(This is a guest article by Stephen Lombardo)
It is unlikely for the Marlins to make news in January. Usually they handle their in-house business around this time of year. Trying to keep guys like Hanley Ramirez and Josh Johnson are priority number one for this so called small market team. However, this past week, the players union and the Florida Marlins have reached an agreement for this cellar dweller franchise to up their payroll. I guess the one big question can now be asked; did baseball just wake a sleeping giant?
For as far back as we can remember, the Marlins are a draft and trade team built on their pitching and a few scattered all stars in the lineup. Just look at their championship teams. The 1997 team had up and coming stars like Gary Sheffield, Edgar Renteria, Moises Alou and a few others, but they won because of their pitching. With the likes of Kevin Brown, Al Leiter, and Livan Hernandez anchoring their rotation they were obviously good enough to go all the way. The same argument can be made for their 2003 campaign. This team supposedly won by accident. Or did they? Once again they did it with budding stars on the field like Juan Pierre, Derek Lee, Mike Lowell, and Luis Castillo who was there for both titles. Yes they had the leadership of Ivan Rodriguez, but that wasn’t why they won. They won again with a rotation that when healthy went five deep. Josh Beckett, A.J. Burnett, Brad Penny, mid-season call up and phenom Dontrelle Willis, and yes Carl Pavano, were the biggest reasons why the 2003 Marlins won the World Series.
It may sound cliché, but I think everyone in the New Year should set out to try a few new things. Hopefully people haven’t already derailed their 2010 plans! One of my former colleagues sent me a tweet last week wanting to promote #ClicheWednesday on twitter that day. It was random, but knowing his use of social media in his job, it was new to me and I thought, hey good for Brian (
Last May I was kicking back with Lewis Howes at a Chicago Cubs game, not knowing in two weeks time I would be doing the same thing with another colleague, Jude LaRose. Still digesting the LinkedIn knowledge Lewis dropped on me, Jude and I ended up not paying much attention to the play on the field and instead spent most of the time hatching a plan.
I always take the opportunity to reach out to a customer and show off a brand I represent. I won’t lie, I had a college professor that pounded this into my head for a semester. Working in ticket sales a few years later, I searched for ways to capitalize on this point.
When I first signed up for a LinkedIn account, I’ll be honest, I was not really sure why or what I’d be doing with it. Initially I saw the value in connecting with others in my industry and experimented with the tools that were there.
