The city of Miami passed its part of the new Marlins stadium deal, and on Monday it goes to a county vote for their approval of the monies they lay out for the deal. It does affect the Dolphins (read below) :
good news they are one step closer to moving the marlins out... but a 1 year extension? come on... let the marlins go play at one of the grapefruit league stadiums. There should easily be enough seats in one of those to contain the marlins faithful.. or, are they doing a better job with attendance now?
While the attendance is bad, its not as bad as it looks, because the Marlins play in a 70,000 seat stadium, one that is a) not a baseball stadium, b) is located 30 miles from most of the population (making it impossible to get to for a 7pm game) and c) is open air, in South Fla summertime = lots of rain delays --- all of which surpress attendance. That and the team has no dicernable "stars" because of the owners reluctance to spend money on the payroll. I believe the new stadium will completely turn around the Marlins attendance because now you will able to go to a game and because it will be a retractable roof, you can be assured there will not be rain delays. Also would you consider Cleveland a good baseball city ? How about San Francisco ? Would it surprise you to know before their new stadiums were built, they ranked 2 of the 5 lowest in average attendance ?
Might I remind you, the Marlins have won two World's Championships in Dolphin Stadium, while the Dolphins......
The problem with that is that the Orange Bowl no longer exists and the new stadium is set to be built on that same spot...
No the University of Miami already has that covered http://hurricanesports.cstv.com/ot/mifl-arod-park.html
Tonight the Miami-Dade County Commission approved with a 9-4 vote the new $ 634 million ballpark for the Florida Marlins, who when the stadium is built will be renamed the "MIAMI MARLINS". This means as of 2012 Dolphin Stadium will be without a baseball infield.
