Marlins are quite a fish story

MIAMI – Jeffrey Loria was standing behind the batting cage here when he felt a tap on his shoulder.

It was Hanley Ramirez, who shyly gestured at the TV crew tailing him and leaned into his boss with a smile. Loria obliged with a pose.

“I’m like their father,’’ said the 68-year-old art dealer who owns the Florida Marlins, a team that has a dozen players born in 1982 or later on its 25-man roster and disabled list. “I’m a believer that you catch more flies not so much with honey, but with enthusiasm and caring. If they don’t see it from the top, what are they going to think?’’

With a major-league low payroll of around $21 million – barely more than the $20 million he donated last year to his alma mater, Yale, for a new building to house the school’s Department of the History of Art – the Sons of Jeffrey Loria remain unexpected contenders in the National League East.

The Marlins, who ended May in first place, have been within a half-game of the lead four times since then, but having lost six of their last eight games, were in danger Saturday night of falling 4½ games behind the New York Mets, their largest deficit of the season.

But Ramirez led off the Marlins’ first with a home run, his team-leading 27th and seventh leadoff homer this season, and six Florida pitchers combined to hold off Chicago 2-1, the Cubs’ nine-game road winning streak ending on a night they stranded 13 baserunners.

The Marlins had stopped hitting. They were batting just .235 since the All-Star break , and a team that lives by the home run – all four starting infielders have hit 20 or more home runs, a National League first – had seen a dramatic drop, from 135 home runs in their first 95 games to 28 in the last 29. Teams were pitching around Ramirez, whose OPS had fallen from .967 to .765 since the break.

Cubs manager Lou Piniella called for an intentional walk to Ramirez in the fifth inning, after he’d homered and doubled in his first two at-bats. Cody Ross followed with an RBI single that drove in the tie-breaking run.

The addition of another Ramirez – Manny – might have produced the same galvanizing effect on the Fish as it did on the Los Angeles Dodgers, and for hours just before the trading deadline it appeared Manny was bound for Miami as part of a three-team trade involving the Pittsburgh Pirates. If Loria wanted to prove to the Marlins kids how much he cared, this deal would have spoken volumes.

But the trade fell apart, sources said, when the Marlins insisted the Red Sox not only pick up the remainder of Ramirez’s contract but asked for additional cash, which they wanted to use to sign the draft picks they’d receive as compensation for Ramirez leaving as a free agent after the season.

“It would have been nice,’’ said Hanley Ramirez, who idolized Manny in Boston before he was traded as part of the 2006 blockbuster deal for Mike Lowell and Josh Beckett.

“Manny plays hard wherever he goes. But we just have to go play. We have everything here.’’

Loria balked at discussing the Manny machinations.

“No point,’’ he said, “in looking back at what happened, what didn’t happen, what we might have done or didn’t do. Most of what you heard was rumor. Maybe it’s because Manny lives here in Florida that there were so many rumors about here. But there were a lot of teams talking.’’

Florida manager Fredi Gonzalez called a team meeting Friday, before the start of the three-game series against the Cubs. “We just told them we had confidence in them,’’ said Gonzalez, who maintains the same even keel he saw Bobby Cox display as part of Cox’s coaching staff in Atlanta. “Everybody goes through it.

“These are the same four guys (Hamley Ramirez, Dan Uggla, Jorge Cantu and Mike Jacobs) who set the National League record, and they’ll set a major league record if Jorge Cantu hits four more.’’

That would give them four infielders with 25 or more home runs.

“We really haven’t had a run yet,’’ Gonzalez said. “We won seven in a row at the end of April, beginning of May, and we haven’t done that since. If we could do that somewhere in the next six weeks, we’ll be right in it.’’

It helps that the Mets and Phillies haven’t run off a prolonged winning streak, though the Mets have now won five in a row against two bottom-feeders, the Nationals and Pirates.

“We’re all in the same boat,’’ Gonzalez said.

The Marlins can be maddeningly inconsistent. They’ve made the most errors in the league, they rank 11th in hitting with runners in scoring position, and 11th in on-base percentage. They are prone to making mistakes on the bases – Ramirez was thrown out trying to steal third base with one out in the third Saturday night – and it remains to be seen whether they can respond with the night-in, night-out intensity required to win down the stretch.

But playing in front of their largest crowd of the season Saturday night – 39,124, drawn in good measure by the Cubs and a postgame concert – the Marlins responded with a playoff-worthy effort. One night after giving up a game-deciding home run to pinch-hitter Daryle Ward, Marlins closer Kevin Gregg caught Mike Fontenot looking at a third-strike fastball with two out and two on to end it.

Just before Gregg faced Fontentot, Marlins catcher Matt Treanor went to the mound and broke into a wide smile.

“I asked Kevin, ‘How do you want to go after this guy?’ and then I just stopped myself,’’ Treanor said. “I looked at him. There was no question what we needed to do. I knew he just wanted to go after him. Let the man work, just call the game and let him execute his pitches.’’

Much of the burden of taking the Marlins to October will fall on Ramirez, who is only 24, the primary reason why Loria can boast of the Beckett-Lowell deal, “Our guys are going to be playing for us a lot longer than the Red Sox will have their guys, even though Lowell and Beckett are special and that was a hard deal to make.’’

Ramirez started for the National League All-Star team, the first Marlin who started the season with Florida to be elected to the team.

“The ceiling is unlimited for him,’’ said Marlins special assistant Andre Dawson, the eight-time National League All-Star whose plaque should be hanging in Cooperstown.

“Hanley’s so laid-back, it hurts him at times. But he’s going to have to accept one day the role that he is the big guy that we’ve built this ballclub around. These guys feed off him. That will be another steppingstone, when he realizes that his ability is what he puts into it.’’

But if the Marlins make the playoffs, it will be because of their pitching, a young staff that brings back memories of the one anchored by the 23-year-old Beckett when the Marlins won the World Series in 2003. All five starters are 25 or younger, and Josh Johnson and Anibal Sanchez are just back from injuries that cost them nearly all of the 2007 season. Johnson underwent Tommy John elbow surgery and Sanchez had a major procedure on his shoulder.

Johnson showed No. 1 potential in ’06, when he went 12-7 with a 3.10 ERA, and the Marlins became the first team in big-league history to have four rookies with 10 or more wins. Sanchez, meanwhile, who came with Ramirez in the Beckett deal, tossed a no-hitter in ’06. Sanchez was wild in just his fourth start since coming back, but got the win. Chris Volstad, 21, goes for the Fish on Sunday afternoon against Cubs ace Ryan Dempster.

“Getting those two pitchers back was like us making a trade,’’ Loria said. “And we felt we had a need for a guy like Arthur (Rhodes, the lefty setup man acquired from Seattle). This is the pitching we dreamed of having.

“We have a great chemistry on this team, and I think that will be a big ingredient down the stretch. I think it’s anybody’s game with 40-plus games to go. I think we have as good a chance as anybody, but we have to go out and do it.’’