FISH ARE JUMPIN'

By Steve Wulf

In the beginning was the letter carrier. When the brand-new Florida Marlins held their first open tryout six years ago, a stout 36-year-old mailman named Joe Ciccarone showed up in a Cubs cap and a softball jersey to audition at shortstop. At the time, Ciccarone told Gordon Edes of the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, "When the Marlins win the World Series for the first time in the year 2011, I'll be able to tell my kids I was at their first tryout."

Ciccarone didn't make the team and may have made a terrible prediction. Last week the nouveau riche Marlins took the National League championship from the vaunted Atlanta Braves to become, at only five years of age, the freshest team ever to make the World Series. Of course, they are also the first wild-card team ever to qualify for the Fall Classic, which makes them the pariahs of purists. And they benefited from home-plate umpire Eric Gregg's unusual strike zone in Game 5, when he gave new meaning to the baseball terms expansion and realignment. And they literally tried to buy the pennant with the $89 million owner Wayne Huizenga shelled out for free agents last winter.

But who's going to quibble? Certainly nobody in South Florida, where residents are suddenly gaga over Bo(nilla), Co(nine) and Mo(ises Alou), and where readers of the Miami Herald were treated to a Wednesday, Oct. 15, front page devoted entirely to the Marlins.

In truth, the Marlins do deserve to represent the NL in the Series because they showed exemplary grit in defeating the Braves in six games. "They talk about the money we spent, that we bought a championship," said Florida ace Kevin Brown after beating the Braves 7-4 in Game 6 in Atlanta. "No, this was all heart and the relentless pursuit of a goal."

Brown provided a good deal of that heart, winning Games 1 and 6 and battling a stomach flu in between. With a 4-run lead after six innings of the eventual clincher, Florida manager Jim Leyland tried to take the weakened Brown out of the game, but the pitcher threw a respectful fit, and Leyland acquiesced. Even when the tying run came to the plate with two outs in the ninth, Leyland kept him in there, feeling Brown deserved to be on the field when the final out was made. When Chipper Jones hit into a force for that out, Brown and catcher Charles Johnson and then the whole team became one big, joyous school of fish.

The tableau last Tuesday night at Turner Field in Atlanta had a richness that had nothing to do with Huizenga's money. There was Bobby Bonilla hugging Leyland, his old Pittsburgh manager. There was rookie pitcher Livan Hernandez, the Cuban defector who was the NLCS MVP, climbing into a knot of Marlin fans in the stands and shouting two of the few English words he knows, "World Series! World Series!" And an hour after the game, there was Huizenga taking a victory lap around the bases.

The richest Marlin fan was no happier than one of the team's poorest fans. Miriam Hernandez, the mother Livan left behind in Cuba, can't afford a radio strong enough to pick up the broadcasts of her son's games, so she relies on a man who lives four floors below her to shout up the play-by-play. After Game 5, in which her son struck out 15 Braves to outduel Greg Maddux and win 2-1, she told the Herald, "God has touched his hands. How much I would give to be able to hug him."

Among the 51,982 in attendance at Pro Player Stadium that night was the 41-year-old letter carrier. "It's unbelievable what the Marlins have done," says Ciccarone. "People all along my route can't stop talking about them. They certainly made a liar out of me. Then again, if I was the shortstop instead of Edgar Renteria, they wouldn't be in the World Series this year."

--With reporting by Greg Aunapu/Miami

With reporting by Greg Aunapu/Miami