By Bob Markus

Love's more comfortable the second time around. That's what the song tells us and I think it might be true. As some of you know, my lifelong love affair with the Chicago Cubs ended last October with the Cubs' craven three-game surrender to the Los Angeles Dodgers in the National league playoffs.

I didn't have to look very far for a new team to love. I've lived in Ft. Lauderdale more or less fulltime the last 10 years and I already had developed a fondness for the Florida Marlins, a team that is constantly looking for love in all the wrong places. As far as the majority of sports fans down here are concerned, the Marlins are just an entr'acte, something to fill the time between the Heat's final loss in the NBA playoffs and the opening of the Dolphins' training camp. This despite the fact the Marlins, extant only since 1993, have won two World Series titles since the Dolphins last appeared in the Super Bowl, while the Heat has just one NBA title in its much longer history.

The local media seems to be even more indifferent to the local baseball franchise. Most of the South Florida columnists have opposed the new stadium the Dolphins finally managed to convince local politicians to approve. The Dolphins had page 1 coverage almost every day for the two weeks before training camp actually opened Sunday. And it isn't as if there was any news coming out of Dolphins headquarters. One day most of the front page was taken up with a Dave Hyde column. Hyde is generally a fine columnist, but on this occasion he took a thousand words, more or less, to tell us that it was anyone's guess where the Dolphins will finish in the AFL East this season. The rest of page 1 was devoted to a feature story on a rookie wide receiver.

Meanwhile, the Marlins and Cubs were engaged in one of the gretest midseason series I've ever seen and you could read all about it on page 3. The Marlins won two of the three games and in the one they lost they rallied from 6-0 and 8-5 deficits to tie the game in the ninth on a two-out three run rally against the Cubs' closer, Kevin Gregg. That wasn't too much of a surprise to anyone who had watched Gregg last year, when he was the Marlins' closer. Derrek Lee's homer leading off the 10th gave the Cubs their only win of the series. They thought they had anoter one wrapped up Sunday when they took a 2-1 lead into the bottom of the ninth. But the thing I love about these Marlins is they don't quit and they have enough thunder in their lineup to be dangerous. Just ask the Mets, who two years in a row have been kept out of the playoffs by the spoiler Marlins. Or the Washington Nationals, who earlier this year lost ninth inning leads to the Marlins three days in a row.

Anyway, Gregg was on the mound again, ready to close out the feisty Marlins. This time he got only one out before Dan Uggla and Cody Ross walloped homers on consecutive pitches to give the Marlins the game, 3-2, and the series, 2-1. This was the most meaningful series these two teams have played since the 2003 N.L.championship series when the Cubs blew a three games to one lead and the Marlins went on to win their second World Series championship. The Marlins haven't sniffed postseason play since, while the Cubs, under Lou Piniella, are working on a third consecutive Central division title.

I don't think either team will win it all this year. The Marlins have a good, young pitching staff headed by starting pitcher Josh Johnson. They have a marvelous player in shortstop Hanley Ramirez and some pop throughout the lineup with the likes of Ross, Uggla, Jorge Cantu, and the just acquired Nick Johnson. They have two of the best pinch hitters in the game in Wes Helms and Ross Gload. But although the relief pitching has been fine of late they don't have a proven closer and they are a little too young. The Cubs have a couple of super stars in Lee and Aramis Ramirez and a couple of faut super stars in Alfonso Soriano and Milton Bradley. They have sufficient starting pitching. But their fate probably rests in the shaky hands of relief pitcher Carlos Marmol, he of the electric stuff. Marmol is so overpowering that few can hit him. But he is also wild, sometimes Steve Blass wild and if he doesn 't regain the command of his pitches, the Cubs aren't going anywhere. But I'll say this: If the Marlins get to the post season they've got a better shot to win it all than do the Cubs.

As I write this the Marlins are five games behind the Phillies, in second place in the N.L. East while the Cubs are in a virtual tie with the St.Louis Cardinals for first place in the Central division. But the Marlins were only three games behind the Cubs/Cards in the wild card race. Both of the Marlins' world championships have come as a wild card team. They have never won a division title and have never lost a playoff series. The Cubs, meanwhile, have lost their last nine playoff games as they continue their 101-year quest to add a third World Series victory to the two they won in 1907-08.

The just-finished three game series served as a test of my conversion from Cubs lover to Marlins admirer. I think I passed the test. I found myself rooting whole-heartedly for the Marlins. Friends told me it is impossible to stop loving the Cubs once you're hooked. But they're wrong. It's not that I hate the Cubs. I don't. This was not an acrimonious divorce. I didn't ask for alimony. I still have some feelings for the Cubs and wish them well. But I won't live or die with them.

It's not that I'm madly in love with the Marlins, my new flame. But I do like them a lot and when I have a choice between watching the Cubs or Marlins on TV--which I often do, given WGN's national reach--I choose the Marlins. I'm comfortable with that.