He's someone to contend with
To an L.A. kid playing high school ball on a dirt infield, Dodger Stadium is hallowed ground.
Look up from the infield at Chatsworth High, and you see a fence, and a street with passing cars. Look up at Dodger Stadium, and you see levels of seats stacked toward the sky, one color after another.
Larry Beinfest was determined to look up from that infield. He knew he might never get that chance again.
This was almost three decades ago. He was the shortstop at Chatsworth, and his team was playing at Dodger Stadium, for third place in the City Section. In the quarterfinals, a runner had slid in hard, breaking up a double play and breaking Beinfest's leg, in two places.
So there he was, on the field at Dodger Stadium, in a wheelchair.
"My mom snuck me out of the hospital," he said.
He was on the field at Dodger Stadium the other day, standing tall. The kid grew up to be the general manager of the Florida Marlins, architect of the unlikeliest of contenders this season.
"I never really imagined coming to Dodger Stadium and rooting for anybody but the Dodgers," he said.
You never know, in baseball and in life.
The Dodgers spend $120 million on payroll and the Marlins spend $20 million, and the Marlins have the better record.
The Detroit Tigers acquired Miguel Cabrera and Dontrelle Willis from the Marlins last winter, but the Marlins are in better position for a playoff berth. Joe Girardi manages the New York Yankees now instead of the Marlins, but the Marlins are in better position than Girardi for a playoff berth.
The Marlins found their closer, Kevin Gregg, on the surplus pile in Anaheim.
"You know you're a contender with the Angels," Gregg said. "You know what they stand for. It was uncertain what I was getting into here.
"I heard the stereotype of the organization, before I came over here and saw what we're all about."
They're about winning on a tight budget, in front of so few fans that "crowd" is an overstatement. It would be nice if the Marlins drew more fans and spent more money -- rival owners subsidize their entire payroll via revenue sharing -- and perhaps that new stadium will help on both fronts.
The ballplayer's favorite cliche is this: Don't worry about things you can't control. That's Beinfest in a nutshell. He doesn't worry about how many pennies his owner will let him spend or how many hundreds of fans show up. That's the stuff of stereotypes, and that's not his department.
