Miami: A fun time and an entertaining baseball series

Miami 12, Atlanta 11
September 25

Miami 6, Atlanta 2
September 26

(Randy's Perspective)

It was nice to experience a couple of days of actual vacation. Those are hard to come by (for me at least, not so much for the recently retired Penny), but we had set aside September 24 through 27 for just that: leave West Virginia behind and head for a "beach and baseball" vacation. Our destination(s): Miami and Miami Beach.
South Beach (the daylight and after-dark versions), Little Havana, Lincoln Road, Adventura (the country's second-largest) Mall ... we took in what we could during the hours that we weren't hanging out at Marlins Park.
About the baseball games, Penny and I had an interesting discussion about the significance of watching a late September series between the fourth-place-in-the-division Marlins and the fifth-place and worst-version-of-a-Braves team in two-and-a-half decades. With two teams holding no chance of advancement, there was a distinct possibility that they could be mailing in the last few games.
Penny, as I have mentioned in this blog, has always enjoyed the "experience" of going to baseball games. But, as she would be the first to tell you, until two seasons ago she knew little to nothing about the game itself. She enjoyed going to the park - just didn't care about the fine details of baseball.
Times and situations change, though. Now, she sees the big picture ... she asks questions ... she keeps a scorebook, for heaven's sake ... she's mastered the differences between a sacrifice and a fielder's choice and she almost understands how a wild pitch differs from a passed ball. Bottom line, she now appreciates and gets into the game itself. And as she has suggested to me on many occasions, I am a lucky man because of that. (Each time she offers this suggestion, I respond in this manner: Penny, you are soooooo right.)

With that as background, here are the nuts and bolts of the discussion we had.
She asked if I had enjoyed the first of the two games we saw. I told her that I had, indeed, enjoyed the game, which so happened to be a 12-11 Marlins victory that featured 36 hits and a Braves comeback from a 12-6 deficit to an eighth-inning, bases-loaded-with-one-out rally (with the tying run on third, the go-ahead on second). Of course, the 2015 Braves being who they are, they failed to get even the tying run home, much less the potential winning run.
I told Penny that I was surprised by a few things, such as the enthusiasm and energy of the fans in the park, as well as the intensity the teams brought to a late-season game that meant little to either team.
She asked what I meant by that?

Not a bad crowd for a late-season game in Miami

For starters, I told her that I had expected about 3,000 fans. There were probably closer to 11,000 or 12,000. The upper decks were closed, but the lower tiers were maybe half full.
I added that I would have been more intrigued had either the Marlins or the Braves been involved in a pennant race. I said "baseball is great, no matter when or where" - but teams in playoff contention create more drama.
Penny thought about this and said, "Hmmm. I'm surprised to hear you say that."
Her assessment is this: She doesn't care if there's a pennant race or not. We're in a Major League Baseball park watching professional players play a game that we love. My enthusiasm, she figured, was not what it should be. Third, she couldn't understand why I didn't seem to care whether my favorite team won or lost.
"If it's my favorite team, I don't care whether they are in first place or not, I'm happy to see them and hope they win," she said.
My turn to say, "Hmmm." Because I immediately thought about what she said and determined that she's right about everything she said.
To make a long story short, "Go Braves!"

Yes, well, we lost the second game, too. It was 2-1 in the eighth, when the unimpressive Braves bullpen gave up four runs. The story of a season.
Early in the season, right after the Braves had traded Craig Kimbrell to the Padres, I flew in from a out-of-town trip. I arrived at the Columbus, Ohio airport shortly after 10 p.m. and got to my car in time to tune in (via Sirius/XM) the end of a game between the Padres and the Diamondbacks. I heard (recently traded Brave) Justin Upton homer and (recently traded Brave) Kimbrell save the 2-1 game for the Padres.
I figured it would be a long season for the Braves.

Back to Miami for a moment.
As usual, Penny has produced a fun blog with a lot of pictures. She captured a lot of the nuances of the park

Here's Penny following a tradition: home team apparel

As I mentioned, I hadn't "read up" enough on the Marlins still-kind-of-new park. My expectations were low, but it was a fun place to watch a game. I would go back.
I didn't realize before going to Miami that the park was built on the site of the old Orange Bowl stadium. As I watched the baseball game, I tried to conjure images from some of the thousand or so great games I have watched on tv from the Orange Bowl.
But the images wouldn't come. It just looked a hip 2015 baseball stadium.