Cigars, photos and a rousing clubhouse speech. Miami Marlins celebrate wild-card sweep.
The captain spoke, and his teammates listened.
The Miami Marlins had just swept the Chicago Cubs in the best-of-3 elimination round of the 2020 MLB playoffs at Wrigley Field on Friday.
So, naturally, once the celebration on the field ended, the team’s leader had to make a clubhouse speech.
Miguel Rojas’ message, shared via the Marlins’ team Twitter account:
“We deserve a lot of credit and we’re going to give it to ourselves,” Rojas said to his teammates, giving praise to top pitching prospect Sixto Sanchez for stepping up in his first career postseason start and Garrett Cooper for his go-ahead home run. “Nobody believed in us. Who are the bottom feeders now? ... We’re going to the [expletive] bubble.”
This team has had plenty to celebrate as of late and is making sure everyone hears it.
They were given a 0.2 percent chance to make the playoffs back in March. Their season was deemed lost after 18 players tested positive for COVID-19 three games into this pandemic-shortened 60-game season.
So what did this team do? It went 31-29 on the year to clinch a playoff berth for the first time since 2003.
Satisfied? Nowhere close. The Marlins then beat the Cubs 5-1 on Wednesday and 2-0 on Friday to advance to the National League Division Series, where they’ll face the Atlanta Braves in the best-of-5 series.
But first: Some more celebration.
Manager Don Mattingly, for the second time in eight days, slid in front of his players for a team photo.
Rojas, Jesus Aguilar, Starling Marte, Lewis Brinson and Monte Harrison smoked cigars.
“Hey,” Aguilar said, “you’ve got to enjoy the moment. Don’t get mad at us, OK? I’m just saying, we’ve got a flight tomorrow. I don’t know about you guys.”
This story was originally published October 2, 2020 at 9:35 PM.
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