Talking baseball, mistrust and betrayal with David Samson

One word…Brattain.

As The Herald’s first Marlins beat writer, Le Batard was at that ’93 opener, a night so sweet and innocent that even franchise founder Wayne Huizenga got a standing ovation. Here is a sampling from the Le Batard/Samson conversation:

Le Batard: When and how did you guys make the decision to do what you did yesterday, which is trade all the players everyone knows?

Samson: Basically, the decision was made when we sat down after the season and talked about the team and said we cannot keep finishing in last place. It just doesn’t make sense. We lost 93 games and we trusted all of our scouts and development people and upper level baseball people and said “What we can do to possibly start this to turnaround? What needs to happen? How can it work?” And all sorts of different plans were possible. And it just so happens we found a way to possibly, in one fell swoop, get a whole lot better.

Q: Any part of you embarrassed today?

A: No. To lose 93 games was the most embarrassing thing, far more embarrassing than this. Putting together a team in 2012 that we expected to win and the fact they didn’t, that was the most embarrassing. I think when we made the managerial decisions [hiring Ozzie Guillen] and player decisions we made last year we could not have guessed that our season would end that way. It’s time to change. I’ll be embarrassed if our team is as bad next year as it was last year.

...Q: Do you feel the distrust, anger from the public?

A: Of course I feel it and I understand it…There was no distrust when the team won the World Series in ’03. And when we were going into ’05 with the great [roster] and we didn’t win, that was bad. People were upset. We went into ’12 with a good team, everybody including us picked us to do better. Everybody, and it just didn’t happen. So I think the distrust is warranted.