Game 25: September 1, 2014 Mets at Marlins

In every one of my trips, my transportation and hotel plan worked exactly as I expected. There were a couple of hiccups, like flight delays, but my plan accounted for those. I think I arrived late for one game. I did see the entire Marlins-Mets game but my plan wasn't a good one. I planned to fly into Ft. Lauderdale and reserved the Sheraton by the airport. A month before the flight, United called me and told me they were canceling my flight. After a lot of back and forth they got me on a USAirways flight to Miami. What I should've done was rebooked a hotel near the Miami airport Sunday night. Instead I relied on Tri-Rail.

The problem with Tri-Rail is that their Sunday schedule only had a train to Ft. Lauderdale running at 9:28 PM, over two hours after I arrived in Miami. So I waited at the airport instead of doing something else. I should've rented a car as a friend suggested. So I didn't get to the hotel until after 10. The next morning I walked to where I thought a Dunkin Donuts was. It wasn't there. At least I got good exercise. If I had a car, I would've found it.

I took the Tri-Rail into Miami. That worked well, but Miami's Metrorail runs about every 20 minutes on holidays. You wouldn't find that in New York, especially on trains going to Yankee Stadium on game day. That took too long. Then I took the Marlins bus to the ballpark. This took a lot longer than it did in Atlanta taking MARTA. I did make it to the stadium.

The Marlins had a bobble head collection that anyone would envy.

The Marlins are 27th in attendance. The Rays are 30th. Marlins Park looked like a place that was empty. The upper deck is entirely closed and they had plenty of empty concessions. This was a bar on the club level.

I thought I was going to be disappointed by the food here, but they had a section called "Taste of Miami."

And I found some very tasty empanadas. Very nice. I didn't find any good beer, meaning that I didn't have a beer at any of the three ballparks I went to last weekend. Let's focus on the empanadas.

I don't like indoor stadiums and Marlins Park had the roof closed. Of the four retractable roof parks I've been to, two had the roof opened and two had it closed. I did like the thing in centerfield.

They did get excited when Stanton homered. I thought it was nice of him to homer while I was there since that's why you go to Marlins Park.

I'm not happy with the proliferation of Sausage Race wannabes. Minneapolis had one. Oakland had one. Atlanta had a Home Depot race. Miami had a fish race. They all feel like a cheap copy.

Marlins Park wasn't a great experience. I got on the bus to the Metrorail and had to wait even longer than the expected 20 minutes. That meant I missed Tri-Rail by ten minutes. So I had to wait 50 minutes for the train. So it took 2 hours 20 minutes to get a distance I could've driven in 30. I did manage to find the Rustic Inn near the train station. A true South Florida gem.