It’s been a couple of months since we had a stadium review here at The Ghost of Moonlight Graham, so I thought today would be a good day to have one.
The stadium that will be covered today is Sun Life Stadium, home of the Florida Marlins. Sun Life Stadium is more known more for having 100 different names over the last 30 years than it is for the crowds they get at the ballpark.
My buddy Tom visited the stadium a couple of weeks ago and I will let him tell you about his experience. Take it away Tom…
Sun Life Stadium
My wife approached me and said it was time for a family vacation. She set guidelines, it must be hot, have a beach, and accessible only by plane. That last one is to keep me from taking her to Long Island.
What do I do? I check to see when and where the Cardinals are playing the Marlins. So the family headed to South Beach, actually Fort Lauderdale, for a little R&R, fun in the sun and some St. Louis Cardinals baseball.
Pros
The Stadium was a breeze to find. It’s conveniently located between Miami and Fort Lauderdale, so the options of where to stay are great. We choose Fort Lauderdale because it is considerably more kid friendly than South Beach.
The Stadium itself is nice enough, there are more bathrooms then fans with plenty of family rooms, which was very convenient. The concessions are standard but what impressed me most was the number of staff at each concession stand.
The game had a 20 minute rain delay but I was thrilled with the amount of activities they had for kids to participate in. They had batting cages, spin the wheel, and other free games that lead to prizes.
I was very pleased with the quality of the seat I was able to get for the money I was willing to spend. We were right off the field adjacent to the visitor’s bullpen.
Lastly, and this was pretty cool, apparently Saturday night games are followed by a fireworks show and on field performance. For our game it was a high flying circus troop.
Cons
I’m getting used to empty stadiums, so I’m not going to dwell on the lack of support for the Marlins. They had an unusual pregame ceremony with at least half a dozen people throwing out the first pitch. They had Miss something another, guys from the radio station, a local Pastor, two guys in spandex from the circus troop.
Eventually Chris Bosh, from the Miami Heat took the mound for what was the seventh or eighth first pitch. I think that’s an oxymoron?
Sun Life Stadium is about the fifth name the stadium has had. I remembered Pro-Player and Land Shark but I didn’t realize this is the same stadium as Joe Robbie and Dolphin Stadium. Then someone referred to it as the Orange Bowl Stadium and my head nearly exploded. How confusing.
They are scheduled to get a new stadium with a roof in 2012 and I hope they pick a name and stick with it.
But the roof brings me to my last point, it rains in Florida every day. How did they not take that into account when selecting the City and Stadium for a team? I don’t have the numbers for rain outs or even rain delays but they have to be at or near the top.
Overall Game Day Experience
Despite another Cardinals loss, my daughter and I enjoyed ourselves and would rank Sun Life Stadium (I hope that’s still the name) a seven out of 10
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