Yesterday's Braves-Marlins game started at a little after 1 pm. The announced attendance — which is based on tickets sold — was 11,211. However, at the start of the game only about 600 people were in the seats at Dolphin Stadium. Before the game, reports the Associated Press, Marlins players were guessing as to how many people would be there: “I was way off,” Marlins reliever Joe Nelson joked. “I had predicted 418.”
What a sad state of affairs. The Marlins have fallen back in the NL East race lately but for most of the year they've been surprisingly competitive. But no one in Florida seems to care, and they're stuck in a football stadium that, when configured for baseball, looks to be a mess compared to all the nice new ballparks that so many teams have. So the Marlins will once again go through the same cycle of trading away their best players before arbitration and free agency makes them too expensive to keep. And the stands will remain empty.
Yesterday's Braves-Marlins game started at a little after 1 pm. The announced attendance — which is based on tickets sold — was 11,211. However, at the start of the game only about 600 people were in the seats at Dolphin Stadium. Before the game, reports the Associated Press, Marlins players were guessing as to how many people would be there: “I was way off,” Marlins reliever Joe Nelson joked. “I had predicted 418.”
What a sad state of affairs. The Marlins have fallen back in the NL East race lately but for most of the year they've been surprisingly competitive. But no one in Florida seems to care, and they're stuck in a football stadium that, when configured for baseball, looks to be a mess compared to all the nice new ballparks that so many teams have. So the Marlins will once again go through the same cycle of trading away their best players before arbitration and free agency makes them too expensive to keep. And the stands will remain empty.
