MIAMI, Oct. 27"The only thing that will top this will be the day [Cuban dictator] Fidel [Castro] dies," said attorney Julio Gomez, 44, who was among the hundreds who clogged Calle Ocho (Eighth Street) until dawn today in an impromptu parade that featured residents beating on pots and pans, honking horns and dancing the salsa.
For many of South Florida's nearly 2 million Hispanics, the team's nine Latin players gave the nation a chance to see what real estate salesman Rene D. Iturrey called "the good side of Miami."
Iturrey said that when President Ronald Reagan visited Little Havana in 1980 "we were finally accepted" as Americans, and thanks to the ballplayers, "we now are contributing" to community pride in this often racially and culturally fractured metropolis.
After shortstop Edgar Renteria, the only Colombian in the majors, stroked the Series-winning single, "people all over the world got to see something other than the stereotype" of Colombians as drug dealers, said Alberto E. Makacio-Ilanes, editor of Acontecer, a weekly newspaper that caters to the region's 350,000 Colombians.
"We produce beautiful things -- ballplayers, great singers and musicians, flowers," said Makacio-Ilanes.
Judging by the comments of men sipping cafecito -- thimble-sized cups of strong Cuban coffee -- in front of an open-air window on Calle Ocho, and sales by curbside vendors, the most popular Marlin is Livan Hernandez, the 21-year-old rookie pitcher whose two wins over the Indians earned him the World Series' most valuable player award. The Marlins signed the baby-faced hurler to a $4.5 million contract after he defected from Cuba two years ago.
Miami Mayor Joe Carollo even attempted to enlist the unwary Hernandez in his re-election campaign, by incorporating his awarding of a key to the city to Hernandez in a political advertisement. But the tactic backfired when Carollo's opponents cried foul ball.
David Gonzalez, 79, one of the regulars in the domino club at Maximo Gomez Park, said he was pleased with Castro's decision to grant a visa to Hernandez's mother, Miriam Carreras, so she could witness the seventh game.
But that decision produced a discordant note among a few exiles in the staunchly anti-Communist community. Two letter writers to the Miami Herald expressed outrage that Florida Gov. Lawton Chiles and other U.S. officials had urged Castro to grant Carreras an emergency visa when their relatives in Cuba are not given similar consideration.
There also was a division of opinion about Wayne Huizenga, the sole owner of the five-year-old Marlins, who, despite seeing his team win a World Series quicker than any expansion team, is threatening to sell the team, saying it lost about $30 million this season. The Marlins drew 2.3 million fans during the regular season -- 11th among the 28 teams -- plus another 480,000 in postseason play.
"He's a businessman," said Blas Prieto, a general practitioner who said he thinks the team should be renamed the Miami Marlins and moved to a new downtown stadium from its suburban location.
"They're not called the Ohio Indians," Prieto said of the vanquished Cleveland team.
Nonetheless, numerous fans credited Huizenga for bringing an expansion team to the area and then spending $89 million in blockbuster moves for seasoned veterans who helped produce the championship.
There were signs today that enthusiasm generated by the world championship will increase cash flow and convince Huizenga to change his mind.
At the team's ticket office in Little Havana, where the Marlins are billed as the "Team of the Americas," there was a steady stream of people trying to buy 1988 season tickets which, Marlins employee Junior Silva said sadly, won't be available until next season's schedule is announced, a month or more from now.
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