Marlins Unretire Number
Via Clark Spencer -
Who’s more important? Joe DiMaggio or George Brett? Because that’s what it comes down to in the retiring and unretiring by the Marlins of No. 5, a uniform number they have allowed no player to wear until now.
The Marlins retired the number to honor Carl Barger, their first president, who died before the team’s first season in 1993. Then owner Wayne Huizenga had the number retired because it was once worn by DiMaggio, Barger’s favorite player.
But when [Logan] Morrison asked recently to wear the number to honor his late father, who was a George Brett fan, the Marlins obliged. Until now, Morrison had been wearing 20. The Marlins will allow Morrison to wear Brett’s “5″ but place a plaque in their new ballpark to honor Barger.
The decision is not sitting well with the Barger family, which said it was never contacted by the Marlins to discuss the change.
“My family and I are disappointed that that is the decision,” said Betzi Barger, a daughter of Carl Barger. “We weren’t informed of it. We were not contacted by anyone in the Marlins’ organization. I would have liked to discuss it with the family. He was certaintly dedicated to that organization.”
Retiring a number for a front office member or owner is stupid. Then again, Logan Morrison asking for it now is somewhat ballsie too. This whole thing is a mess from a lot of different angles.
If the team’s current owner wants to unretire the “number” of a former club official that served prior ownership, he certainly has the right to do so. It may not be the most courteous thing to do but, really, the former executive shouldn’t have had his “number” retired anyway.
That’s the trouble with shitty expansion teams: they do gimmicky stuff like retire numbers of team executives because they don’t have anything better to do.
@ MJ Recanati:
MJ, the club official was actually the original owner who died just as the team was starting their first season. His favorite player was Joe D…I’m a native of Miami, but I had until now never heard of the story….
@ KPOcala:
Wayne Huizinga was the team’s first owner. I see nothing that suggests otherwise.
MJ Recanati wrote:
It was a tribute to Barger, not really out of the ordinary when you think about it. Never came up all these years, after all, the Marlins have been around for nearly 20 years (whoa!).
One of the issues here I guess is someone who doesn’t appreciate the history of the franchise they own. Not to say that I wouldn’t have unretired Barger’s number, I feel that Morrison’s request was a reasonable one. I guess we’ll see what happens, if Morrison goes back to #20 after the season or if he keeps #5.
@ MJ Recanati:
My bad, he was the team’s first President who died before the season began. I must have been half asleep when I read the Miami Herald’s article. Even then, it seemed strange to me…
Raf wrote:
No argument that Loria is a half-wit owner who doesn’t give a crap about what he owns, as long as he owns something (Montreal and Florida were apparently interchangeable to him).
Having said that, I’ll “meh” the idea that Barger is a significant or noteworthy part of Marlins history.
#5 apparently is a hard number to keep retired. The Cincinnati Reds have retired it three times. First in 1940 for the tragic Willard Hershberger, then a few years later when they realized they had unknowingly “unretired” it (sorry, Willard). Then it sayed retired for a quarter century or so when it was again unwittingly unretired again for Johnny Bench (supposedly nobody in the Reds organization understood why no one had been wearing #5). And then it was retired after Bench. Hopefully for good.