I think the first impression anybody has coming into that ballpark for the first time is the fact that it just says Miami. It speaks to Miami. It’s bright, it’s colorful, and it’s very unique in the color patterns inside the ballpark as well as the design outside.
—Dave Van Horne, Miami Marlins radio play-by-play broadcaster
The University of Miami, otherwise known as “the U,” has a team whose name is quite suited for the city it represents: the Hurricanes. Situated on the nation’s Eastern seaboard like a lemming suspended in animation, Miami is no stranger to Atlantic Coast hurricanes reaching as high as category 5, meaning “buy used and always send your insurance agent a Christmas card.” While open air sports like football tend to “dig in” and play through conditions like rain—though perhaps not an actual hurricane itself—baseball umpires raise their arms and let the fans in the seats endure the conditions they paid for while the players work out in rain-free clubhouses, sharpening the skills they may or may not get to exhibit that day. Sound like something one fan, let alone tens of thousands, would want to pay to do 81 times a year? In 1990, thanks in part to business developer H. Wayne Huizenga’s investment in both the Miami Dolphins and their home of Joe Robbie Stadium, the expansion talks about baseball started to focus around south Florida. The following year, in a marketing experiment, a two-game spring training series between the New York Yankees and the Baltimore Orioles, which averaged nearly 63,000 fans in attendance, all but put the ink on the paper to invite Major League Baseball’s 28th team to Miami, where the Florida Marlins played their first-ever game on April 5, 1993, in front of 42,334 fans. The Marlins’ home, which took on so many names that corporate finally stopped ordering letterhead stamps, was one they shared with the NFL’s Miami Dolphins for 19 seasons. During that time the Marlins won two World Series championships (1997 and 2003) and hosted just as many fire sales that relinquished players like Kevin Brown, Hanley Ramirez, and Miguel Cabrera. As could be expected from fans who paid an average of $19 a ticket to crane their necks for three hours in Miami’s intense humidity to watch a player whose name appears on his jersey in stitched lettering but who is referred to as “the guy we traded Miggy for,” the attendance at Marlins games dropped considerably from the team’s opening season average of 38,000. The overall season attendance was over one million less than Major League Baseball’s average, but with the team having announced in December 2000 that a new stadium would be built, the question from Marlins fans—most of whose viewership of Marlins games took place in their living rooms—understandably was “When?” Finally, in July 2009, ground breaking took place in Miami’s Little Havana for the team’s new ballpark, and on April 4, 2012, under their new identity, color scheme, and on-field management, the Miami Marlins took the field at Marlins Park.
The newest ballpark in Major League Baseball, Marlins Park brings with it many of the baseball-compatible amenities overlooked and unseen at the team’s original home of Dolphins Stadium/Joe Robbie Stadium/Pro Player Stadium/Pro Player Park/Dolphins Stadium(again)/Dolphin (singular) Stadium/Land Shark Stadium/Sun Life Stadium. The first and obviously most important issue addressed by Marlins Park was the weather. A retractable roof and built-in air conditioning system, likely sporting the highest energy bill in Miami-Dade County, gives Marlins fans the cool feeling they never had for 19 seasons watching the team in a stadium “awkwardly reconfigured for baseball.” Hall of fame Marlins radio play-by-play broadcaster Dave Van Horne describes the park’s welcoming climate: “A retractable roof makes for a wonderful facility in the heat of Miami. If the Marlins were to survive in south Florida, they had to get the fans not only out of the rain but out of the searing heat and humidity of those midsummer days, and that’s what Marlins Park does for the fans. It takes them away from the heat, humidity, and the rain. The biggest complaint the first year from Marlins fans—believe it or not—over the course of the first home stand was that the air conditioning was set too high. It was too cold in there. Here they had designed an indoor, retractable roof facility to get the fans out of the heat and humidity, and the number one complaint was that it was too cold. They had to make some modifications in the way the air conditioning units were directed down onto the fans, and now it’s really comfortable. They couldn’t ask for more. We don’t hear any more complaints about fans being too cold in Marlins Park.”
In addition to a thermostat needle resting just on the right spot, the Marlins’ new home offers many of the amenities baseball’s newest ballparks are practically mandated to include in order to draw fans from their sofas, including an angle ideal for baseball viewing. Van Horne continues, “Every seat in the ballpark is angled towards the middle of the diamond. You’re really looking from any seat at the pitcher. No more having to sit forward in your seat, as you did at the football stadium, crane your neck, and turn—to your left if you were on the right-field side or to your right if you were on the left-field side—to look down and see home plate, the pitcher, and to follow the game. At Marlins Park, everyone can sit back, relax, and enjoy a baseball game with their seat properly angled towards the middle of the inner diamond.” While the comfortably angled seats may give the “popcorn, peanuts, beer” vendors backaches supplying greater demands from settled and unmoving spectators, the stadium concourses accommodate transient, specialty food seekers, as well as the short attention span of adolescents in attendance. Van Horne adds, “It’s a wonderful facility for the fans. The concourse above the lower seating bowl goes all the way around the field. You can walk around the entire ballpark on that concourse and never lose sight of the field of play. It’s wide for the food services, the art displays, and everything else that’s in that ballpark. A lot of the work around the concourse and the walls that back the lower bowl seating areas are a variety of colored tiles. The colors correspond with the section of seats for which you hold a ticket and the tiles blend from one section to another. Some use ballpark green for the color of their seats, but the seats forming that sea of blue that looks like the ocean certainly attract attention when fans walk in there. Straight back from home plate—to the left and to the right—there are two large aquariums stocked with all kinds of tropical fish that are topical to the waters of the Atlantic in the south. It wouldn’t fit in in Denver, Seattle, Boston, Pittsburgh, or even Atlanta, but it fits right into the Miami landscape.” This “Miami landscape” extends to all walls at Marlins Park, including the ones between the two foul poles on the field of play. Van Horne continues, “The first thing that catches everyone’s eyes is the ballpark looks different. For example, in most ballparks, they’ve used the standard ballpark green for the outfield walls and for the padding on the railings around certain parts of the field. There’s no ballpark green in that ballpark. The green is a color that the owner Jeff Loria came up with that he calls ‘vibrant green.’ Some people have referred to it as a lime green. It’s actually got a little more green in it than lime green. It also has a little touch of yellow in there that creates the vibrant, high-visibility green color. That’s very unique about the ballpark.”
While the kids are out enjoying “real life Nemos” and the spicy food aficionados savor meals for which every menu item contains the word “Goya,” it’s arguable that the pitchers are the ones having the most fun at Marlins Park. Van Horne notes, “To use a baseball term, the park plays big. The dimensions are big. It’s a pitcher’s park. The outfield fence is 11-feet high, and it goes from 11 feet to 13 and a half feet from right center all the way to straightaway center field. I think, from a baseball standpoint, that’s the first thing the players see, and, of course, word gets around quickly that Marlins Park is a pitcher’s park, but it makes for some exciting baseball because it’s a great triples and extra-base-hits park.” When advocating Marlins Park from a pitcher’s perspective, Cuban right-hander Jose Fernandez is as expert of a witness as the court will allow. The 2013 National League Rookie of the Year, who also came in third in Cy Young voting, is the incarnation of home-field advantage while on the mound at Marlins Park. Van Horne relates, “Jose has responded not just to the ballpark, the dimensions, and the fact that it’s a pitcher’s park, but also to the fact that the fans have taken to him and he to them. He has excelled at Marlins Park. Here’s a young man who’s had just a touch over a full season in the Major Leagues, and he has already established this is certainly his home park. He hasn’t been beaten. He has 11 wins, no losses, and an ERA of 1.07 after 18 starts in his home park, and that’s in sharp contrast to his 3-7 record on the road and an ERA of 4 after 14 starts. Not to use just statistics to describe what Jose has done. I think they underscore the fact that he is really comfortable there, and, obviously, so far, tough to beat there.” Luckily for Fernandez, he never has to face his own teammate, Giancarlo Stanton, who has been credited in some circles with having the most natural home run swing in all of baseball, which he has proven even in pitcher havens like Marlins Park. Van Horne adds, “Some of the more exceptional hitters like the Marlins own Giancarlo Stanton, can make any park look small, and, sometimes, he makes Marlins Park look small.” Since 2012 balls off Stanton’s bat have left Marlins Park faster than former club manager Ozzie Guillen’s job security after his infamous “I love Castro” comment. The slugging outfielder has 98 home runs in only two and a half seasons’ worth of games since Marlins Park opened in 2012, earning him two All-Star game appearances. With Stanton at the plate and Fernandez on the mound, that sea of blue seats may eventually be blanketed daily with fans wearing Miami’s “vibrant” colors. Van Horne comments, “Now the Marlins, as an organization, just have to put a winning product on the field. I’m sure we’ll see attendance figures climb, but it’s a challenge in Miami. It’s an event city, and, even the ballpark itself doesn’t attract all that many people. I think there are a lot who go to see it one time, but, as far as locals who purchase season ticket packages, the ballpark itself, while new, is not an attraction. The team on the field will be the attraction, and the Marlins appear headed in the right direction now, but, until they win on the field, the ballpark is half empty on most nights.” Definitely more than half empty during the final home game of the 2013 regular season, Marlins Park sent fans home for the winter with a going away present courtesy of starting pitcher Henderson Alvarez.
September 29, 2013: Alvarez Throws a Wild No-Hitter
A total of 287 no-hitters have been thrown in baseball history through the ’14 season. For some teams, like the Florida Marlins, the fans had to wait only a few years before someone like Al Leiter or Kevin Brown came in and broke the “drought.” For teams like the Mets, who endured 8,019 games before Johan Santana brought them a goose egg under the “H” slot on the scoreboard, or the San Diego Padres, Major League Baseball’s sole no-hitter-less franchise, whose tally is up to 7,328 and counting, a pitching gem of that caliber seems downright implausible. Through these 287 no-hitters, which include combined pitching efforts, a losing decision, and a fill-in for an ejected Babe Ruth, Marlins pitcher Henderson Alvarez’s feat is unmatched in a most peculiar way. Announcing up in the broadcast booth, Dave Van Horne recalls the contest between the Marlins and the defending American League champion Detroit Tigers: “It was a very strange weekend. First of all, the Tigers were getting ready for postseason play, so their game was being handled and managed very differently than the Marlins game. The Marlins were winding up a season in which they had lost an even 100 games. They wound up, in the final weekend, sweeping three games from the Detroit Tigers, one of baseball’s most powerful teams and headed to the playoffs, so it was a different kind of situation for the Marlins to end the season than for the Tigers. The Tigers were playing for their playoffs, so none of the starters stayed in the games very long. Justin Verlander started that final game and went the first six innings. That was his tune-up for the playoffs. Jim Leyland had this plan in mind even before the game had started. Then Doug Fister pitched an inning, and then Rick Porcello pitched an inning. Three of their starters pitched in that game and Luke Putkonen went out there and pitched the bottom of the ninth inning. So you had all three of those Tigers starters, Verlander, Fister, and Porcello, appearing in the game, and the Tigers hitters failed to score a run for any of their pitchers.” While the three Tigers were combining for 13 strikeouts and no runs on 103 pitches, Alvarez was “hanging” with them, striking out four and walking one in his impressively economic 99 pitches over nine innings. The big difference between Alvarez and three-fifths of the Tigers rotation was the numbers displayed on the scoreboard’s hit column: Marlins 4, Tigers 0. Van Horne adds, “There was no score when the Marlins came to bat in the bottom of the ninth inning. Alvarez is sitting on a no-hitter, but he only gets the no-hitter if the Marlins win the game while he’s still the pitcher of record. Putkonen gave up a couple of hits and a couple of wild pitches in that inning. The wild pitch that decided the game brought home Giancarlo Stanton to score the only run of the day. It was the first no-hitter that was decided by a walk-off wild pitch in the bottom of the ninth inning. Ironically, instead of being on the mound to finish the no-hitter—which is usually the case—Alvarez was in the on deck circle. He would have come up next to bat. There have been walk-off home runs, walk-off singles, etc., so that made for certainly the most memorable of our games to date at Marlins Park. It would have been memorable in any ballpark.” Though Henderson Alvarez’s ’14 season ended on the opposite end of a no-hitter pitched by the Washington Nationals’ Jordan Zimmermann, the Marlins were relevant as a playoff contender much further into the season than they were in 2013 thanks to MVP-candidate-caliber numbers from hitters like Stanton and Marcell Ozuna and a stellar ERA of 2.65 from Alvarez, who, due to a season-ending injury to team ace Jose Fernandez, “shouldered” the rotation’s load. Though the 15-win improvement from 2013 to 2014 resulted in only a one-slot improvement on Major League Baseball’s total attendance list, the new look Marlins improved almost 2,000 fans a game, which in baseball’s ballpark with the smallest capacity is 5 percent; hopefully good enough to keep the “fire sale” signs shelved away in management’s proverbial garage for the time being, keeping Giancarlo Stanton and Jose Fernandez “playing with the fishes” for at least a few more seasons.