I hopped in my car last night just in time to catch the segment about the Florida Marlins marketing tactics on NPR’s All Things Considered.

They call the Marlins marketing team the best in the game and spend quite a bit of time with the Marlins Manatees (accurately described as “fat guys with no dance experience”). Marlins VP of Marketing Sean Flynn also makes an appearance, highlighting all the marketing initiatives the team undertakes including the player autographs, the Marlins Mermaids, Super Saturdays and more. Flynn describes it best by saying (and I paraphrase): We’re not selling baseball… We are an entertainment property with core property of baseball.

Listen to the segment and enjoy the brief attention. They seem to downplay the two world championships and describes our trades resulting in “lesser and cheaper players” making it sound like Hanley and Cameron are nothing more than scrubs. It concludes with the question of whether a dozen fat men can change the team’s fortunes. But, as Marlins fans know, 25 athletic and talented men haven’t been able to change it either.