[Yan Wang]

If you keep up with Dave Barry then you'll have read the two articles below. If not, read them - they're funny, yet highly truthful. I remember listening to him talk last year at Cornell and it was great.

Marlins unite us -- unless they lose
DAVE BARRY

I'm a huge Marlins fan. I've been following this plucky team ever since they beat the San Francisco Giants, which was, what, nearly a week ago. I live and die by this team! When they win, I drink champagne and dance all night. This is also what I do when they lose, because there is no point in wasting champagne. But I dance in a more subdued manner.

The last time I was a huge Marlins fan was October 18 through 26, 1997, which happens to be exactly when the Marlins won the World Series against the Cleveland Native Americans. I'm not taking all the credit for that victory: Many Marlins players were also involved.

But I was in the stands for game seven, and when the score was tied in the bottom of the 11th inning, with two out and the potential game-winning Marlin run on third base, I decided that if I buttoned a certain button on my shirt, it might cause the Marlins to get a base hit. A bold tactical gamble? Yes. But it paid off, and the Marlins won, and South Florida erupted in a joyous celebration that lasted until 2:30 the following afternoon, at which time owner Wayne ''The Antichrist'' Huizenga sold all the good players.

But that is the distant past. Today South Florida is, once again, totally and permanently united, for the time being, behind this spunky young Marlins team and its plucky players, including one named ''Pudge'' and another one named ``Spooneybarger.''

CUBS DON'T WIN

You'd think everyone would be rooting for this spunky team, but you'd be wrong. Everyone else in the entire world (including, in a formal statement released today, the Pope) is rooting for the Chicago Cubs. Why? Because, historically, the Cubs stink. They have not won anything for centuries. They are the only team in the National League that fought for the South in the Civil War.

So now everybody is making a big deal about the Cubs, and their fans who've been loyally supporting them through decade after decade of losing -- as if we should APPLAUD them because they wasted generations of perfectly good fan energy rooting for a team that traditionally had as much chance of winning the World Series as the von Trapp Family Singers, with Julie Andrews pitching.

HITTING THE WALL

Does this make any sense? Let's say you're at a restaurant, and you see a man stagger away from the bar and walk directly into the wall, mistaking it for a door, banging his face and falling down, only to pick himself up and walk into the wall again, and then again, over and over. Would you say to yourself: ``I admire that man! He is loyal to the tactic of walking into the wall, in the hope that it eventually will turn into a door!'

No! You'd say: ``He must be a Cubs fan.''

Ha ha! I'm kidding, of course: A true Cubs fan would never leave the bar. But my point is that we South Florida fans deserve some credit for displaying discretion. Yes, we're loyal to our local teams. But if, after a reasonable period of loyalty -- generally, two days -- we perceive that a given local team is unlikely to win a national or world championship, we drop that team like a used napkin and move on to another team, or another sport, or a mall.

IVY-LESS STADIUM

But for now, we're committed to our Marlins, and we'll be out rooting for them this weekend in Formerly Joe Robbie Stadium. Oh, sure, it's not historic Wrigley Field, with the ivy growing on the walls.

This is actually a sign of poor maintenance, but it causes baseball writers -- who spend their entire lives in dingy press boxes where the only green organic thing they ever see is relish -- to spurt little prose orgasms. Wow! Wall vegetation!

Listen, baseball writers: If you like wildlife, South Florida has WAY more wildlife than Chicago! It would not surprise anybody down here if, during a game, a third-base coach was eaten by an alligator.

But it's no use arguing South Florida's merits: Nobody wants us to win, except us.

So let's do our part; let's all go out to Formerly Stadium and root, root, root for our Marlins. Go ''Pudge!'' Go ''Spooneybarger!'' Go ``whoever the other Marlins players are!'

If they don't win, it's the mall.

Marlins make to World Series, but still don't get respect
By DAVE BARRY
The Miami Herald

OK, Marlins fans: We have to go through this one more time.

I'm talking about getting disrespected by the fans of the other team, because we're not deserving enough.

We went through it with the Giants fans, who felt their team deserved to win because they had Barry Bonds, plus they were supposed to win the World Series LAST year.

Then we went through it -- big time -- with the Cubs fans, who felt they REALLY deserved to win because (a) the Cubs have not won anything since the glaciers retreated from North America; (b) the Cubs have a better ballpark than we do, with all the history and the ivy and the blah blah blah; (c) the Cubs fans are SO knowledgeable about baseball, as opposed to us lame-o Marlins fans, a bunch of bandwagon jumpers who know so little about baseball that we would probably do something REALLY stupid, like interfere with a catchable foul ball hit by an opposing player.

Listen, Cubs fans: We feel sorry for you, really. But stop whining already. And leave that poor fan alone, unless you truly believe that, by touching the ball, he caused the Marlins to score eight runs in that game, and nine in the next. Your team lost because THE MARLINS PLAYED BETTER, OK? It's NOT because of some ''curse.'' The supernatural had nothing to do with it! Unless you count a Miami woman I know named Tina, who's from Nicaragua, and who revealed, after the Marlins beat the Cubs, that during the crucial eighth inning of Game 6 she performed a type of witchcraft called brujeria. But that did not violate any National League rule.

Anyway, my point, Marlins fans, is that neither the Giants fans nor the Cubs fans respected us. And now we're going to go through it again, only this time it will be much worse, because it will be New Yorkers.

I don't mean to insult all New Yorkers. I myself grew up in the New York City area, and I know that there are many New Yorkers who are thoughtful, gracious and classy. But there are also Yankees fans. They can best be described by an eight-letter word, beginning with the letter ''a,'' which I cannot write in a family newspaper.

Oh, what the heck, I'm going to write it anyway: The word is ''arrogant.'' Yankees fans believe their team should win the World Series every single year, because the Yankees have a Great Winning Tradition, defined as ''a really rich owner.'' That would be George Steinwhacker, who overcame the handicap of being born wealthy to become even more wealthy, and who buys all the best players from other teams. Sometimes he buys them during actual games, dropping cash on opposing players from his helicopter until they change into Yankees uniforms right on the field.

So the Yankees fans will be very confident, and the Yankees will be heavily favored. The entire rest of the nation will be rooting against us, because the Marlins had the insensitivity to beat the beloved Cubs, instead of, I don't know, deliberately striking out in key situations.

In short, Marlins fans: Nobody wants us to win, and nobody respects us. Fox Sports has announced that it will not even be broadcasting the Marlins' halves of the innings.

''When the Marlins are batting,'' stated a Fox executive, ``we will broadcast our new sitcom Wanda at Large, which we feel will have a greater appeal to our viewers.''

OK, fine. Let the rest of the world disrespect the Marlins, and their fans. It didn't matter when we played the Giants; it didn't matter when we played the Cubs; and it won't matter when we play the Steinwhackers. Because we don't need tradition, and we don't need history. What we have is better: A, plucky, spunky team that never gives up; a feisty 106-year-old manager who doesn't give a crap what anybody thinks; and a bunch of fans who maybe jumped on the bandwagon a little late, but who plan to make up for it by partying EXTRA long when we win the World Series.

Plus, we have Tina.