The Miami Marlins most recent fire sale has been received more backlash than just about any trade in baseball history. The Fish are sending Josh Johnson, Mark Buehrle, Jose Reyes, Emilio Bonifacio and John Buck to Toronto in exchange for Yunel Escobar, Adeiny Hechavarria, Henderson Alvarez, Justin Nicolino, Jake Marisnik, Jeff Mathis and Anthony Desclafani.

Basically, they’re switching teams. The only thing left in Miami is Giancarlo Stanton and that hideous home run sculpture thing.

Scott Miller of CBS calls the deal “despicable” and says Loria “must be stopped.

The flea-market Marlins have a history of running fire sales, garage sales, rummage sales, blue-light, half-yearly sales, Jeffrey Loria Needs a New Picture Frame sale and every other sort of sale you can name.

But not when they’ve got a brand-new, mostly-taxpayer-funded, gleaming new monolith sitting in their backyard.

Before, fire sales were the byproduct of running a ballclub recklessly and irresponsibly.

Now? Even the corporate raiders and cowboy swindlers on anything-goes Wall Street would wind up with hard time operating a bait-and-switch like this.

Tensions are high in Miami and rightfully so. But I can’t stop thinking about how this disaster could have taken place right here in Baltimore. It sure was close.

In 1994, Loria lost out to Peter Angelos in his bid to purchase the Baltimore Orioles. Say what you will about Angelos, but right now it sure seems like he rescued Charm City from the baseball apocalypse.

Loria went on to buy the Montreal Expos and essentially sold them back to the commissioner’s office in 2002  which led to the franchise moving to Washington.