First visit: March, 2001. I was in Miami for the Gavin Radio Convention – a business trip that I didn’t have to pay for – and took a quick ride up I-95 and Forida’s Turnpike (when I lived in Palm Beach it was called the Sunshine State Parkway – a better name in my humble opinion) to Miami Gardens to check out what was then called Pro Player Stadium. Earlier it was called Joe Robbie Stadium (he was the owner of the Miami Dolphins), later it was Dolphin Stadium, Land Shark Stadium, Sun Life Financial Stadium and now Hard Rock Stadium. It was pre-season and no games were underway. The field was in the process of the football-to-baseball conversion. This was one of those multi-purpose stadiums that was clearly designed for football and squeezing in a baseball field was clearly a round-peg problem.
When Kara and I went to a game there it was Sun Life Financial Stadium and the Florida Marlins were in their final season there. The following year they’d move to a brand new Marlins Park in Miami on the site of the old Orange Bowl and become the Miami Marlins.
There are typically huge crowds at an NFL game, but when we pulled in to the parking lot it was pretty close to empty. We were going to a Marlins-Diamondbacks game. As we headed to our seats the Jumbotron (which by current standards was not very jumbo) had a notice apologizing for the delayed start to the game due to bad weather. The sky was azure blue and the sky had not been cloudy all day. (I know in the song Home on the Range the line is “and the skies are not cloudy all day”…but when I was a Program Director at multiple radio stations one of my weather rules was to never say “skies” in the forecast. Why? Because there’s only one sky. Go ahead, look up. Do you see more than one sky?)
There was zero need for a delay. The crowd, and I use the term generously, could rival the crowd at a high school game. Seriously. A guy named Juan Miranda played 1st. I would have put Miranda in right. Nyuk, nyuk. Other notable players the game were Stephen Drew, bother of former Red Sox right fielder JD Drew and future Sox shortstop himself. Chris Young played center for the D’Backs. He later was a reserve outfielder for the Red Sox. Both Drew and Young subsequently played for the Yankees. Same with Marlins right fielder Giancarlo Stanton. Despite Stanton’s presence, the only home run of the game was by Arizona starting pitcher Zack Duke. Micah Owings got the win for the Diamondbacks, Ricky Nolasko took the loss for Florida.
The box score said the attendance was 15,000. Absolutely no way. Maybe they sold 15,000 tickets, but there were at most 750 butts in the seats.
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