christie's in New York recently held an art auction, and dealing art is Loria's area of expertise. Well, that and destroying baseball franchises and screwing over baseball fans and their cities.
The painting, Diego en chemise ecossaise by Alberto Giacometti, was reportedly worth about $50 million, but Loria was able to fetch "only" $32.6 million for it.
Still, that's not too shabby, seeing how this was a record amount for a Giacometti.
And that's all fine and well. Loria is a businessman, and he's an art dealer, and this is how he makes his scratch.
The problem with all this is, of course, that one painting by an expressionist Swiss artist who's been dead since 1966 costs slightly less than the entire roster of his professional baseball team. The one he threatened to move to San Antonio unless Miami-Dade's taxpayers bought him a snazzy new ballpark. The one he keeps dismantling for "financial" reasons.
"It's par for the course with this guy," ESPN personality Jorge Sedano tells New Times of Loria's latest sale. "Should we be surprised by anything he does?"
Yeah, probably not.
Loria has always been a slime (as baseball fans in Montreal tried to warn us about!). But, ever since the truth about Marlins Park was revealed, and then the subsequent fire sale by the team last year, the man has become a pariah.
Not only did Loria go back on his word and trade away some of the Marlins best players -- among then reigning AL MVP Miguel Cabrera, Hanley Ramirez, and Anibal Sanchez, all ballplayers who helped their respective teams reach the League Championship Series -- he also had the gonads to threaten to sue a couple of Marlins season ticket holders who complained to the team after their front-row view of a game was with a billboard.
Sedano, who hosts Sedano and Stink on ESPN Radio, says that he gets that Loria is a businessman, doing businessman things. But that he needs to stop hosing Marlins fans with his insufferableness.
"I understand if he's going to treat the team like a business, then he should," Sedano says.
"But don't blow it up and then lie to the fans. Most owners treat their teams like a hobby, with passion. And that passion is seen when they spend what they need to spend to better their ballclubs. This guy is like George Steinbrenner on food stamps."
Sedano rightfully points to Loria's stubborn, laughable insistence that he knows baseball. For years, Loria has pointed out how Ivan Rodgriguez, who came to the Marlins in 2003 at the end of his career and was part of the World Series winning team, is proof that he knows baseball.
Loria got crazy luck with Rodriguez. Also, that was a decade ago. Since then, he's gotten rid of talent more than he's acquired it. And his go-to explanation remains that the team simply can't compete with other teams because of finances.
Then he goes and sells a painting that could literately buy him a bullpen and keep Giancarlo Stanton in Miami long-term.
"I get it; he's an art dealer," Sedano says. "I just feel bad for that organization. They've got good people working for that team. And the fan base deserves so much better. Yet they're stuck with this guy."
Jorge Sedano just doesn't appreciate fine art!
Now let's all go sell these Stanton jerseys at a garage sale before he gets traded to the Nationals.
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