Opening Day in Miami

Tomorrow night, the newly named Miami Marlins open their season in their brand new ballpark against the defending World Series champion St.Louis Cardinals.

It’s always exciting to have a new park in the league. Each team gets to see it for the first time this season, then determines the strengths and weaknesses. Eventually there will be a book or report that teams can look at and get a pretty good feel for what type of building they’re playing in.

This new place was a long time coming. For some reason, the Marlins were neglected by the city by having a terrible stadium and virtually no fan support, even though they were the most successful with two World Series titles in their first 10 years of existence.

 

The Florida Marlins franchise was created in 1993, and played their home games in the same stadium as the Miami Dolphins. Their old place has had 7 different names since 1987 when it was built, but it's name for the time being is SunLife Stadium. Not even a year after the team was established, there was talk of a new facility specifically for the Marlins elsewhere in Miami. SunLife was built with other sports in mind, including baseball, in hopes to make it a total multipurpose facility for South Florida. Unfortunately for the Marlins, football was always the top priority. With a few renovations, it could technically hold baseball games, but the conditions weren’t the best. For all regular season baseball games, nearly all of the upper deck was closed. Not only because the views were obstructed, but because the seats felt like they were a mile away from the action.

 

 

If you couldn't tell, that second picture has an actual game going on. The official attendance that day was 347, a record low for an MLB game. As you can see, fan support was indeed was a big problem.

With a decent amount of support after their second World Series win in 2003, (let’s not go into detail on that) the City of Miami and Marlins management officially started to work on a proposal for a new stadium in early 2004. That proposal was presented in February 2005 with an estimated cost of up to $435 million. Shortly after the initial proposal, the plans ran into problems in Florida House Legislation. To make a long story short, the county wasn’t willing to chip in their $45 million to build it, and thought it was unfair to put the burden on taxpayers. For a little while, it seemed like the Marlins would relocate. Another large problem they considered was the Orange Bowl, Miami’s beloved football stadium. The Dolphins played there until 1987, and, in 2005, was still was the home of the University of Miami Hurricanes. That was really the only space available in the city to construct any sort of new stadium. In order to not have to squeeze this one in a small plot of land, the new, eventually final, plans called for the demolition of the Orange Bowl after the Hurricanes announced they were moving out after their 2005-06 season.

Over the next 4 years, a multitude of lawsuits and court holdups regarding funding hindered the process. After quite a few years and many complications, (including a 2-2 tie vote due to the last voter being on maternity leave) the plans were officially passed with a cost of $515 million on March 19th, 2009. Construction started and groundbreaking took place in July 2009. Because of the roadblocks in the proposal stages, the opening was delayed a year later than planned, and the new target date was Opening Day 2012. In order to get the plan passed, the county made Marlins management agree to change the franchise name to the Miami Marlins. They felt this would benefit the team with fan support by making it a true Miami franchise.

Fast forward to today, and the state of the art, 37,000 seat stadium is ready for some baseball. So far this spring it’s hosted a high school game, minor league exhibition game, and a Marlins spring training game against the Yankees. It’s located at the sight of the previously mentioned Orange Bowl, and just over 2 miles from downtown Miami, much closer than SunLife was. A retractable roof was necessary for the heat, rain, and terrible humidity in Florida. It’s so bad, the plan is to only have the roof open for 10 to 15 games a year, maximum. In addition, there are removable outfield panels, which allow some air in without opening the roof. Many of the dimensions from the old park are replicated; the “Bermuda Triangle” in center field, a short porch in the outfield, (but flip flopped to right field, instead of left like the old stadium) and a large wall they called the Teal Monster.

But for all the beautiful, new, shiny things, I think there are also some aspects that may not be perfect.

Space is tight in the area. The current neighborhood developed around the Orange Bowl. Not to mention, this place is enormous compared to the Bowl. Combine that with the anticipation of a new stadium, a not so great public transit system, and Los Angeles caliber traffic, it’s going to be a big mess on gamedays. To make that mess even more frustrating, the entire stadium has only 5,700 official parking spots. They didn’t realize their mistake until they had a minor league game there; about 15,000 fans showed up. Some fans drove around for almost 2 hours until they found somewhere legal and fairly priced to leave their vehicle. I don’t even want to think about the headache people will be going through for Opening Day when almost 40.000 people want to get into the game.

Second, the roof is an entity of itself. It slides on and off, and when open, rests on gigantic pillars. It literally takes as much space as the stadium. Of course, there’s a walkway underneath, but it just adds unnecessary size to the building as a whole. I think they could have thought of a better solution than this:





Next, look at this terrible wall color:

 

It’s that color everywhere there’s padding; from the right field seats (shown here) to dead center field, then on the left field foul line. I get the tropical feel, especially with their new logo, colors, and atmosphere they want to create, but that’s just too…vibrant and bright.

This idea is pretty cool, but unnecessary- THEY PUT A FISH TANK IN THE BACKSTOP.

 

It wraps all the way around behind the plate, and will feature colorful marine life and coral. I wonder how they get the food in there...

Seriously though, I can't see this going well. People will be kicking and poking the tank, and the vibrations will be way too harsh. Tropical fish are very sensitive, not like the lone goldfish I've had for 5 years running.

And lastly, what in the name of God is this?

The Mets have the Apple, the Phillies have the swinging Liberty Bell, and now the Marlins have this monstrosity. It could be short lived though. It could potentially protrude into the center field batters eye, and be a distraction for left handed hitters. “If it is an issue, it can no longer be there,” Gregg Dobbs, Marlins infielder, said. “I won’t be the only left-handed hitter saying something. If other teams have a problem with it, they’re definitely going to voice their concern to the league”.


Overall, without those few kinks, it seems like pretty nice building. I look forward to watching the opener and the first month of the season to see how this “new” franchise works out. They have a ton of new talent, real fan support for once, and a little extra effort in this first revival type of season.

Go Fish!

(After listening to that over 20 times, I still can’t stop laughing at the first 30 seconds.)