Jeter gives Marlins mascot the hook
Derek Jeter likes his fish fried. The latest victim of the Marlins’ house-cleaning, following Giancarlo Stanton, Dee Gordon, Marcell Ozuna and Christian Yelich, as well as a host of personnel and staff, is Billy the Marlin.
While the team’s mascot, in its smiling, long-nosed glory, has survived the slashing, the man inside the suit has been cast aside. Billy had been played by the same actor for 14 years, Sirius XM reported, and the Marlins offered no explanation about the gutting. The Miami Herald reported the man is no longer part of the organization.
Generously, Jeter has not let the true face of the Marlins — Billy — off the hook, the team’s mascot since its debut season in 1993. But the team must scramble to find a new Billy, with the Marlins’ annual FanFest scheduled for Saturday at Marlins Park. After this offseason, things could get ugly — and could use some levity.
Jeter knows that his overhaul plan is not popular.
“People may not agree,” Jeter recently told Fast Company magazine about his vision for the franchise, “but they have to at least respect that you’re doing it with the best interests of the company in mind. There were times when I didn’t like some of the decisions being made about teammates of mine. But I always knew that the ultimate goal was to have the best team on the field.”
Since an ownership group that includes the Yankees legend bought the team, virtually nobody has been safe. Stanton is now a Yankee, Gordon a Mariner, Ozuna a Cardinal and Yelich a Brewer, as a team that had been losing money strips basically all parts of its roster that make money.