DATE: Tuesday, November 4, 1997             TAG: 9711040456

SECTION: SPORTS                  PAGE: C1   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Column 

SOURCE: Tom Robinson

                                            LENGTH:   66 lines

CLASS REUNION WAS SCRATCHED WHEN SERIES WENT SEVEN

Jonathan Mariner missed the 25th reunion of Lake Taylor's Class of '72 a couple of weeks ago for a good reason. He had a World Series to win.

Well, not him, exactly. Just the men for whom he signs all those paychecks with all those zeros on them.

``I told people back in September that the only way I wouldn't be there was if we were in the seventh game of the World Series,'' says Mariner, vice president of finance and administration for the Florida Marlins, who won the Series the night his high school chums gathered again.

That is, Mariner would have bet Bobby Bonilla's meal money that he'd make the reunion. Marlins owner Wayne Huizenga committed about $89 million for free-agent acquisitions before the season, but Mariner thought it would take a season for the club to jell and make a serious title run.

Who knew that the Marlins would keep winning and winning, right through October, dumping San Francisco, Atlanta and Cleveland in the postseason to finish their five-year rise from expansion team to champion.

Mariner, 43, has paid every bill, and then some, along the way. A University of Virginia graduate and Harvard MBA, Mariner joined the Marlins before they'd played their first game.

At times, he's also doubled as chief financial officer for other Huizenga properties, the NHL's Florida Panthers and Pro Player Stadium, where the Marlins and Huizenga's Dolphins play.

So Mariner has seen from the inside the fiscal insanity of big league sports. And he admits it's not pretty. Which is what you could say about the Marlins' case in particular.

The irony is that Florida reached the pinnacle leaking buckets of red ink. The Marlins, Mariner says, will have lost at least $30 million by the time he closes this year's books.

And Huizenga, hamstrung because suite and club-seat revenue must go toward the ballpark's debt service, put the Marlins, and their $50 million-plus payroll, up for sale in June.

``Our loss this year was necessary to be competitive,'' Mariner says. It was Huizenga's intent, he says, to open the vault and take maybe a $20 million to $25 million loss for a high-profile team that could contend and, it was hoped, reverse declining attendance.

But when paid attendance bumped up by only about 27 percent to an average of 29,500, as payroll jumped about 50 percent, Huizenga became discouraged, Mariner says.

The situation has accelerated conversation about building a new ballpark in South Florida that gives the team owner the money from premium seating. No matter that issue's fate, Huizenga's getting out, Mariner says.

Huizenga knows that a man of his means asking Floridians to pay for a ballpark for his team would be bad form, Mariner says. He is content, then, to hand off a World Series winner to the next person or group, and let them continue the battle to keep baseball in the Miami area.

``Wayne doesn't want to be a .500 team or less,'' Mariner says. ``But he can't continue at this (salary) level in this building. There will never be enough revenue in this building.''

From the sound of things, though, Mariner will never be without an important position in Huizenga's empire.

``Before Wayne announced he was selling,'' Mariner says, ``he pulled me aside and told me, depending upon who the new owners are, that it would be my choice to stay or come join him and do some other things.''

Trouble is, whatever's next might lack a little something in the pizzazz department.

``There are very few jobs,'' Mariner says, ``that give you the kind of thrill you get from winning the World Series.''

Send Suggestions or Comments to webmaster@scholar.lib.vt.edu