Ultimate Baseball Road Trip (48 page)

If the field dimensions seem quirky to you, you’re right, they are. But they’re not just quirky for quirks’ sake. They are quirky because they offer a nod to the unusual outfield configuration that once existed at the Marlins’ previous home. The converted football field quickly became known as a pitcher’s park upon its arrival on the big league scene. The outfield fences used to measure the farthest from home plate in the notch called the “Bermuda Triangle” in left-center. At their new home, the Marlins moved the deep gap to right-center and made the angle of the centerfield wall not quite so dramatic. But the concept is the same. It’s a place where a well-struck gap-shot might well turn into a three-bagger. And what fan of the game doesn’t get a special rise out of watching a speedster leg it from home to third in the blink of an eye?

The deepest outfield point measures 420 feet from the plate just to the right of dead-centerfield, and the gaps extend 384 feet from home in left-center and 392 feet in right-center.

Unless you’re sitting at field level on the infield, or even if you are, you’ll want to arrive early to visit the massive saltwater aquariums between the dugouts and batter’s circle. We think the colorful coral is a nice touch too, and though we’re no ichthyologists we assume the fish agree.

Josh:
Did I ever tell you about the time I caught a sixteen-pound flathead catfish with my bare hands in a Louisiana?

Kevin:
Probably. I don’t really listen when you start telling fish stories.

Josh:
It was hiding under a partially submerged log and I dropped a rock on the other side to scare it toward me …

Kevin:
Yeah, I’ve heard this before. This is your bogus noodling story.

The pool in left field is the centerpiece of the faux beach resort known as the Clevelander. This is a private part of the park, accessible to groups wishing to hold an event at the ballpark. While it’s perfect for a company outing or bachelorette party, we know the real fans look down their noses at gimmicks like these, even as they crane their necks and dig out their stadium binocs to check out the females arriving at the game in bikinis.

The home run extravaganzas in other cities include rising icons that emerge from beyond the outfield fences, flashing lights, explosions and even waterworks. In Miami the celebration machine that rises from behind the center-field fence incorporates all of the above … and then some. It’s the most ambitious homer hoopla spectacle in the game, so root, root, root for a long ball.

The food at the Marlins’ previous stadium ranked among the very worst in all of baseball as far as we were concerned. And apparently the Marlins weren’t too impressed by what they were serving either. More than a year prior to the move to the new tank, they announced they would be inviting several stalwarts of the Miami dining scene into the park to share their expertise.

Not only can you always count on getting a good Cuban sandwich at a ballgame in Miami, but you can also get arepas, which are sweet, round, deep-fried cornbread patties stuffed with cheese. They’re delicious.

The
Taste of Miami
area in left field is your best bet to get something unique at the game. Plus, you can have a couple or three cold ones at a bar that looks out at the Miami skyline through the big glass wall that seals in the park when the roof is closed. As mentioned earlier, the ballpark officially opened just as our book was landing in early 2012, and the Marlins hadn’t solidified their concession lineup at the time of our visit to Miami in 2011. By then the team had assured its fans, however, that the ballpark concessions would include such South Florida staples as
sushi, stone crabs, fresh-shucked oysters, dolphin sandwiches, Cuban coffee, medianoches, empanadas,
and
croquetas.
For the uninitiated, we can tell you that croquetas are deep-fried treats just full of savory wonder. Here’s betting that they become the Marlins trademark food in the years ahead.

To experience a Marlins game is to immerse oneself in a more diverse gathering of seamheads than the typical big league park draws. In our experiences, we’ve encountered fans from all corners of the United States at Marlins games. Attending a game in Miami, you’re apt to see Baltimore Orioles caps, Red Sox caps, Yankees shirts, Dodger blue, and just about anything else. We suppose that in a state of transplants and retirees, this shouldn’t be surprising. Beyond that, it’s tough to characterize the experience of watching a game at Marlins Ballpark, because the facility is so new and the fan base had been stuck in low gear for so many years before the park’s arrival. Fish fans will surely develop their own traditions at the park, but this process will take time and must transpire organically as the characteristics of the park, the team, and the fans themselves come to the fore.

The roof consists of three steel panels that, in total, weigh nineteen million pounds. The highest panel is the one over the middle of the field, which hovers two hundred feet above second base, ensuring that even the highest of popups and big league flies will fail to reach it. For comparison’s sake, the catwalks hanging from the roof at Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg are just fifty-nine feet above the centerfield fence and 146 feet above home plate.

The roof takes about fifteen minutes to close, as the panels move at 39 feet per minute. The panels can all move at once, or they can move one at a time, so that the roof can be partially closed, if necessary, for the purpose of blocking the sun from interfering with the game. What the roof can’t do is open or close under high-wind conditions. It is unsafe to operate the roof in winds exceeding 40 miles per hour. On non-windy days, however, the process of opening or closing the roof costs just $10.00 in electricity, owing to a “regenerative drive system” that we two writers lack the engineering background to explain.

Kevin:
It cost more than $10.00 for that hot dog and beer I had last inning.

Josh:
So you’ve funded one roof-closing, my friend. How about making it two … and close the roof again for me while you’re down there?

Marlins fans surely won’t miss the frequent rain delays to which they were subjected at their previous stadium. But we’ll miss them just a tad. After all, they provided a chance for the Marlins to broaden fans’ knowledge of all-things-teal
with JumboTron trivia. In honor of the rain delays that will never occur again, we provide the answers to two of the trivia questions we posed earlier in the chapter.

Livan Hernandez’s two World Series victories as a rookie in 1997 represented only the second time a rookie had won two Series games. The first hurler to garner a pair of October Classic W’s was Larry Sherry, who accomplished the feat for the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1959.

Before John Lynch became a Pro Bowl defensive back in the NFL, he was a pitcher for a Marlins Rookie-League team—the Erie Sailors of the New York-Penn League. After displaying a fastball that could reach ninety-five miles per hour at Stanford, Lynch was drafted in the second round of the 1992 Major League draft. A year later he was selected in the third round of the 1993 NFL Draft and gave up baseball. But first, Lynch threw the very first pitch in Marlins franchise history and recorded a no-decision as the Sailors lost 6–5 to the Jamestown Expos in thirteen innings on a June day in 1993. Today, Lynch’s Marlins hat resides at the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. For the record, the righty’s final minor league stat line included one win, three losses, and a spiffy 2.35 ERA over thirty-eight innings. In a fourteen-season NFL career, he totaled 740 tackles and twenty-six interceptions. And he made eight Pro Bowls.

Kevin:
I’d say he made the right call.

Josh:
Nah. Two-sport stars should always choose baseball.

Kevin:
Why?

Josh:
Because I like baseball better….

Kevin:
That’s not too egocentric.

Josh:
And because baseball causes fewer long-term physical problems.

Kevin:
Provided we’re not counting the effects of smokeless tobacco and steroid use.

Josh:
True enough.

The Marlins made it their goal from the start to construct the first LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certified retractable roof stadium in the bigs. Washington’s Nationals Ballpark is the first major sports facility to achieve LEED certification but alas, it has no roof, leaving room for the Marlins to still be first in something. And while they were still awaiting the final word on whether they had achieved this most sought-after stamp of approval in the world of environmentally friendly design, they no doubt went to great lengths in their pursuit of it. The stadium’s glass façade allows much more light to filter into the stadium than the retractable roof fields in Houston or Arizona allow, for example, while the white roof reflects sunlight rather than absorbing it. Waterless urinals, like the ones they have at Citi Field in New York, are also fixtures throughout the park. There are 250 of them and they combine to save six million gallons of water a year that would otherwise be flushed down the drain. The materials used in the stadium’s construction were also carefully selected to minimize their negative environmental impact. Some were recycled from other projects, while others were fabricated as close to the stadium’s construction site as possible, to reduce the environmental impact of transporting them to South Florida.

Josh:
If only they’d opted to power the whole yard with fuel cells.

Kevin:
Let me guess, that’s a stock you own?

Josh:
As a matter of fact I’d like to tell you about …

Kevin:
I’m really not interested.

When the Marlins are playing a Friday night home game, they give fans a special treat: the chance to win T-shirts, caps, bobbleheads, posters and other Marlins-related prizes. On these nights, the first ten thousand fans through the gates receive Baseball Bingo cards. Some are marked for an instant prize, while the rest leave it up to their holders to keep score as the game progresses to see if they can spell Bingo and win a prize the old-fashioned way.

The Mets have Jerry Seinfeld. The Dodgers have Alyssa Milano. The Yankees have Paul McCartney. And the Red Sox have Stephen King. All of the high-profile teams have immediately recognizable celebs associated with their home ballparks. And now that the Marlins are actually playing in Miami, instead of out in the burbs, we expect at least a few of the beautiful people who frequent the clubs in South Beach to start turning out for games. We hear Drew Barrymore bleeds teal and silver and think she would look great on
SportsCenter,
sitting tank-side near the Marlins dugout. We hear rapper Flo Rida follows the Marlins, too, and that Gloria Estefan, who owns a small share of the Miami Dolphins, is hooked on the Fish.