Baseball dreams: when New York art dealer and baseball aficionado Jeffrey Loria bought the Marlins last year, South Florida fans had all but abandoned the team. Now Loria is not only rebuilding a roster of solid players, he is also reconstructing the team's relationship with its home base. Will the fans play ball?

South Florida CEO, April, 2003 by Jeff Zbar

That's just what Loria and Samson hope--that the team will play hard and be warmly received, that it will find success on the field and in the media, and that by October, it will be in the post-season.

"Jeffrey and I will go down in history," Samson says. "If we fail here, we will be the third failure in this market. Or, we will be the ones who make baseball prosper in South Florida--that two people with high hopes failed, and we hit a home run."