The Pulp Curse is on the Marlins. It was a mere four days ago that I wrote about how exciting the young team has been and predicted they'd make a strong run for the wild card. Since then, they've been swept by Dodgers and the management has publicly imploded. Kevin Baxter clues us in on the team's turmoil in todays Miami Herald. The Sun-Sentinel's Mike Berardino also adds intriguing info on the argument, apparently inspired by Robert DeNiro, between Girardi and and team owner Jeffrey Loria after a questionable called third strike on a Marlin Sunday:
"It was like a back-and-forth, 'You talking to me?' type of deal," the second source said. "It was, 'Yeah, I'm talking to you,' and it went from there."
Look at the photograph above, shot by the Herald's Walter Michot. How'd you like that giant ape bearing down on you at work? Not good.
-- Okay, so billioniare Jeffrey Epstein is going on the offensive about charges that he solicited prostitution from young girls in his Palm Beach mansion. He's even hired a high-rolling New York publicist named Dan Klores, who reps Paris Hilton and Jennifer Lopez. Larry Keller tells it in the Palm Beach Post. I'm no P.R. expert, quite the opposite, but I'm thinking Epstein should keep his mouth shut right now, except to eat the the occasional meal of raw shit.
-- The Palm Beach Post's Kevin Deutsch strikes again. It's a story that has the oh-shit factor from the start: Eight-year-old runs over two-year-old cousin. Just the facts would have been fine. But Deutsch does the detail and gets into the head -- and stomach -- of the 12-year-old who took the keys in the first place. The lede:
The 2-year-old boy lay in the driveway beside the beat-up Oldsmobile that hit him, a black tire mark streaked across his chest, his forearm broken and bleeding.Jasmine Addison, 12, screamed at the sight of her little cousin, Mikhi Akins, lying in the driveway. She had a weight in the pit of her stomach, a weight that, even at her young age, she identified as guilt. In that moment, she wished she'd never taken her mother's keys from the kitchen; that she'd stopped her sister from putting the car into gear.
-- The Sentinel's series on the insurance industry wrapped up today. Nothing too explosive, but reporter Kathy Bushouse's work serves as a strong 101 course on what's happening in a very complicated arena and shows how the legislature in Tallahassee hung us all out to dry for the insurance industry's benefit. If you haven't read it, start here, then there's part two, and today's wind-down from Mark Hollis, which details the payoffs, I mean political contributions, from the companies.
-- Finally, I neglected to mention a whoop-ass story by Brittany Wallman, my dear wife, in yesterday's Sun-Sentinel about how a fight between two Israeli landowners has brought development on Fort Lauderdale Beach to a veritable standstill. One of the players: billionaire Yitzhak Tshuvais, the fifth richest man in his home country. If you missed it, check out the story, which is all the talk of the city, and the comments.
