Florida Marlins 29-30 August

The highlight of the trip to Joe Robbie Stadium was watching Duane Wade, Miami Heat Player and Olympic Gold Medal Winner, throw out the first pitch. Other than that, this was not the greatest of experiences. First, Joe Robbie Stadium is a miserable venue for baseball. A football stadium by design, the stadium is old and poorly designed for baseball. Secondly, the only way to the stadium is to drive. This is one of the very few stadiums that does not have a designated driver program. Given the amount and variety of alcohol sold at the park, this is suspect. The games that we watched were against the Mets which generated other problems. We found it interesting that when we visited the two stadiums in New York, the fans were fairly well behaved. The same cannot be said of the New Yorkers who had migrated to south Florida. These fans were loud, obnoxious and contributed nothing positive to the game. How do I know where they were from? A New Yorker can move to Florida, but the accent comes with them.

In the first game, the Marlins were only able to score one run while their starting pitcher was in the game. As we have seen many times this season, middle relievers are very poor. This was again evident during the game when one of the Marlins relievers in succession gave up an infield single, a walk, hit a batter, and then a grand slam home run. This was a Marlin loss that should have been avoided.

The Marlins won the second game that we attended in a manner that I had never seen before. With two outs, a Marlin tripled. Jerry Manuel directed the pitcher to intentionally walk the next two batters loading the bases. A third unintentional walk brought in the winning run in a most anticlimactic manner.

You may have noticed that I took very few pictures during this visit, and this was for a very good reason. There was very little about this stadium worth recording. It would be very hard to blame the Marlin's organization if they simply picked up stakes and moved to a city that was able to better facilitate the needs of a two time world championship team.

As you might suspect from my comments, this stadium did not rank well in the stadium list. The First Division remained the same. The second division is now:

• Baltimore
• Milwaukee
• Texas
• Houston
• Cincinnati
• Toronto
• Tampa
• Philadelphia
• New York Yankees
• New York Mets
• Cleveland
• Washington
• Kansas City
• Chicago White Sox
• Boston
• Florida (Miami)
• Minnesota