Breaking down the Melnyk interview
Thoughts in Bold: Melnyk Speaks on the Fan 590
His strategy was simple: he wanted a new stadium that the taxpaying community would pay for.
Like many other owners of the era, he wanted to portray his baseball organization as poor to create imbue the notion that unless his team received a new building, they would never be able to create and sustain long-term success.
To generate sympathy and rally more fans behind his cause, Huizenga had the idea to spend frivolously between 1995 to 1997 to try and deliver a World Series so that he could have an easier time with his publicly-subsidized stadium efforts as fans were caught up in the championship honeymoon period.
In 1997, the Marlins won the World Series and a few short weeks after, they dealt Moises Alou. He was the first casualty of Huizenga’s scheme that eventually saw players like Robb Nenn, Bobby Bonilla, Al Leiter, Kevin Brown, Gary Sheffield, Charles Johnson, Devon White and Jeff Conine move on.
Huizenga literally tore down a championship roster in the pursuit of a new stadium.
Interestingly, the remnants of a few of these trades eventually wound up helping the Marlins win another World Series in 2003, so for Melnyk to say that a teardown of this magnitude has not been done before is a bit disingenuous