One might imagine that the Florida Marlins imparted a bit of their fighting spirit on the young Lewis Brinson who watched in 2003 as Josh Beckett closed out the 9th inning at Yankee Stadium. This Florida Marlins team’s success came as a Wild Card winner that rode its good young pitching and competitive hitters right over the titanic New York Yankees whose status as the most successful MLB team has been passed down through generations.
It was the last time you would see the seemingly-upstart Marlins in the playoffs until 2020. During that 17-year playoff drought, Marlins homegrown talent like Miguel Cabrera and Christian Yelich won MVP awards in the midwest, Beckett and Mike Lowell became catalysts for the Boston Red Sox en route to a championship, and even the franchise’s home run king, Giancarlo Stanton, will be best remembered for his time in pinstripes after the Fish dumped the final decade of his contract coming off his best individual season.