which veteran on that team can tell anything to Cabrera he doesn't know.  When Cabrera was on the Mudcats, he was the most dogged player on the team.  You don't get that good by screwing around.  He's very business like.  I remember a quote in a recent edition of ESPN Mag where he was asked who he would most like to have dinner with.  His response, "Manny, Ortiz, and Vlad."  Why? "So we could talk about hitting all night."  Jeff Conine should STFU and stop worrying about the future of an inner-circle HOFer.  Stopped shagging fly balls? Stopped shagging fly balls?  Is this a joke.  This has nothing to do with work ethic.  This is some stupid pre-game ritual that people are making a big deal out of.  If any of those veterans who are speaking out would have anything close to the year Cabrera was having, the Marlins would be coasting to the playoffs.  Until then, they should stop worrying about the best player on the team and just be happy they get to tell their grandchildren they played with him one day.  You could get rid of this "clubhouse cancer" and we can all go ask Daunte Culpepper how that's working out.

I like how the "big tough-guy" veteran Conine left "the talking to" up to another player.  Nice vet he is.  I'd get in line behind him. <sarcasm>

It is clear jack McKeon is an absolute joke of a manager and it's a disgrace he got lucky and won a World Series.  This ship is sinking fast.  This comes right on the heels of Burnett's meltdown too.  I don't think it's too coincidental.

Read again what Perez said about Cabrera.  Quote the HOF'er---"Sometimes fame comes too quickly," Perez told the Post. "He has the ability; everybody knows that. He's got a great future ahead of him, but that's up to him."

Concentrate on the words 'great future ahead of him, but that's up to him.'  In other words---quit acting like a B*tch!  Play AND practice like a professional!

Maybe Cabrera doesn't need to listen to Conine but he sure as hell needs to listen to Tony Perez.

Cabrera's stats:

Age 20: .268/.325/.468
Age 21: .294/.366/.512
Age 22: .321/.382/.557

Who knows what next year's stats will look like, let alone his peak 27-31 years...

His career comp as of right now according to baseball-reference.com is Hank Aaron (who I hear was pretty good in his day.)

My point here is that Cabrera is not the guy to be criticizing because the Marlins didn't make the playoffs.  The kid hits the ball -- period, so let him do his job and lay off.

I can't stand when people make comparisons to their every day jobs to prove a point about sports.  The fact is, if you took 10 extra minutes on a coffee break, or came into work 30 minutes late, most likely no one would notice.  And I can fairly certainly say it would not be a headline on ESPN.com.  You are making a total unsubstantiated claim about Cabrera's discpline that that is based on two quotes from some teammates.  Do you think it took any discipline to get to where he is today?  Natural talent can only get you so far, at some point you need hard work and dedication.  Miguel Cabrera is 22 years old and he has carried a team's offense for an entire season.  If he takes some liberties here and there, I don't really mind.

It's not a coincidence that this story comes immediately after the Burnett incident.  People are rooting around Florida's clubhouse trying to find any hint of dissent they can.

I tend to err on the side of the players until truly damning evidence comes out.  9 times out of ten the media drums this crap up because people need to have something to write about.  We know absolutely nothing about Miguel Cabrera's work ethic, and to judge him on the basis of an article like this is a joke.  

If the Marlins don't want him, I know of about 29 other teams that would jump at the possibility to get the best 21-year-old hitter in baseball on their squad.  

I'm not going to make a huge deal of this. The only thing in the article that truly made me think WTF was:

"Cabrera stopped shagging fly balls in July and August, instead sitting in the dugout with friends from his native Venezuela."

Ummmm, stopped shagging flys? Well, I can live with that. Whatever I suppose. But should his entourage be in the dugout before games? Has this sort of thing has become commonplace and I just didn't know about it? To this outsider it sounds like B.S.

The issue seems to boil down this way.
If the story is just an attempt to find more problems in the Marlins' clubhouse then Cabrera is not a cancer.  If the story has some truth then there is the possibility that a problem exists.  The most important aspect is that of the effect his actions have on the team's inter-relationship or chemistry.  Actions such as those suggested by the report invariably affect how other players feel about him.  You don't have to like any of the guys out there you only have to perform.  Other players though do lose respect for him as a professional baseball player.  That is because there are certain things that are expected out of a professional as judged by other professionals. On the field performance is most important but it is not the whole story.  That is because teams with poor chemistry consistently do not perform better than the sum of their parts and often underperform while teams with good chemistry often find ways to play above themselves.  I have played professionally on both types of teams.  I played on a team with good chemistry that managed to definitely outperform all expectations.  The next year certain players were dropped and new "better" players were added.  Some of these guys had "different rules" and did what they wanted.  We finished with the same record as the year before and underperformed by all measurements.  Individually, those guys had good years but in the end without chemistry the team just wasn't as good.  They set a poor example.  They did not make others and thus the team play better.  While the fans and outsiders will not care if all they measure are the statistics of the individual player; the team's wins and losses will in the end be effected by the actions of any player, especially one of his caliber.
It is also an organization and a manager's responsibility to hold each player responsible for his actions and their effects on the team.  A player is human after all.  Attitudes and habits change over time.  A player can lose his good attitude and player's with poor attitudes can develop good attitudes.  
If and only if the report is accurately stating a problem then that behaivor can lead to noticeable differences in a team's overall performance and this is truly where the effect of a "cancer" will be felt.

"Chemistry?!  Go fuck yourself."

~ Reginald Martinez Jackson