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Get used to that headline up there, Miami. If Riptide were a lazier sort of operation, we’d copy it onto our desktop and recycle it over and over during homestands. One day after setting a new low attendance mark at Marlins Park, the Fish shattered that record last night by drawing just 13,810. How empty will stands get by July during Monday-afternoon games against the Pirates? Two thousand fans? Six hobos plus a ratty dog that wandered in off NW Seventh Street?
The team might just destroy some statistical marks for futility this year, too. After getting shut out 8-0 by the Braves last night, they’ve now been blanked in four of nine games, sit at 1-8, and are somehow already seven games out of first place.
Honestly, it’s tough to decide which numbers are more embarrassing: the plummeting attendance at Marlins Park or the team’s Sandlot-esque offensive output.
Let’s begin with a few nuggets about fan support in this first homestand of the year. With two of the three games setting new low-water marks, the Opening Day series is the lowest-drawing three-game stretch at Marlins Park, 7,000 fewer than a Phillies series last August.
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In fact, last night’s crowd was so awful that even during the dark, cavernously empty final season at Sun Life Stadium, the team only drew a worse turnout 13 times. There were 27 completely empty sections at the park when the first pitch went out.
And this was the first series of the year! Hope is supposed to spring eternal in April, with fans giving a fair shake to whatever collection of one-armed spitballers and converted gymnasts shuffle onto the field.
Then again, no team has ever crushed any hope of a decent season quite as quickly as this Marlins squad. They’ve now scored a grand total of 16 runs all year.
How bad does that suck? Well, remember John Buck? That guy who played catcher for the Fish for the past couple of years, who usually looked like he was attempting to swing a bat made of pure lead?
Well, he’s now toiling for the Mets, and so far — by himself! — he’s hit one more home run (three) and driven in just one fewer run than the entire Marlins roster. John Buck!
The good news is that Marlins attendance jokes have become the Twitter thing du jour for sportswriters.
Hilarious work, dudes! Of course, you didn’t watch your city get cornered in a back alley and mugged for $560 million by the worst owner in professional sports, so sometimes it’s less of a funny ha-ha kind of thing.
Now hitting Placido Polanco cleanup, that’s some Dave Chappelle-worthy material.
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