Florida Marlins’ Move To Their Own Ballpark, Help To Promote Local Programs

The Florida Marlins will have a new home beginning in 2012, and their move into a home that is all their own figures to help promote baseball in the area.

After playing its first 19 seasons in the Miami Dolphins home stadium, the organization finally will have its own place to call home, a place that will offer far better baseball facilities than the former Joe Robbie Stadium could muster.

The Marlins also will have a new skipper in former World Series-winning manager Ozzie Guillen, and a new name as the Miami Marlins. But these moves are reflective of the move into their state-of-the-art, 37,000-seat, retractable-roof stadium in the Little Havana section of Miami, the sight of the former Orange Bowl.

What is most important is that they will have their own baseball field and will no longer share the field with a football team. Just as much as the Dolphins have long wanted to end this relationship and retain their field for only football-related activities, so too have the Marlins long desired a place that catered more to baseball dimensions. Football always came first at Sun Life Stadium. This affected the field, the lights, the seating, everything. Now that won’t matter.

“Sun Life Stadium is not a baseball stadium,” said Fort Lauderdale coach Terry Portice, who attends many games each season and has a daughter who works for the organization. “It will be great to have a climate-controlled facility where all the seating will face the play all the time, and we will have a place that can offer baseball activities year round.”

The Marlins played their first game at the stadium, which was then called Joe Robbie Stadium, on April 5, 1993, defeating the Los Angeles Dodgers 6-3 in front of a sold-out crowd of 42,334 fans.

In current times, those exciting days seem like from a different lifetime. The Marlins’ low point came late this season in the opening game of a doubleheader against the Cincinnati Reds on Aug. 24, an unscheduled makeup game from a rainout earlier in the season. An unofficial count made by fans posted on Twitter announced 347 people in attendance, a figure that I can personally verify as being reasonably accurate because I was one of those 347 in attendance. I was sitting in the outfield and could hear the umpire’s calls and everything the few scattered fans were shouting, and I watched the JumboTron flash images of the same few people throughout the game.

The heat and the weather certainly play a factor in the low attendance numbers that have increasingly worsened over recent years, and the new ballpark will now do just the opposite by guaranteeing a comfortable climate-controlled environment. Speaking as one who lost out on box seats one year because Hurricane Ivan wiped out the game, it is comforting to know such a financial investment cannot be disrupted by an act of Mother Nature.

But before we cut the ribbon and usher in the new era of Florida Marlins baseball, let’s take one last look at the history this team has created for its fans here in South Florida in its first 19 years of play.

Obviously, there was nothing more rewarding than the fact that the team managed two World Series championships, in 1997 and again in 2003, both of which were accomplished as wild-card teams won with exciting young players and memorable, iconic moments.

“Those were exciting times for South Florida,” says Portice, who was at Games 6 and 7 in the ’97 series after some of his former players treated him with the tickets. “The stadium was really juiced for Game 7. It was absolutely pumped and alive.”

The Marlins’ 11^th-inning victory when Edgar Renteria singled to drive in Craig Counsell was certainly their most accomplished instance at Sun Life Stadium, but it is also a moment that is iconic and historic for MLB history as well. Few championships had been settled in extra innings in Game 7, let alone by a young expansion team that was also the wild card team.

Beyond just the Marlins’ significant accomplishments as a team, there have been several big moments for some of the area’s local stars.

In 2009, former Fort Lauderdale High School and Anaheim Angels pitcher Scot Shields was able to pitch at the stadium for Team USA during the World Baseball Classic, throwing a scoreless inning as part of a victory against the Netherlands that staved off elimination for Team USA and propelled it into the championship bracket.

Current Marlin and former Palm Beach Gardens pitcher Chris Volstad made his Marlins home debut on July 21, 2008 against the Atlanta Braves. Volstad has 15 career home wins in his four-year MLB career with the Marlins.

With the wealth of local talent now playing in the Big Show, countless other games found those locals returning home to play against the Marlins in front of their family and friends.

This past season, two-time defending state champion Archbishop McCarthy enjoyed the unique opportunity to compete in a showcase game at Sun Life Stadium, an opportunity the team anticipates to return in 2012. It is just one way that the Marlins can help to give back to the baseball communities it neighbors.

Portice brought the Fort Lauderdale baseball, softball and track teams to attend a game each spring at the old stadium, something he hopes to continue for the school in the new ballpark. He says their name is in the hat to be on the list for Opening Day next spring.

Now that professional baseball has a home of its very own in South Florida, hopefully the Marlins will continue to help promote the game of baseball by providing a year-round baseball facility for the area’s eager programs.

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